[EL] "Majority" of Spending by "A Tiny Minority of Private Citizens?"

[Jack Cushman]

>
> Not sure what form of mathematics shows that $86 is a "majority" of $259
> (presidential and superPACs combined). Or perhaps $400 as a "majority" of
> $1900.


Hmm. Interesting. The numbers aren't so clear yet, but it does look like
superPACs are running at less than 50% of total fundraising so far.
SuperPACs have raised $155 million [1] (of which they've spent $86 million)
to the candidates' $330 million. As far as how much will be spent total in
this cycle, one estimate has $9.8 billion, vs. $7 billion in 2008, across
all elections. Of that, "Spending by PACs, national political party
committees, and the superPACs is projected to be $4.76 billion, or 48% of
all spending." [2] I'm not sure what portion of that is superPACs, but
obviously they're less than half of the total.

But that hardly means that political contributions aren't concentrated.
Here's a few more datapoints ...

- Even if superPAC spending only comes to, say, a third of the total, it
will mean incredible concentration. Just 90 donors accounted for 78.6% of
donations to Mitt Romney's superPAC in 2011. [3] If PACs account for 1/3 of
total spending, those 90 account for 1/4 of total spending all on their
own. If Mitt Romney owes a quarter of his total fundraising to those 90
people, and he wins, it would be reasonable to conclude they might have an
outsized influence on his decision making.

- Or, consider Adelson. Let's go with your numbers. That means Adelson's
planned spending -- alone, one person -- will be 5% of the total, and 17%
of the spending on Mitt Romney's side. And to do that, he'll be peeling off
less than half a percent of his total wealth. [4] This could possibly
affect President Romney's decision-making as he plans for reelection ...

- But this is just the beginning. There's huge room for SuperPAC spending
to grow, in a way that seems unlikely for other sources. For example, if
the top ten wealthiest Americans made the same proportional contribution of
their wealth as Adelson, those ten people alone would contribute $1.4
billion. [5] And your estimated $1.9 billion is a mere 6% of ExxonMobile's
net profit for 2010. [6] If Exxon thought that deciding who was president
might raise profits by more than 6%, it could reasonably choose to outspend
the rest of the field combined.

- Setting SuperPACs aside, consider ordinary campaign contributions. Where
is Barack Obama's money coming from? Out of $93 million listed in this
table [7], $61 million came from donations over $2500 -- less than 14,000
people. He's raised about twice that by now, so a third of his $180 million
came from about .004% of the population. He's expanded fundraising, and I
couldn't work out what fraction of the population you would need to get up
to half of his current total, but I'd be curious. I also didn't work out
numbers for Romney, but it's likely an even lower percentage of the
population.

- But of course Obama doesn't see this money coming in check by check --
it's brought in by bundlers. $74 million, 40% of his current total, came
from 444 bundlers collecting smaller checks:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/bundlers.php?id=N00009638


So in a world where a quarter of Mitt Romney's money comes from 90 people,
and 17% from one person; where 5% of total spending on the Presidential
election comes from one person; where a third of Barack Obama's money comes
from .004% of the population, and almost half of it is bundled by a few
hundred people; and where current spending could easily be swamped by the
extremely wealthy individuals and corporations who so far have devoted a
tiny fraction of their resources ...

Well, I don't think this is ambiguous. Political spending is highly
concentrated, and with SuperPACs, presumably a good deal more so than it
was four years ago. A majority of political spending is by a tiny minority
of the population. A significant fraction (in the sense of, enough to
potentially affect the outcome) is by a few hundred people.

So while it's true that SuperPACs are not yet outspending everyone else
combined, no, I don't think that answers my question.

Best,
Jack

[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php
[2]
http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/total-2012-election-spending-hit-9-8b/233155/
[3] http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/01/superpac-takeaways/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson
[5] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil#Revenue_and_profits
[7]
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/donordemCID.php?cycle=2012&id=N00009638

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 5:25 PM, <BZall at aol.com> wrote:

> **
>  In a message dated 4/11/2012 4:39:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> jcushman at gmail.com writes:
>
> we're going to keep having to talk about what, if anything, we should do
> about highly-concentrated political spending, where a tiny minority of
> private citizens direct the majority of paid speech. That's the question of
> the day
>
> What an odd question, even in the context of the hypothetical being asked.
> I'm sure you don't mean it the way the actual numbers show:
>
> According to the New York Times,
> http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance, as of today, the
> presidential candidates themselves have raised over $330 million. President
> Obama alone has raised $173 million. Although some reports suggest he's
> been having trouble raising money, there's every expectation he'll approach
> one BILLION dollars in joint campaign and DNC spending. The candidate known
> to 2% of Americans as having the first name of "Mittens" will likely raise
> and spend some significant percentage of the President's haul, say $500
> million between campaign and RNC spending.
>
> Compare that to the superPACs (which I guess you're referring to).
> According to today's Wall Street Journal,
> http://projects.wsj.com/super-pacs/, superPACs have raised $85,894,000.
> Some reports suggest that superPAC spending might top $400 million in 2012.
>
> Not sure what form of mathematics shows that $86 is a "majority" of $259
> (presidential and superPACs combined). Or perhaps $400 as a "majority" of
> $1900.
>
> American political spending has long been dominated by "a tiny minority of
> private citizens" directing "the majority of paid [political]
> speech." They're called candidates.
>
> (And their political consultants. "Senior advisor" David Ploufe and his
> cohorts are going to "direct" much more than any other "tiny minority" of
> Americans. It's his job, and he seems to be quite good at it.)
>
> And doesn't that suggest that the answer to your question of the day is:
> nothing.
>
>
> Barnaby Zall
> Of Counsel
> Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP
> Please note our new address:
> 10411 Motor City Dr., Suite 500
> Bethesda, MD 20817
> 301-231-6943 (direct dial)
> www.wjlaw.com <http://www.wj/>
> bzall at aol.com
>
>
>
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