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Political Parties – Question 4
Question for Julie Kate K, Warren K, and Randy L. The section of the text on campaign finance and regulation has a lot of rules on contributions and limits and reporting that can get quite complicated. A couple of points are worth noting. First, while about half the states do have public financing of campaigns to eliminate the connection between money and political influence, South Carolina does not. Second, the soft money that used to flow from national parties to the state parties no longer exists with the national reforms that took place a few years ago – soft money no longer exists. Third, the amounts of money required to run for office have increased since the text was written. So candidates must spend a lot of time asking people for money if they are to have a chance of winning – and you cannot win without money! The most recent example was the 2006 governor’s election in which Aiken County’s Senator Tommy Moore only raised $3 million against incumbent Governor Mark Sanford’s $8 million. (Moore did not like asking people for money.) While many factors contributed to Moore’s loss, not being able to run tv ads until the last 3 weeks of the campaign pretty much doomed him to defeat. Ok, having said all that, here is the question. Describe the major sources of funding for elections and how candidates spend the money they raise.
3 comments:
Political parties have what they call “Hill Committees,” which provides campaign services to legislative candidates. Political Action Committees also provide funding for political parties and candidates. Only 19 percent of candidates did not receive PAC contributions, which means the majority of candidates did receive a lot of funding from PAC. It is also easier for incumbents to receive monies over the challenger. Individual contributions are another source of funding for parties and candidates. Finally, the candidates themselves contribute to campaign funds. The reasoning for all of these sources of funding is because running a campaign is very expensive these days. The cost of media, especially television, is extremely expensive. Billboard advertising is another cost candidates have to pay for. Newspapers, radio advertising, direct mail, canvassing, and phone banks are all things in which a candidate must pay for in order to get the proper amount of publicity. However, these days, Internet has become a cheap source of publicity. As one can see, money is hard to fund, and proper publicity is not cheap. Therefore, challengers have a hard time beating the incumbents, and an even harder time getting funding to run their campaign.
Julie Kate
Major sources of campaign funding:
1) Hill committees – they are chambers that provide campaign services to legislative candidates.
2) Political Action Committees
3) Individual contributions
4) Candidates themselves
Ways of spending:
1) Media- that is especially television, radio, network television, cable television, newspapers for advertising
2) billboard advertising, yard signs, and bumper stickers
3) Direct mail
4) telephone calls, door-to-door canvassing themselves, public opinion polling
5) Internet which isn’t used much but is still being used.
Randy Lucas
Both Julie Kate and Randy did excellent jobs in presenting their answers! You would do well to read them!
Just one comment -- a new kind of PAC has arisen in SC that copies what political leaders do at the national level, "leadership PACs." A couple of leaders in the house has formed these things -- they raise money and then contribute it to other members so as to make these other members feel a sense of political debt to them. The most notable leadership PAC in SC was created by the House Speaker, Bobby Harrell, who is reputedly seeking nomination for being the next governor -- he is, of course, a Republican.
Bob B
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