"Consequently, while it's easy to think both Republicans and Democrats have too much money, it's false to think one has a lot more than the other."

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Money in politics is huge, but no side has an edge
By James Varney, December 26, 2014

The calculations are coming in on the money spent on this year's midterm elections. It's easy to think, without thinking too hard, that one side has a financial edge.

This isn't true. Both Democrats and Republicans raise mind-boggling sums of cash, and this whole political advising field is clearly a lucrative one. When all the contributions are calculated, however, neither side has a distinct advantage.

It's somewhat perplexing why individuals are willing to spend so much on politics. Or at least it's perplexing to me. I've never understood why anyone who is smart enough and works hard enough to make millions of dollars would shower large clumps of those after-tax dollars on a politician or a political party.

In my mind, the two don't go together. Obviously if a donor is employed by a company dependent to some extent on government largesse -- a union, say, or a defense contractor -- then steady and sizable political contributions make sense. Those also make sense if they are sprinkled without partisan regard, given that the people in power this year may be out of it two years hence.

Nevertheless, millions are contributed. It is a cherished and persistent liberal myth that most of them flow to conservative candidates and causes.

Take a recent peek at campaign spending provided by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune via the good people at OpenSecrets.org, run by the Center for Responsive Politics. A glance at it would leave one thinking Bill Cassidy, the Republican congressman who unseated the incumbent U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., had an edge when it came to money.

The story opens with a handful of the biggest givers, most of whom donated to Republicans like Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and conservative outfits. It then segues to the fact that in Louisiana, 69 percent of the $23.7 million Louisiana residents tossed into political pots this midterm went to the GOP side.

Further down one learns that outside groups spent $13.2 million against Landrieu and $10.9 million against Cassidy -- a difference that is meaningless when one takes into account post-primary spending when Landrieu was running as a prohibitive underdog and her erstwhile Democratic allies abandoned her.

Indeed, back when control of the U.S. Senate and other issues were in play, Democrats appeared to have an advantage. In October, for instance, Slate wrote about how "Democrats just buried their Republican opponents in an avalanche of TV ad buys across key battleground states."

It stands to reason no one throws around millions of dollars without expecting something in return. Yet the influence of all this money is sometimes hard to discern.

Overall, spending on the 2014 elections was around $3.67 billion, according to OpenSecrets.org. That's a whopping figure, but it's only $40 million more than was spent in 2010, a negligible increase.

This time around, it sure looks like the liberal hedge fund magnate Tom Steyer, the biggest single political spender, got very little for the more than $70 million he contributed. The Democrats, who get all of Steyer's cash, got shellacked.

Two years ago, however, when groups formed or associated by Republican adviser Karl Rove amassed and spent many millions of dollars, his candidates were losers practically across the board.

In other words, while it is impossible to remain competitive without raising and spending king's ransoms, money does not appear to be the deciding factor in elections.

A dispassionate look at the numbers shows neither side has an edge.

Take Wall Street, where individuals and firms account for massive political contributions. OpenSecrets.org insists that the Republicans have an edge there, but no one has ever gotten more from Wall Street than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hardcore liberals like Bill Moyers and Harper's Magazine publisher John R. MacArthur despair over what they consider the Democratic Party's feverish pursuit of Wall Street's billions.

Similarly, no Americans have been vilified more for their free political speech than the Koch brothers. If Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had the monopoly on information and fundraising he so clearly desires, the country would never know that the Big Money in the United States is liberal.

For example, when the top 10 individual donors are broken down, five favored Republicans and five Democrats. The breakdown in money was less equal - Democrats took home 71 percent of the Top 10's donations.

And while some outfits favor conservatives, the liberals dominate the field. Among the 183 groups who wrote checks for $100,000 or more in 2014, the Democrats' edge over Republicans was 3-to-1, The Associated Press found.

Consequently, while it's easy to think both Republicans and Democrats have too much money, it's false to think one has a lot more than the other.
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