With campaign fundraising reports (rather than the press releases on the reports) being released shortly, brace yourself for some of the least informed, least useful pundit analysis of the entire campaign.
Rather than use the filings to to see which corporate and wealthy interests the candidates are indebted to (and discern potential conflicts and loyalties they might have if elected), we all know that most reporters will view these reports only as sports scores designed to show who’s “ahead” or “behind.”
And because the press uses these reports to indicate “momentum” and ascribe "credibility" to candidacies, the campaigns therefore play all sorts of games to manipulate their numbers, and mislead the media and the public about them.
To help wade through the misinformation, what follows are some humble tips (from a reformed campaign aide who has seen the ugly side of this process) of what to really look for as these reports come out.
1) Does Obama really have 493,000 donors? The press has no way of knowing and is simply taking the campaign’s word for it. Whenever a campaign claims it has a certain number of donors, there is no way to prove whether it is true or not, because campaigns are not required to record or report any contributions below $200, meaning there’s no way for us to check filings and count every donation. So when the Obama campaign claims it has 493,000 donors, which sounds like a lot of people (rather than a small coterie of rich donors), we'll never know for sure. When the media “reports” this number of donors, they are merely taking the campaign’s word for it. Inspiring, isn’t it?
2) Did Mitt Romney really raise $10 million in one day? This is almost definitely false, and fortunately we’ll be able to check. It’s hard to remember now, but around a month or two ago, Mitt Romney was struggling to maintain his strong position, getting battered for his health care plan, and being attacked by conservatives for what they viewed as his many apostasies. Next thing you knew, Romney’s campaign made the dramatic announcement that he had raised a whopping $10 million in one day, and all of a sudden any whisper that Romney was struggling was swept right out of the room.
But this always struck me as nearly impossible. For one thing, it was a call-a-thon, meaning that the chances that Romney actually received $10 million in checks that day were virtually null (as opposed to a live event where people hand in checks upon entering the room). It was also highly unlikely, but possible, that Romney got $10 million in pledges (ie, promises to donate) that day, but even in the unlikely case he did, so what? I could claim I’m getting $100 million, but no one would or should care until, and unless, it actually happens. Yet in this case, the press just went with it and took the campaign’s word.
I can tell you from past experiences that it is not unheard of for a campaign to falsely tell the press they reached an impressive milepost if they know the claim cannot be checked (eg, “We raised $7 million online this week,” something a reporter could never disprove). In this case, the Romney campaign very likely threw out a huge number to demonstrate major momentum (to change the narrative at a time they were getting killed on health care), because they knew the hapless press would dutifully recite the line, even though there was no way to check whether it was true (unless the campaign actually showed reporters the checks, which I highly doubt). Given that the campaign now says it only raised $18 million for three months -- meaning Romney would have had to raise 55 % of his money in one day -- it seems even more likely that this is exactly what happened.
Well, the good news is: we’ll see the filings next week, and each contribution to Romney’s campaign will be dated. I’ll be looking at that date (May 16) to personally make sure that there are $10 million in checks that add up for that day.
If they do not, I’ll reveal it exclusively here at Daily Kos. Of course, it will be too late because Romney will have gotten what he wanted from the gullible press, but perhaps it will shame the duped reporters into being more scrutinous next time, and Romney’s credibility will take a hit.
3) Campaigns use various tricks to pad their final numbers for the reporting period. Among the various ploys to beware of:
• Primary versus General money. Candidates will often announce the amount they raised for both the primary plus general elections, and total it up into one big “money raised” number. But the only relevant number at this juncture is the primary money. Any candidate can raise money for a general election – donors give it freely, because it’s money that can only be used if the recipient becomes his party’s nominee (ie, there’s no downside for a donor in giving that money since they’ll presumably support their party’s nominee regardless), so that money is easy to raise and tells us little. In 2007, the Clinton campaign raised general election money in addition to its primary money, so that its total “money raised” number would be higher than Obama’s, even though the latter actually raised more money that could be used in the primary.
• Self-funding or “personal contributions.” Candidates will often announce a total amount raised that includes money they donated to themselves, which is not being totally truthful (ie, they should say how much they raised from others, and separately say how much they donated themselves, rather than conflate the two into one big number). If you’re really measuring how much each campaign raised as a sign of its strength, (note: as discussed below, I think doing this misses the point completely), subtract the self-donation from the total number so that you’re comparing apples to apples. Already this year, John Huntsman announced he raised $4.1 million, but sheepishly allowed that “less than half” of that total was donated by the candidate himself. Let’s hold off characterizing how much he raised until we see that “less than half” number that he put in himself.
• Cash-on-Hand versus Money Raised. As the campaign goes on, how much money raised is less meaningful than how much the campaign actually has to spend. If Mitt Romney raised $18 million, but only has $2 million left to spend because he already blew it all on TV or staff (this is only hypothetical), then that’s less useful than another candidate who raised $6 million but has $4 million to spend because they only spent $2 million (this is known as having a good “burn rate”).
• Transfers from Previous Campaigns. Michele Bachmann, like Hillary Clinton in 2007, has a significant amount of money previously raised for a Congressional account that she is legally allowed to transfer to her presidential account. Be sure that this chunk of change is not being considered part of her total “money raised” number for the quarter, if you’re trying to compare apples to apples.
• The Expectations Game. As if this media-sponsored parlor game of praising who is the most corporate-bought candidate wasn’t weird enough, reporters love to add another dimension to this quasi-sporting event: predictions. Inevitably, the media will guess how much each campaign has raised, and just as inevitably, some campaigns will exceed, and others will fail to reach, the media’s expectations. While it should be irrelevant, how a campaign fares relative to media expectations impacts how those reporters cover the fundraising number.
A candidate who does dramatically better than the expectations set by the omniscient press (think Howard Dean in 2003) suddenly gets credibility, and one who does worse, suddenly gets less (McCain in 2007).
As a result, the campaigns set really low expectations for themselves (“we’re only going to raise $2 million this quarter”), and impossibly high ones for their rivals (“if Romney doesn’t hit $40 million, he’s a failure”), in an effort to skew the press’s expectations and subsequent coverage. Amazingly, these games actually impact who becomes our president.
The truth is, all of the above should really be irrelevant. Contrary to the lazy media treatment of fundraising reports as sports scores designed to show who’s “ahead” or “behind,” campaign fundraising predominantly measures only one thing: How much rich people want the candidate to be president. As nice and truly important as the $5 checks from people like us are, the real source when candidates rake in tens and hundreds of millions, are the piles of $2300 checks collected by bundlers and big-time givers (and yes, this even includes Barack Obama cerca 2008).
So reporters would do a great service to treat these numbers not as some sort of scorecard that determines who’s “winning” -- or as a way to see how much candidates pay for their haircuts -- but rather as a journalistic imperative to see which corporate and monied interests the candidates may be owned by.
Unfortunately, we live in a different world.