Running for Office: All You Need Is An Issue
Schlesinger, Stephen
Running for Office: All You Need Is an Issue by Stephen Schlesinger Until recently, the politician who was seriously weighing a race for the presidency, or for a lesser office like governor...
...The experiences of 1964, 1968, and 1972 in raising money are simply too powerful for future candidates to ignore...
...right and on the left have won nominations and run national campaigns while raising most of their money from small contributors, thus avoiding dependence on special-interest funding...
...Insurgency campaigns, however, may not be limited to candidates on the fringe...
...What makes this total really impressive is that the candidate was leading a hastily organized, ad-hoc guerrilla uprising, and had to improvise his fund-raising activities throughout the campaign...
...Running for Office: All You Need Is an Issue by Stephen Schlesinger Until recently, the politician who was seriously weighing a race for the presidency, or for a lesser office like governor or senator, always faced the question of how to finance his fantasy...
...The second new fund-raising method, also introduced somewhat audaciously by Goldwater (although Adlai Stevenson had experimented with it in a limited way in his two campaigns) is televised appeals for funds...
...After the nomination, McGovern raised six times as much money as he had in the pre-convention period...
...Foraging for support outside the structure of both major parties, Wallace crystallized the enormous discontent with both major candidates and used racial and economic issues to appeal to millions of voters...
...The uprisings in 1964, 1968, and 1972 may represent a shake-out process in American politics, the first stirrings of new independent candidacies that will rise from the ashes of the burnt-out twoparty system...
...McGovern had raised in toto about $33 million...
...McCarthy’s campaign, fueled by the protest against the war, moved outside the party structure and raised an extraordinary $1 1 million before the convention...
...candidates can give the contributors the feeling that they are co-conspiring in an outsider’s crusade...
...The insurgency campaign reached its highest stage of development in Senator M cGo vern’s presidential campaign in 1972...
...By the end of the campaign, the total number of contributors had reached nearly 700,000...
...and in part the electric discontents in society surge with new voltage in the heat of an intense, ideological fight...
...So there is hope for the person who wants to run for elective office without selling his soul, or, to be less dramatic, there is hope for the person who, for whatever reason, doesn’t have the backing of the financial and political establishments...
...Altogether, before the nomination, McGovern raised some $5 million through constant mailings and a few big contributions from wealthy liberals which served as “seed money...
...Finally, if the income tax check-off becomes an important source of revenues for the post-convention phase of presidential races, it may also encourage insurgent campaigns by shifting the fund-raising emphasis to the primaries, when the issue-oriented candidate seems to do best...
...Large-scale, direct-mail drives to millions of names obtained from conservative lists arounq the country attracted approximately 300,000 small contributors before Goldwater was even nominated...
...Unless he decided to drop the race altogether, or unless he had inherited wealth, the candidate had no choice but to honor the system and plunk down his soul at the nearest financing institution he could find...
...The pattern of wellfinanced insurgency campaigns blossoming in the cracks of the regular party organization was now established as part of American politics...
...They have, however, paid for their acts of heterodoxy by losing their elections...
...Second, insurgents haven’t won any national elections...
...The real figure was probably closer to 750,000...
...In August, September, and October-the months when his campaign was floundering, McGovern stimulated an incredible outpouring of donations through direct-mail drives and TV appeals...
...If the limit on overall spending is set very low, it could hurt the McGovern-type candidates, whose ability to raise money is one of their principal strengths...
...But developments in presidential campaign fund-raising over the past decade have dramatically altered the conventional ways of campaign financing...
...Goldwater’s extraordinarily successful use of direct mail in 1964 has made the technique an integral component of American political financing...
...That may be because the insurgency campaign is a force whose greatest influence is still to be felt...
...He cannot attract potential small contributors unless he has a way of making his views known to them...
...The insurgent acts as a receptacle for the highly charged electrical currents loose in the society...
...His successful fund-raising effort was the first visible proof that in both political parties the makings of independent candidacies were present-a failing party, a turbulent society, and independent men who promised new and dramatic solutions to modem problems...
...The question very quickly boiled down to this: Which special interests must I court...
...What happened to Goldwater is typical of what has happened to all insurgent candidates since-they seem to raise most of their money from small contributors when the going is at its roughest, when their entire campaign is falling to pieces...
...The effect of some campaign spending reforms now being proposed could be negative...
...The era of insurgency then would mean not so much an increase in extremists and splinter groups as the rise of the issue-oriented candidate...
...The Wallace staff estimated that 900,000 people contributed small amounts to the campaign...
...In the period before the nomination, when McGovern was still considered a “one-issue” candidate, it was a fluctuating group of some 7,000 to 9,000 men and women contributing $10 a month that kept his campaign alive...
...The insurgency campaign is still a very complicated and uncertain course for a candidate to follow: all recent insurgencies represented high-risk, high-octane pQlitics where a single misstep could (and did) result in self-immolation...
...Both George Wallace and to a lesser degree, Eugene McCarthy, successfully employed direct mail to go outside the strictures of regular party financing...
...The man or woman who lays out dimes and dollar bills for an insurgent candidate is clearly caught up in a symbolic act of protest-an emotional release from a sense of personal frustration...
...McCarthy assembled an odd mixture of about 150,000 small contributors who gave less than $100, and about 50 large contributors...
...First, one limitation on the issueoriented candidate must be noted...
...Unless he has a name like Buckley, this means that he must convince the press that he and his ideas are newsworthy...
...This was just enough money every 30 days to keep McGovern’s staff and office together through his bleak first year...
...Once again, in a time of national unrest, a politician’s sharp views on the issues-particularly on Vietnam-mobilized great numbers of people to contribute to a seemingly forlorn campaign stuck at two or three per cent in the polls...
...In part the feeling of co-conspiracy between the small contributor and the candidate is enhanced by adversity...
...Between February and October, 1968, Wallace raised $6.7 million, of which more than 75 per cent came from contributions of less than $100...
...To which industries or unions or lobbies must I sell myself for the money to run my campaign...
...After his defeat, the party was left with over $1 nullion in surplus campaign contributions...
...Perhaps their attraction to insurgents is symptomatic of a disorderly time...
...Frank Mankiewicz, political advisor to Senator McGovern during the 1972 presidential race, has suggested one explanation for this sort of candidate’s appeal : “Ant i-es t a bli shme n t , anti -rich, and anti-centrist...
...From 60 to 65 per cent of this money came in donations of $100 or less...
...After the convention, during the nadir of his campaign, Goldwater raised $15 million from about 650,000 people who responded to direct-mail appeals and TV appearances, and most of that money came in contributions of $100 or less...
...It may be that the issue-oriented candidate must also have a touch of the press agent in his soul...
...But putting aside speculations about past campaigns, the more fundamental observation to be made is that insurgency fund-raising is here to stay regardless of whether it leads to winning elections or not...
...Rather, any candidate who identifies himself with an issue enough voters care ’ about should be able to tap the small contributor...
...The other 35 to 40 per cent came from labor unions and a few well-heeled donors...
...In 1968 this phenomenon was repeated on an even larger scale than in 1964...
...In the last three presidential elections, candidates with controversial, anti-institutional views on the Stephen Schlesinger is the former editor of The New Democrat...
...Using direct-mail drives, he raised some $9 million...
...Goldwater raised about $20 million in contributions, largely through employing these two techniques...
...the largest sum ever collected by a Democratic candidate, and as much as was raised in the three campaigns of Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Adlai Stevenson (in his second presidential bid) combined...
...The most fascinating example of this new trend was the insurgency by George Wallace...
...The question he must still ponder is: Can he win...
...This time there were insurgent campaigns on both the right and the left: Wallace and McCarthy...
...Millions Tlirough the Mail The crucial factor in turning the psychic emotions of alienated voters into campaign gold has been the development of two new methods for fund-raising on a scale suitable for nationwide campaigns...
...While insurgent politic has not passed the ultimate test-actually winning electionssome thing is stirring American voters...
...Using the new techniques of TV appeals and direct mail, he can operate as an insurgent, simultaneously running and financing his campaign on those strong issues which evoke an emotional response among the voters...
...But he no longer has to assume that it is impossible for him to to run...
...But reasonable limits on individual contributions could help the issue-oriented candidate, who is less likely to be dependant on large individual donations...
...The first is something which has been a normal part of advertising in America for years-the direct-mail drive...
...But looking through the still whirling dust storms of the 1972 election, it is apparent that the future of insurgency campaigns is still unsettled...
Vol. 5 • October 1973 • No. 8
