Campaigns Not Much Changed
In 64 BC, Quintus T. Cicero gave the following advice to his more famous brother, during Cicero’s successful campaign for consul of the Roman Republic that year:
Exploit the weaknesses of your opponents (he had two), flatter voters shamelessly, promise them anything, and give people hope. He undoubtedly added, though it is not recorded: Spend buckets of money, as they did back then.
There are four resources available to any campaign: money, people, time and skill. All are limited, though money appears almost limitless in Illinois legislative campaigns this year.
Abraham Lincoln said the job of a campaign is to “canvas your district, identify your voters and get them to the polls.”
Nothing much has changed, except the technology and the money spent.
In Lincoln’s 1858 campaign for the US Senate, campaigning was conducted largely in person and by local party organizations.
Lincoln doggedly pursued the better-known incumbent Stephen A. Douglas across the battleground of central Illinois, arriving in towns the day after Douglas appeared—and had stirred up big crowds.
Money for travel, broadsheet posters and campaign buttons was important but not dominant.
In the 1900s, statewide candidates made a point of visiting each of our state’s 102 counties. This was a poor use of limited time, however; for example, the population of my tiny county of Stark is 1000th that of Cook County.
With the advent of television in the 1960s, candidates could reach all voters by going into the nine major media markets of the state for both “earned” media (unpaid news coverage) and paid advertising over TV.
Television transformed congressional, statewide and presidential campaigns—and drove the costs skyward.
The two biggest changes in campaigns since the 1960s have been about money and nastiness.
When I ran in highly competitive races for the Illinois House in the late 1960s, I spent a total of $4,000 in each race, which is about $28,000 in today’s dollars.
This past week, 10 Illinois House races each reported spending a total of more than $2 million. And the campaign is just coming into the peak spending period.
Candidates for the U.S. House who have competitive races (there aren’t that many because of gerrymandering) are told by consultants they need to devote to 50-60 percent of all their time, year-round, to fund-raising.
Traditionally, most of the campaign money came from national and state-level interest groups. That money is now being augmented by huge dollops of money from wealthy individuals, often contributed to the super-PACs (supposedly independent “political action committees”), where most donor names are protected from disclosure.
I always hated seeking campaign contributions. I thought there was an implicit quid pro quo, which both giver and solicitor vaguely understood to be a part of the transaction. You help me, and I’ll help you.
That quid pro quo isn’t always there, of course, but big money certainly buys more access to elected officials than that given to non-contributors. And the person who has the lawmaker’s ear at key moments certainly has a leg up in decision-making.
Otherwise, why would big money make big contributions?
Then there is the nastiness.
When I was campaigning for myself and others decades ago, consultants said that negative advertising was dicey.
It often backfired onto the candidate who ran ads that tried to smear the opponent. Voters apparently didn’t believe the ads and were offended. We didn’t use them.
Today, Katy bar the door. Ads have morphed over the years from the sublime to the ridiculous. Guilt by vague association is typical.
Voters say they don’t like them, but are swayed by them.
State political observer Rich Miller serves up some of the worst on his capitolfax.com site.
A recent TV ad in southern Illinois slams a responsible Democratic incumbent for contributing $1,000 to a fellow lawmaker who has been convicted of child pornography.
But the contribution was made three years before the pornography charges surfaced!
Apparently this scurrilous ad was payback for Democratic ads elsewhere in the state that have blasted a lawmaker for renting one of his properties to a released sex offender.
What to do?
I think all major donations should be disclosed. In the same vein, there should be more prominent statements on ads about who paid for them.
In Cicero’s day two millennia ago, big money metastasized and nastiness turned to assassination, all contributing to the fall of the Roman Republic.
We need to do what we can to rein in excesses of both today.
