The campaign finance reports for August are available, and we discover that Mitt Romney’s campaign committee, along with the RNC (and a joint fundraising committee), raised $111.6 million in August. This is the 3rd month in a row that the major Republican fundraising committees have raised more than $100 million. This does not count the Super PACs associated with the Romney campaign, which are raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars as well.
The Washington Post reports that the Barack Obama campaign committee (and the DNC) raised about $114 million in August. These numbers are staggering to me. While the money is spent in a wide variety of ways, purchase of air time for TV ads comprises a fairly large percentage of campaign spending in a presidential race. I am now thinking that maybe it’s not so bad that we don’t live in a strict battleground state (although some experts are putting Michigan as a “lean Democratic” state, so it’s still possible that we’ll see more active campaigning here over the next few months). Can you imagine the number of campaign commercials we’d have to endure if we were a battleground state?
The Michigan Campaign Finance Network (www.mcfn.org) does important work in investigating campaign spending by Super PACs in the presidential race. They do what no one else does – they go to TV stations in each of Michigan’s media markets to determine which groups bought air time at Michigan TV stations. Because campaign finance laws don’t require Super PACs to report directly how they spent their money, groups such as MCFN perform an important public service. Their latest report on TV ad spending in Michigan shows that groups affiliated with Republicans and Mitt Romney have spent $10.9 million on TV ads through early September.
An opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press yesterday noted that if a politically active group such as a Super PAC isn’t required to reveal who is contributing to that group, then don’t listen to them. We do seem to have lost some transparency in our political campaign finance system. In research that Dave Dulio and I have done on the Republican presidential primary and general elections, we’ve noted that lots of campaign money that in previous elections went to political parties and candidate committees is now moving to the Super PACs. In other words, money has gone from transparent and publicly reported giving to hidden and secret giving. Not a plus for our democratic process, in my view.
John Klemanski
The Washington Post reports that the Barack Obama campaign committee (and the DNC) raised about $114 million in August. These numbers are staggering to me. While the money is spent in a wide variety of ways, purchase of air time for TV ads comprises a fairly large percentage of campaign spending in a presidential race. I am now thinking that maybe it’s not so bad that we don’t live in a strict battleground state (although some experts are putting Michigan as a “lean Democratic” state, so it’s still possible that we’ll see more active campaigning here over the next few months). Can you imagine the number of campaign commercials we’d have to endure if we were a battleground state?
The Michigan Campaign Finance Network (www.mcfn.org) does important work in investigating campaign spending by Super PACs in the presidential race. They do what no one else does – they go to TV stations in each of Michigan’s media markets to determine which groups bought air time at Michigan TV stations. Because campaign finance laws don’t require Super PACs to report directly how they spent their money, groups such as MCFN perform an important public service. Their latest report on TV ad spending in Michigan shows that groups affiliated with Republicans and Mitt Romney have spent $10.9 million on TV ads through early September.
An opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press yesterday noted that if a politically active group such as a Super PAC isn’t required to reveal who is contributing to that group, then don’t listen to them. We do seem to have lost some transparency in our political campaign finance system. In research that Dave Dulio and I have done on the Republican presidential primary and general elections, we’ve noted that lots of campaign money that in previous elections went to political parties and candidate committees is now moving to the Super PACs. In other words, money has gone from transparent and publicly reported giving to hidden and secret giving. Not a plus for our democratic process, in my view.
John Klemanski
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