The Last Hurrah?: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 2002 Congressional Elections

Chapter Twelve. The Consequences of Noncandidate Spending, with a Look to the Future

258 Outside money has changed the dynamics of campaigns and elections in competitive congressional elections. Unlike most candidate-centered congressional elections, much of the campaigning in a competitive race falls outside the control of the candidate. Political parties and interest groups do not all share the same agenda, and some have resources well beyond those of the candidates. Instead of seeing an election as a race between two major party candidates, we now need to consider the campaigns mounted by the party committees and interest groups as part of the overall campaign. In an extremely competitive South Dakota Senate race, nearly forty groups communicated with voters, compared to the noncompetitive New Mexico Senate race, where fewer than ten messengers communicated with voters. These noncandidate groups have also changed the volume and tone of competitive congressional elections, making them more intense and negative. Candidates continue to play an important role, even when substantial outside money is invested in a race. They remain the focal point, even while they have less control over defining themselves and their opponents , because noncandidate spending typically also focuses on the candidates . This is ironic because most of the noncandidate activity is by political parties, yet party soft-money-funded messages rarely even mention the party. The importance of candidates is well understood by the parties, who invest heavily in candidate recruitment in potentially competitive races. As noted in chapter 1, President George W. Bush and the White House political staff gave this added emphasis in 2002. When a TWELVE The Consequences of Noncandidate Spending, with a Look to the Future david b. magleby j. quin monson candidate fails to remain competitive, party soft money and issue advocacy spending in that race tends to fade. For example, the Mississippi Third Congressional District race between Republican Chip Pickering and Democrat Ronnie Shows, both incumbents, was initially expected to be competitive and attracted substantial noncandidate money. However , “as the campaign wore on, and polls showed that Shows was not going to be able to offset the advantages held by Pickering, interest in the race evaporated and [the parties and interest groups] took their money elsewhere.”1 In 2002 party soft money was again the most important source of outside money. As in 1998 and 2000, it was spent strategically in the competitive races and largely invested in voter persuasion and mobilization . The Republicans invested more of their soft money than before in voter mobilization through the 72 Hour Task Force, but both parties continue to spend large amounts of their money on broadcast communications . Two factors converged in 2002 to make the impact of soft-money expenditures especially heavy. First, because 2002 was billed as the “last hurrah” for soft money, donors were especially motivated to give. As detailed in chapter 1, compared to the previous midterm election, soft money soared in 2002 and very nearly rivaled soft-money spending in the 2000 presidential election. Second, these soft dollars were spent in a small number of congressional races, in large part because most federal contests in 2002 were not competitive, especially because redistricting in 2002 tended toward incumbent protection and produced fewer competitive seats than anticipated. Additionally the few competitive Senate races in 2002 tended to be in less populated states with less expensive media markets. Cheap media markets and sparse populations in South Dakota, Arkansas, and New Hampshire permitted the parties and interest groups to stretch their soft-money dollars more than they would have if the battlegrounds had been New Jersey, Florida, California, or New York. Our research in 2002 reinforces our earlier findings that the two parties have different strategic advantages. Republicans clearly have a hardmoney advantage, something Democrats could counter in 2002 with soft money but which, under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, gives the GOP a substantial head start in the now more important hardmoney game. In 1998 and 2000 Democrats had a large ground-war advantage. This was due in part to the strength and expertise of their the consequences of noncandidate spending 259 large membership-based interest-group allies. In 2002 the Republicans took major steps toward closing the gap on their ground-war deficiency. How the Democrats do in mounting a ground war without soft money and whether the Republicans have really “gotten religion” on spending hard money for the ground operation are questions to be explored in future studies. As discussed in chapter 3, interest-group issue advocacy...