[EL] Super PACs and the Presidency

Fri Nov 9 09:38:46 PST 2012

I suspect Mr. Friess is pretty well aware of the bottom line, however. You don't have to know much about how a lawyer's fees are distributed to know if you won or lost a case, you don't have to know much about baseball to know if the team is winning or losing.

Bradley A. Smith
Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
  Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
303 East Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 236-6317
bsmith at law.capital.edu<mailto:bsmith at law.capital.edu>
http://www.law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.asp

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Schmitt
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 11:32 AM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Super PACs and the Presidency

Steve, I realize that you have said you won't respond further to this thread you started, but I'll bring in Mr. Foster Friess himself to reply:

"'You have no idea of the financial structuring of a lot of these outside groups in terms of how much went to the actual delivery of a message,' Friess said, 'versus how many dollars were taken off as fees to the people running them.'"

Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute<http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/>
202/246-2350
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
twitter: mschmitt9

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com<mailto:hoersting at gmail.com>> wrote:
Never liked the "restaurants near a highway" argument in undergraduate economics courses. Dismissing Hayek because my economics professor couldn't conceive of a Zagat Restaurant Guide (and its equivalent in any market) was always non-starter for me.

And I think you'll see the same thing here. Not only will Friess and Adelson hear reports by word of mouth as to who was effective and who wasn't, remember that each receipt and disbursement of these Super PACs is reported.

By the way, when you reply with some form of "but Friess and Adelson will be totally in the dark with regard to c4 spending," I won't be answering soon. I have other things to turn to.

All the best,

Steve

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Mark Schmitt <schmitt.mark at gmail.com<mailto:schmitt.mark at gmail.com>> wrote:
"Any Super PAC seen lining its pockets rather than winning will be punished by those dreaded markets the left tends to discount in other spheres."
I don't discount markets; I think markets are awesome. However, markets with asymmetric information are not likely to be that efficient. The donors to SuperPACs typically aren't sophisticated enough to know whether they are being ripped off or not. And in every cycle, there seem to be new big donors. So it's the equivalent of the restaurants near a big tourist hotel (like in Woodley Park in DC) that don't have to be very good because their customers are unlikely to return anyway, and they'll have new ones next weekend. Consultants managed to rip off campaigns on media buys for years and years before 2008; mega-donors like Adelson are easier marks.

Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute<http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/>
202/246-2350<tel:202%2F246-2350>
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
twitter: mschmitt9

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 9:44 AM, Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com<mailto:hoersting at gmail.com>> wrote:
Good morning, Mark,

I do agree that this election appears to have turned on voter mobilization efforts. The Democrats got exactly what they needed, where they needed it, and nothing more until the California returns came in. Very different from the 2008 general election. I think the degree of that will be understood in time.

I've also surmised for years (without knowing quite how to confirm) that the Left is better at mobilization not because they have less money but because they have more persons, actual individuals, in their coalition to work maps, drive vans, and walk people to the polls -- and have had for a number of cycles now.

Ground game funded by Super PACs and c4s is entirely new to the Right. And I have often thought that Republicans run ads because they don't know whom to finance to knock on doors. A study is needed there to see whether I am right about that as well. Republican party-oriented Victory programs are effective enough, and their micro-targeting data is good. But that model needs to be transmitted to outside groups motivated to use them, and to multiply exponentially the efforts of the party committee or the Republican party committee will be swamped.

As to your second point, which is far less charitable, I've heard the stories over the years of mail shops putting all their receipts into salaries and overhead.

But I believe the people running newly minted Super PACs and expanded c4s desperately want to win elections. This is true for ideological reasons: no one can say Steven Law didn't have what it took to have become a Wall-Street trader rather than a policy operative. But it is true for that base reason you ascribe to the Right's failure: Any Super PAC seen lining its pockets rather than winning will be punished by those dreaded markets the left tends to discount in other spheres.

Again, I believe the Right runs the ad war because it doesn't know whom to finance for large scale ground game. Ads over the air are meant to find a coalition the Left has already found and can fund directly: people willing to get off the couch.  Who are the labor unions of the Right... or other such coalitions?  You can tell from this post that I don't know.

But I would imagine that the Drew Ryuns and Matt Kibbes of the world are awaking this morning to figure it out. Let's let the Super PACs work awhile.

***

I will add one more point: If, as some pundits were suggesting last night, markets, individual liberty and speech rights are an "aging, white-male thing" that Republicans should rethink -- because, after all, what "the folks" really want from their politicians is stuff -- we are all doomed, each of us. These principles are universal; the natural right of all men and women. I hope "diversity" doesn't come to equal statism, as I fear it might in the near term.

Immigration does need rethinking. You saw that tension in speeches at the RNC last September -- and I saw, on Twitter, that Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick have begun with a new book.

Steve

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Mark Schmitt <schmitt.mark at gmail.com<mailto:schmitt.mark at gmail.com>> wrote:
I agree with that point, Steve, and always have.

I would suggest, however, that one reason that the pro-Romney SuperPACs and c(4)'s had less impact than some expected is that they seem to have put all their money on broadcast media and to a lesser extent robocalls and mail. What if some of the money had been put toward voter mobilization efforts, targetted at key likely-Romney constituencies? Much of the Democratic non-campaign spending takes this form.

Why didn't that happen? My guess is that it's a combination of two things: Rich donors want something they can see, like an ad that they imagine will reveal that Kenyan socialist for what he is and destroy him, rather than the amorphous idea that some people are out there getting people to vote. And second, the operatives who created the SuperPACs and c(4)'s are getting very, very rich off of media-buying commissions (richer than they would get if they were actually working for the campaign, which followed Obama's lead from 2008 in cracking down on commissions), and had no interest in giving that up. Hence, as pointed out in another thread, they were essentially burning off money on national ad buys in the last week.

If it weren't for greed, Citizens United and SpeechNow might have had more impact.

Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute<http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/>
202/246-2350<tel:202%2F246-2350>
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
twitter: mschmitt9

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com<mailto:hoersting at gmail.com>> wrote:
To those who read this e-mail as predicting a Romney win, fair enough: If that is the way you read it, I was incorrect.

But as to my main point (and one directed at an election law list) -- to not blame the Super PACs; they were never the President's problem -- I stand by it. There were always plenty of independent players and funds supporting Team Obama.

I still believe the President ebbed in his reelection effort -- and no one doubts that today's race was close; too close for a well-liked incumbent -- because of an Obama agenda of what I called earlier today and continue to call "out-sized collectivism."

Congratulations to the compliance team and strategists at Perkins Coie,

Steve
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com<mailto:hoersting at gmail.com>> wrote:
Should, by this time tomorrow, President Obama fail to win re-election, as now seems the case, many will point to a point made by Politico on August 20th of this year:

Obama has himself to blame for what has, arguably, been the greatest unforced error of his political career: his team's failure to adequately form a strategy to deal with the avalanche of unregulated cash raining down on him from GOP and Romney-allied Super PACs.

As one who started blogging against the FEC political-committee regulations that would kill the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and six other notable organizations on the Right and Left, and as one who worked on some of the cases that would bring Americans the "Super PAC" -- and there were four or five cases responsible, not just two -- it is tempting to want to echo emphatically the Politico commentary: You're darn right.

But the commentary doesn't hold. While I understand the role of freed speech in this election, and the importance of increasingly alternative committees speaking in an increasing alternative media, I recognize that the real reason the President ebbs in his reelection effort is his inability to cloak an out-sized collectivism in American garb.

No one could pull that off. It is regrettable he tried,

--
Stephen M. Hoersting

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79867.html

--
Stephen M. Hoersting

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

--
Stephen M. Hoersting

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

--
Stephen M. Hoersting

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20121109/2054c3e6/attachment.html>