How easily Democratic stars can be born! All it takes is a narrow, disappointing loss.
Beto O’Rourke rose to national fame and even got ideas about the presidency because he had narrowly lost a Senate race in 2018. Jon Ossoff’s overfunded House campaign in 2017 fell short in the Atlanta suburbs, and now, he has won his party’s nomination for Senate.
Stacey Abrams became famous because she lost a statewide election in Georgia by more than 50,000 votes.
Likewise, former Marine pilot Amy McGrath narrowly lost a key House race in the 2018 election in Lexington, Kentucky. For much of the race, she had been favored to win. She outspent her incumbent opponent by a significant margin, but she came up short. Even so, her narrow loss propelled her to the top of the Democratic field of hopefuls seeking to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2020.
McGrath’s fame took her a lot further than that, though, or we wouldn’t be writing about her today. With the full backing of her party’s establishment, she raised $41 million (more than McConnell himself) for her Senate campaign leading up to last week’s primary election.
As of June 1, she had spent an astonishing $21 million of that. For reference, the Democratic candidate who ran against McConnell in 2014 spent a total of just $19 million for her entire campaign, starting in July 2013 and running through November 2014.
Unfortunately, as a candidate, McGrath was something of a floppy gaffe-machine — to the point that Sen. Elizabeth Warren took back her endorsement and gave it to Charles Booker, a more liberal candidate and a little-known state representative. He had raised and spent less than $1 million on his campaign as of early June.
How did that race turn out? For a time, it looked like McGrath was going to lose. The absentee ballots were finally rolled into the totals on Tuesday, and the Democrats’ $41 million woman squeaked out a win with 45%, by less than 3 percentage points against her underfunded opponent. She outraised him by more than 40 to 1 and outspent him by a similar ratio. Imagine what’s going to happen when she goes up against an opponent with a bit of money.
This is all obviously good for a few guffaws at McGrath’s expense. Even better, by the election’s final stage, McGrath’s millions seemed to have been truly wasted. Booker was actually polling stronger than she was (though still trailing by double digits) against McConnell for this fall’s race.
McGrath’s dramatic, confidence-destroying underperformance probably also means she will have trouble raising large amounts of money for the fall race. But it is just an additional reminder of the old adage we have repeated endlessly on this page: Money does not buy elections.
The myth that money buys elections, widely shared by liberals who are obsessed with campaign finance reform, has been repeatedly debunked by the failure of all sorts of candidates from all parties. For example, have you ever heard of Republican Bob Hugin? Most people haven’t. At $39 million, he ran the third-most-expensive U.S. Senate campaign of 2018. He outspent his opponent 3 to 1. He lost by more than 11 points.
But it’s most fun to watch the Left’s own overfunded candidates fall flat and prove the point.
For example, the money propelling Hillary Clinton to the presidency, both through her campaign and through outside groups, exceeded Donald Trump’s by an estimated $300 million. She still lost.
Part of the reason O’Rourke came close to defeating Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 was that he spent twice as much money as Cruz did — a shocking $79 million. He still lost.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, outspent her 2018 opponent, 4 to 1. He now holds her former seat in the U.S. Senate.
Former Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, spent $37 million — 3.5 times more than the man who easily defeated her, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.
In this year’s presidential race, Tom Steyer spent $344 million on his own presidential campaign to accomplish basically nothing. In fact, Steyer spent about the same amount as Trump’s entire campaign had spent in 2016, and Bernie Sanders wouldn’t even smile at him on the debate stage.
And when it comes to proving the futility of campaign spending, Michael Bloomberg is the gold standard. He spent $1.1 billion earlier this year in the short space of 16 weeks. For a time, people thought he was a contender. Overnight, he completely collapsed in the face of an underfunded, already-counted-out Joe Biden “juggernaut.”
Oh, money in politics, where is thy sting?
Money is often a requirement in politics, but it cannot make up for a lack of substance, popularity, or political suitability to voters. Candidates usually need to meet a basic minimum in terms of standards before donors will entrust them with money. Even then, some poor-quality candidates make it through the filter and raise big bucks with help from their party — McGrath, for example.
But then, there must be at least one silver lining to McGrath’s debacle. Booker just narrowly lost. Do we hear the sound of a draft movement for president in 2024?
