By JOSHUA GREEN By JOSHUA GREEN ADVERTISING New York Times News Service The 2012 election will measure a lot of things, but one of the most important is whether we’ve reached a point in politics where money is the chief
By JOSHUA GREEN
New York Times News Service
The 2012 election will measure a lot of things, but one of the most important is whether we’ve reached a point in politics where money is the chief determinant of who wins a race or just a big advantage that can still be overcome with effort and planning. From the White House on down, the sudden infusion of huge sums of money into races, facilitated by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, is changing the way the two parties approach campaigns.
Many Republicans are now enjoying a pronounced advantage, while their Democratic opponents struggle to adapt. This new reality was on vivid display in the failed June 5 election to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The candidates and outside groups spent a record $63.5 million, up from $37.4 million two years earlier. Walker and his allies outspent Democrats 7 to 1, dealing a setback to the labor groups that had forced the election. On Wednesday, the AFL-CIO’s political director, Michael Podhorzer, met with reporters to discuss what has happened since Citizens United and what lies ahead. “I don’t think people were prepared for quite what happened,” he said. “When we went back and analyzed it, one of the things that was really clear was the power that money had to put races into play and to tip the balance in a lot of races.”
The Wisconsin election had a couple of quirks. Many voters considered the recall illegitimate, and opposed the Democratic challenger on that basis. A state law that allows incumbents facing recall to raise unlimited funds also helped Walker. But the basic lesson holds: Democrats were heavily outspent and lost. And that financial disadvantage looks as if it’s going to be perpetuated in many races this fall, including the presidential race.
So what do you do if you’re a Democrat? The AFL-CIO has decided to focus on organizing and “grassroots persuasion,” and hope that that can overcome the blitz of television advertising that well-funded campaigns can afford. In Wisconsin, and in an Ohio ballot initiative last November to curtail collective-bargaining rights for public employees, the AFL-CIO conducted experiments on how best to win support under such an ad blitz. The results suggested that personal contact by friends or acquaintances was most effective, persuading 20 to 30 percent more voters than those who were left alone.
The same dynamic applies in commerce: Businesses are eager to reach consumers through online social networks because recommendations from friends carry more weight than traditional advertising. As a result, Podhorzer says, “We’re recruiting activists and saying, ‘Who are your friends? Are you willing to talk to them? Are you willing to talk to the people in your neighborhood, or people who have some other affinity with you?’ If they are, then we provide training and information.”
The focus, he says, is on “quality over quantity.” This same strategy is being deployed by President Obama’s reelection team, which will rely much more heavily on grassroots organizing than the Romney campaign, in part because it cannot match the other side’s anticipated spending.
Earlier this week, the Obama campaign rolled out an elaborate online organizing tool dubbed “Dashboard” to help activists recruit friends and neighbors. As with the AFL-CIO’s approach, the hope is that personal contact will, in the end, prove more effective than traditional methods of campaigning. Whether it will or not is anyone’s guess. For all that the Obama campaign enthuses about technology and social networks, its strategy stems partly from necessity. In 2008, Obama outspent John McCain 3 to 1; this time, his advisers expect to see him outspent 3 to 1. And Republican super PACs, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, are already running millions of dollars of television ads in Senate races, spending unlikely to be matched by Democrats.
Labor will try to build an infrastructure of activists that will endure beyond this election. If that model performs, it will suggest a limit to money’s power in politics. But there’s probably also a limit to what even the strongest organization can overcome. “If the 7-to-1 spending margin in Wisconsin happens on a national scale,” Podhorzer says, “then we’re not a democracy anymore.”
