Independent Gubernatorial Financing
Despite some excellent analysis of the recent gubernatorial finance reports – including by Mike Tipping, who managed to outdo even us on graphs, and Matt Gagnon, who gave some historical context – media outlets large and small have pretty much ignored the independent candidates for governor.
This isn’t for a lack of them, to be sure. There are eight unenrolled candidates for governor. Five of them have declared as privately financed candidates, while six of them are seeking clean election money. So how are they doing in the money race? Well, except for Eliot Cutler, they’ve all missed the starting gun.
The privately-financed Cutler has raised $266,485 (including approximately $166,000 in self-donations) and spent $183,159.58, for $83,325.42 cash-on-hand. This puts him about on par with Rosa Scarcelli, who had about $85,000 cash-on-hand, and gives him more cash than Paul LePage, Matt Jacobson, John Richardson, and Libby Mitchell. Steven Rowe, Bruce Poliquin, and Les Otten all have more cash-on-hand than Cutler. In other words, Cutler is not only raising money, he’s seriously competing with the major-party candidates and their fundraising – no mean feat.
The other independent candidates? Not so much. Samme Bailey, Chris Cambron, Beverly Cooper-Pete, Augustus Edgerton, Alex Hammer, Kevin Scott, and John Whitcomb have no or next to money. Most haven’t even filed a report. For those seeking public financing (Hammer, Campbron, and Whitcomb) they’re essentially dead in the water. Their deadline to qualify for public financing is April 1, giving them 75 days after the January report to collect 3,250 $5 checks and $40,000 in seed money. This is a monumental task with six months to spare; in 75 days it’s nigh-on impossible. They’d have to collect over $500 a day and over 4 $5 checks a day (including Sundays).
If a candidate hasn’t made serious progress towards this goal by now, odds are they’re not going to make it. Most of the major-party candidates running Clean are already there, or well on their way. In Maine elections, if you don’t qualify for Clean Elections funding, you can’t switch and run privately financed after the deadline. You just don’t have any money.
If you’re privately financed and haven’t raised any significant money by this time? You’re even worse off. Don’t forget, in addition to finding a way to finance their campaigns, all of these candidates must collect 4,000 signatures to appear on their ballot. Just as many of them have been unable to raise any money, many won’t collect enough signatures to even appear on the ballot.
By April, we’ll know if any of these independents qualified for public financing. Shortly after the June 1 deadline, we’ll know if any of them have qualified to be on the ballot at all.
Cutler has given his own campaign more than $150,000. Then check out those who have donated the maximum of $750 and where they are from: http://bit.ly/bEm05n.
I really don't see how it matters where donors are from or how much a candidate gave to themselves. Every campaign tries to trumpet the number of in-state donors they have, or small donors, or what have you, but all privately-financed candidates accept donations from out of state, and anyone who has their own money to spend spends it.
What really matters in the end is how much money they have and whether you can get your message out. Maine voters have shown repeatedly they don't care where a campaign's money comes from. One only needs to look at the result of referenda campaigns to prove that.
Unfortunately, money raised is now seen as an indication of the strength of a campaign – it's political shorthand, and since any other way to compare candidates is lacking (poll numbers, etc.), it's often the only way method available. How much money is raised is seen to equal support, but that methodology is useless when a candidate is responsible for a large portion of funds raised, or to a lesser extent when a high percentage of donations come from out-of-state contributors – especially when such contributions are at the maximum allowed.
Early money is like yeast – every candidate tries to raise as much money as quickly as they can, to give the impression that they have strong support. But notice which candidates give the breakdown of those contributions and which do not.