Be Thankful: Money Is Not Everything In Politics

Thanksgiving is approaching and here in Washington everyone is still having a hard time understanding what happened this past election cycle.  Despite a seemingly terrible climate for Democrats and the money disparity against them, Democrats managed to beat expectations across the board.  Although there are numerous political implications for the recent Democratic success, I think an overlooked and far more important legal implication can be made from the 2012 election: that the citizen, despite the amount of money and advertising in an election, can be relied on to cast an intelligent ballot by cutting through the advertising noise in an election.   Reformers opposed to the Citizens United decision argued that corporate spending would blind voters, confuse them, and ultimately would guarantee that corporate interests would run government because of the large amounts of money corporations could put into elections.   This year we can at least be thankful that despite all the money spent on campaigns, voters were able to cut through the noise generated by massive amounts of money in the 2012 election cycle. 

Corporations, through Super PACs and other tax protected entities spent a large amount of money in this election.  OpenSecrets.org has a very detailed explanation of the amount of outside money[1] each side spent in this election cycle.[2]   The top five entities that spent money in this election cycle were American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS, Restore Our Future, Priorities USA Action, Americans for Prosperity, and the US Chamber of Commerce.   Of these five, Priorities USA action was the only entity connected to liberal spending.   Looking at the spending of these top five groups the four conservative groups spent just under half a billion dollars with most of that money going towards independent expenditures for a conservative candidate or against a liberal candidate.   The liberal backed Priorities USA Action spent a paltry 77 million dollars in comparison.  Just in terms of the largest five outside spenders, conservative groups spent 6.25 times more money on elections than liberal organizations.[3] 

The money in this election cycle can be further broken down by looking at the spending disparity in competitive races.  Outside spending for the presidential race resulted in 670 million dollars being spent.   Of that 670 million, only 188 million went towards either helping President Barack Obama by supporting him (33 million) or attacking Governor Romney (155 million).  The rest of the 482 million went towards attacking the president (370 million) or bolstering the governor (98 million).  Despite this amount of outside money, President Obama was re-elected with roughly 51% of the vote and with 332 Electoral College votes compared to Governor Romney’s 48% of the popular vote and 206 Electoral College votes.

For the Senate Races the following outside spending information is available:

Race	Total	Total Democratic Spending per race	Total  Republican spending per Race
Virginia Senate	$45,650,100	$14,823,839	$30,826,261
Wisconsin Senate	$38,603,100	$17,475,823	$18,366,769
Ohio Senate	$36,848,886	$10,736,119	$25,894,000
Indiana Senate	$27,097,583	$9,969,877	$14,856,706
Nevada Senate	$25,509,388	$11,490,044	$13,911,128
Florida Senate	$24,899,671	$3,005,133	$21,893,469
Montana Senate	$21,071,425	$11,378,133	$9,392,337
Missouri Senate	$11,234,346	$7,413,969	$3,818,491
Nebraska Senate	$10,147,804	$4,231,004	$4,066,363
Massachusetts Senate	$7,155,420	$4,094,455	$3,060,965

 

In the senate races democratic candidates were generally outspent by outside money.  In Virginia Governor Kaine was outspent 2:1, in Ohio Senator Brown was outspent 2.5:1, in Indiana Joe Donnelly was outspent by 1.5:1 and in Florida Senator Nelson was outspent 7:1.  In these elections the democratic candidate won despite the spending advantages from outside conservative spenders.  

Those in favor of campaign finance reform have to now explain how having Super PAC spending, corporate influence, and large infusions of cash in elections have hurt America’s electoral process when, contradictorily, Americans were able to cut through the corporation backed advertisements that blanketed every media market in seemingly every important electoral college state, and senate race.  If the reformers’ theory about elections were correct then the results of the 2012 election should have been remarkably different for both the presidential and the senate races.  This justification is not needed only as a matter of policy, but as a matter of law for the Citizens United decision and future Supreme Court rulings on the matter. 

The conservative wing of the Supreme Court has through various cases explained that campaign finance restrictions on contributions and independent expenditures seem useless because our democracy favors more not less speech, because speakers should be able to speak freely regardless of wealth, and because voters should be trusted to be able to see through campaign advertising and still make an intelligent decision on the ballot.   This analysis formed the backbone of the Citizens United decision and explained why the Supreme Court overturned McConnell v. FEC and Austin v. Texas Chamber of Commerce.  This election cycle seems to support the conservative wing’s underlying theory supporting Citizens United.   

 If reformers want to get the Citizens United decision overturned, they will first have to contend with evidence from the 2012 election cycle that money did not play as pivotal a factor in the electoral process.   As a legal matter it is hard to explain the harms of allowing corporate entities to use vast aggregations of wealth when, in 2012, those aggregations of wealth did little to convince voters to vote for conservatives.   It is also hard to argue that corporate interests will allow corporations to buy elections when those corporations resoundingly lost in their efforts to take more seats from Democrats in the House of Representatives and flip control of the Senate and the Whitehouse into Republican hands.  It may be that reformers like Justice Stevens were proven incorrect in that no entity was able to drown out opposing speech by using large amounts of money on media buying, and voters were not blinded by an onslaught of advertising sufficient to deny the ability to hear both sides of the debate.    At either rate, the most important lesson to be gleaned from the 2012 election is that we can be thankful that money is not the most important factor in determining the outcome of an election.

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[1] Outside money means money spent from entities that are not legally tied to a candidate for elective office such as a Super PAC or a 501(c)(4). 

[2] http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/index.php.  I am using all of Open Secrets numbers to aid in my analysis.

[3] Note that the money from these five groups could be spent on candidates for the presidential race, the senate, or the house of representative.