Your political contribution strategy should be refined before the March 31 cut-off for fundraising covered by 1st quarter filings with the Federal Election Commission.
I recommend balancing these 7 criteria:
• Likelihood of close race and/or spillover to other close races
• Candidate’s potential to exploit and amplify recent shocks
• Time remaining
• Value of candidate’s message
• Value of contesting every election
• Cost of campaigns in the state or district
• Candidate’s funds
…in order to determine what candidate contributions are most effective for a Progressive, with limited funds, to advance the following goals:
• get “Bang for Your Own Buck$” (BYOB$), and
• “Catalyze Your Own Cause$” (CYOC$).
Below the jump, I flesh out these criteria and illustrate them through the ME-Sen candidacy of Shenna Bellows.
1. What is the minimum cost of a successful campaign in the candidate’s state or district?
• If this cost is low, then relatively small contributions can cover a non-trivial part of overall campaign expenses.
• ME-Sen: Maine's low-cost market enables Bellows to fund her candidacy with less than 10% of the amount that is needed in more expensive states.
2. Is candidate
well-funded?
• If a candidate already has millions, or has sufficient connections to raise millions, then how much impact will a few hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands have on the campaign? And how much gratitude will the candidate feel for those small contributions in comparison to the gratitude and favors owed to other bigger contributors?
• In contrast, a few early thousands can have a big impact if (a) they pay for basic start-up costs like an early website, and (b) the candidate’s ability to obtain competitive levels of funding from bigger contributors depends on first demonstrating ability to obtain small contributions. The adage “money makes money” is triply true in electoral politics, because the first few thousands yield the following 3 benefits:
(i) demonstrate viability (which attracts more contributors and volunteers),
(ii) earn free media attention (which attracts more contributors and volunteers), and
(iii) be re-invested in further fundraising (and volunteer-recruiting) activities.
• ME-Sen: Bellows parlayed her successful first partial quarter of amassing small contributions into much media attention, and endorsements and contribution solicitations by PCCC, DFA, NORML, and the Council for a Livable World.
3. How
much time remains until the election?
• An ambitious campaign, especially by a first-time candidate challenging a well-known incumbent, needs time to leverage contributions into more contributions, name recognition, popularity, staffing, voter-registration and voter-turnout.
• ME-Sen: Bellows still has 7 months in which to campaign before the early November homestretch of GOTV (including Maine's registration of new voters on election-day -- reinstated through a referendum led by Bellows).
4. Is a
close race likely? Can the candidate’s progress help other races?
• Horse-race predictions are important, but should not override the value of all other factors.
• An incumbent’s past success and early polling popularity does not prevent challengers from finding, creating and exploiting new vulnerabilities.
• A candidate can help an entire ticket by drawing attention to the election, and turning-out voters to vote for the entire ticket.
• ME-Sen: Bellows’ campaign can help Maine’s Democratic candidate for Governor, who must beat both a Tea Party incumbent and a “moderate” independent. Bellows has a better chance to make her own race close, and to win it, than is appreciated by most polling-watchers, for reasons detailed in these DailyKos diaries.
5. Does the candidate have potential to greatly exceed expectations by
connecting with newly emerging or deepening voter concerns, such as by leveraging a
“shock” in order to “not waste a crisis”?
• ME-Sen: Bellows’ is uniquely equipped to benefit from, and the Republican incumbent has clumsily repeated discredited assurances to protect the dishonest ‘business as usual’ on,
(a) the NSA abuses and unaccountability revealed by Snowden in the past year, and
(b) the CIA accountability resistance and intimidation of Senate revealed by Mark Udall and Dianne Feinstein in the past month.
6. Is the candidate’s message
important enough to have value even before it proves able to win?
• Candidates' publicity and education on Progressive messages has value independent of how many votes they receive.
• ME-Sen: Bellows’ many Progressive messages include several that she is deeply identified with from her past statewide activities:
(a) protecting civil liberties by increasing local and national oversight and transparency of surveillance,
(b) marriage equality, and
(c) voting rights.
7. Does the
candidacy itself have value even before it proves able to win?
• Is a challenger needed to every Rightist incumbent in order to benefit from late-breaking national waves, local scandals and/or incumbent retirement?
• In an era when Progressive challengers are accused of ‘wasting resources’ or ‘helping Republicans’ if they compete with centrist Democrats, should a Progressive seize the rare opportunity to fill the void wherever local centrist Democrats fail to compete against a Republican?
• Is it healthy to have some first-time candidates (who have general experience and specific expertise outside political office-holding) in order:
(a) to attract voters who blame “all politicians”, and
(b) to counteract the tendency for officeholders to be morally worn down over time by the never-ending pressure of fundraising and dirty money?
• If so, then isn’t it important to demonstrate to all potential first-time candidates that Progressive contributors will provide funds as a small incentive to counterbalance the many deterrents against becoming a candidate?
• ME-Sen: Bellows punches all of these buttons even while, in comparison with the typical first-time candidate, she benefits from previous experience and success in lobbying her state legislature and organizing her state’s voters on referenda.
Between now and the post mortems on quarterly fundraising announcements:
• Happy Contributing! and
• Thanks to those who contribute shoe leather at every stage of campaigns.