“We are the 99 percent!” shouted the man sitting next to me, rising to his feet and almost instantly being tackled by a guard. I was at the Supreme Court for the very first time to observe oral arguments in a case, and after having been assured that this was usually a fairly staid affair, I was surprised to discover at least half a dozen protesters had made their way inside, each rising to yell at the justices in honor of the fifth anniversary of the Citizens United decision.
The Citizens United case has been the target of much anger in the years since the Supreme Court’s decision was handed down, paving the way for super PACs and the current campaign finance environment. “Get money out of politics!” you might hear shouted at a Bernie Sanders rally.
The irony is that it may actually be Donald Trump, not Bernie Sanders, who is getting money out of politics, simply by failing to have much money driving his presidential campaign.
On Monday night, Federal Elections Commission reports came out detailing the expenses, debt and fundraising efforts of campaigns and party committees. The story for the Trump campaign is a bleak one, having just north of a million dollars cash on hand, a significant amount of debt (much owed to Mr. Trump himself), and a staff of fewer than one hundred. All this, to go up against a Clinton campaign behemoth of 700 staff and cash reserves currently sitting over thirty-two times larger than Trump’s.
Consider that for many voters, Trump having no fundraising base is a feature, not a bug. A million cable news packages have been run featuring supporters at Trump rallies pledging their support because Trump isn’t “bought” by the donor class.
But at a certain point, whether the money comes in from Trump’s own checkbook or from donors large and small, does Donald Trump need money to win? If Trump is unable even to come close to matching Clinton in terms of campaign dollars … can he even come close to taking the White House?
If money really did buy elections, our recent elections would look a whole lot different. Jeb Bush would be the Republican nominee, having spent an estimated $510 for each vote he received in the primaries (in contrast to Trump, who spent less than $5 per vote). In the 2014 election, Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer put over $70 million into races and came away with very little “return on investment,” with a number of competitive Senate races breaking in favor of Republicans who were outspent.
Furthermore, Trump has done nicely for himself in the world of “earned media.” If every minute of TV time Trump has received was counted as a campaign contribution, he’d be sitting pretty with over $2 billion in in-kind gifts from the media. Ten years ago, if a candidate wanted to get his or her message to millions of voters, it would necessitate spending significant sums on TV ads; Donald Trump fires off a tweet and it’s mission accomplished. Television spending tends to make up a significant chunk of a campaign’s expenditures; being able to get your message out there on the airwaves is a valuable ability.
But if Trump has been able to skate by on fundraising fumes in the Republican primary, he’s about to run into the expensive buzzsaw of the Democratic Party and progressive community’s vast organizing ability.
Political field operations cost a lot of money when done right. At a basic level, campaigns need a lot of data about their voters in order to efficiently target the people they need to persuade and turn out.
The RNC, for instance, reports that it has spent some $200 million on building and enhancing lists of voters over the last two decades, and claimed to be planning on another $20 million spent in this election.
Once that data are purchased, cleaned and made actionable, it then takes money to do something with that data. This requires hiring people — LOTS of people — to make phone calls and knock on doors and build relationships that, come election day, can be converted into votes. For all that money in politics is bemoaned, a lot of it actually does go toward activities that try to get more people to participate in the process. Without resources, there’s only so much a candidate can do on that front. All the earned media in the world might be worthless if there’s no field operation to speak of.
Trump has famously declared that he thinks much of the political data game is baloney and nonsense, that he can simply tweet his way to the presidency.
With only $1.3 million dollars in the bank, we might be on our way to finding out in spectacular fashion if Trump’s right.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
