THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE DOLLAR
by John Gear

The March 2003 issue of "Campaign Finance Talk," produced by the Michigan 
Campaign Finance Network contains a revealing and fascinating article 
called "Costliest Seats in the Michigan Legislature," which is about the 
role of money in determining the winners of seats in the Michigan Legislature.

The article concludes that "When it comes to winning elections, money 
matters."  The article asserts that "money won 92% of the time" and urges 
readers to pay particular attention to "the degree to which these races are 
funded by parties and caucus PACs."

But, rather than showing that money determines the winning side the 
Michigan elections, MCFN's data actually show something else entirely: that 
money has very little to do with the outcome of elections to the Michigan 
Legislature.  A reanalysis of the MCFN's data show that money is at most a 
second-order variable.  The primary variable -- the one that mainly 
determines the outcome of the race -- is the district composition: the way 
the district is drawn (gerrymandered) by the party in power in Lansing to 
produce a certain result.

That is to say that the pen --the district-drawing pen wielded by the party 
controlling the redistricting process -- is far mightier than the dollars 
from campaign contributors.  MCFN's own data from the article -- for the 
nine most expensive Senate and twelve most expensive House races -- show it 
clearly.  By entering the data in a spreadsheet and sorting the races 
according to the margin of victory instead of the total spending, it 
becomes clear that money is simply not deciding who wins or by how much.

Let's start with the nine Senate races MCFN examined, where the nine most 
expensive races ranged from total spending of $517,000 to 
$1,194,000.  These races all show that, rather than determining the winner, 
we see that contributors give money where they can tell that the the shape 
of the district has already determined the outcome of the race.  Of these 
nine races, three were won by Democrats.  These three were outspent by 
$500, $1,000 and $115,000 -- but they won their races with margins of 10.2, 
21.0, and 7.0 percent respectively.  The four most expensive races, all won 
by Republicans, were won by margins of 2.2, 9.1, 11.4, and 1.2 percent -- 
even as they outspent their opponents by $752,000, $49,000, $498,000, and 
$215,000.  The other two races of the nine most expensive were also won by 
Republicans, who spent between $425,000 and $600,000 more than their 
opponent to win by 12.6 and 8.4 percent.  This wide variation in margins 
and spending -- and the fact that winners can be outspent but still win 
anyway -- clearly shows that there is no way that the races MCFN chose to 
analyze support the conclusion that "money wins."

In the House, the same result: where the district is drawn to elect a 
Democrat, even substantially outspent Democrats win.  Those districts drawn 
to favor Republicans produce Republican winners, with the margins of 
victory totally unrelated to the spending on the race.  The clincher is the 
one race of the twelve where the Republican was outspent: the 2-1 money 
advantage the Democrat enjoyed in House District 108 did not produce a 
Democratic winner.  Of the four races among the twelve where Democrats won, 
they were outspent by $87,000, $89,000, $71,000, and $44,000, while 
managing winning margins of 1.0, 1.4, 2.3, and 5.0 percent 
respectively.  The Republican victory margins varied from 1.5 percent 
(spending margin $98,000) to 25 percent ($134,000) in races where they 
outspent their opponents by between $12,000 (victory margin 6.0%) and 
$242,000 (6.4%).

This reanalysis shows that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, PACs and 
party caucuses do not sway the outcomes of election campaign in 
Michigan.  Rather, the data show a much more serious assault on democracy 
in Michigan: the gerrymandering that renders voters all but irrelevant in 
nearly every district in the state.  Rather than focusing on campaign 
finance, we must turn our attention to the redistricting process that 
allows a tiny handful of political operatives to determine the composition 
of the Michigan Legislature for a decade at a time -- or worse, every time 
majority party in Lansing decides it could increase its majority through a 
redistricting, if the recent trend from Colorado and Texas comes here.

In the long term, multi--member districts and proportional representation 
systems are the solution to insure voter empowerment, so that we have 
majority rule with minority representation all across the state.  That's a 
long-term fix.  In the meantime, we should emulate Iowa and its rigorously 
nonpartisan redistricting system, which is not even allowed to consider 
party affiliation when drawing district lines.

Voter turnout continues to decline because voters intuitively understand 
that they have been locked out of the process and herded into districts 
where their only real choice is whether to cast a redundant vote for the 
sure winner or a protest vote for the sure loser.  The consequences of this 
decline plays out in Lansing every day, because the Legislature is full of 
elected officials who only face a serious challenge in the primary if at 
all, which rewards ever more extremism.  It is not too soon to begin 
thinking about whether to call a constitutional convention in 2010, because 
it may require nothing less to rescue democracy in Michigan from the 
partisan gerrymander artists whose only goal is power and privilege for 
their party and the annihilation of all other parties.