This morning, the Beachwood Reporter's Steve Rhodes posted a press release from the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) with a "sigh." The underlying study found that, while the number of small contributions (less than $200) received by Barack Obama was unprecedented, the share of his donor base who remained under this threshold over the course of the election cycle was on par with George W. Bush in 2004. The discrepancy is due to what CFI dubs "mid-range repeaters":
Many of the repeat donors who started off small ended up in the $201-$999 middle range. Among Obama's total pool of 403,000 disclosed donors on August 31, more than half (about 212,000) started off by giving undisclosed contributions of $200 or less. About 93,000 of these repeaters gave in cumulative amounts of no more than $400 for the full primary season. Another 106,000 repeaters ended up between $401 and $999. By comparison, Clinton and McCain each had about 100,000 donors in the entire $201-$999 middle range, and for them the number included both repeaters and one-time givers.
Obama critics/skeptics are sure to use this study to argue that Obama's financing system simply represented more of the same and that the "small donor" buzz was, in CFI's words, a "myth." But as Politico's Ben Smith notes, those mid-range repeaters are themselves a phenomenon worth noting. Indeed, while they ultimately exceeded the $200 threshold, they still represent a break from the access-oriented fundraising that has dominated most presidential campaigns:
I think I must have been buying into the wrong myth, because this doesn't really debunk the thing I'd thought was key about Obama's fundraising: That it was, to a higher degree than in the past, web-driven, rather than dominated by high-dollar events at which donors buy access (though there were still a lot of those). The relationship between the candidate and a random citizen who gets $500 squeezed out of her by a series of desperate emails from David Plouffe isn't all that different from the relationship between the candidate and someone who gave $10 to buy a key ring at a megarally -- there's no access bought, no implied promise of favors, and no opportunity to ask for a favor.
On the other hand, the relationship with old-fashioned donors who write checks at events, including to Obama, is different. They bought time with him or with his top staff, and developed relationships with professional fundraisers part of whose job, in turn, is traditionally to seek perks for donors.
Those old-fashioned donors' influence really was diminished, and significantly, this time. Though Obama did rely on donors who gave $1,000 or more for nearly half of his money, he didn't need them as much as earlier candidate have, and they knew it.
As I've written before, future campaign finance reform shouldn't involve banishing big donors and special interests from the system, but rather figuring out a way to provide a counter-balance that lessens their influence and boosts that of average Americans. Say what you will, the Obama campaign appears to have done just that.
Comments
Cosmo (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 11:59
I'm not sure I believe in your (and apparently Ben Smith's) "offset"/"counter-balance" argument. I like to believe Obama has "lessened the influence" of big donors and special interests by taking a principled stand against allowing them to influence campaign policy. Donors who realized this were the ones who "knew it." I'm not sure the small donors made a difference in their minds.
I don't believe that a large bundle of maximum contributions is countered by hundreds of online contributions. I feel a fund raiser that gets people to contribute a total of $100,000 is definitely more likely to have access than any one of the 5,000 donors who contributed $20. I'm not sure that this disparity in access is any different than the past.
Let's discuss.
Josh Kalven on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 14:41
Anyone who has observed our political system in recent decades should have come into this election cycle extremely concerned about poliicians' ever-increasing dependence on big-donors/bundlers/special interests.
Now, Obama was by no means shut off from these fundraising sources. But I think it's undeniable that he was not nearly as dependent on them as George W. Bush or other previous presidential candidates. It stands to reason that he won't be as dependent the next time around either. That, in my opinion, is a move in the right direction. It's a luxury that other candidates should seek and that future campaign finance reform should help enable.
How this singular fundraising apparatus ultimately affects his governing style and sphere of influence is yet to be seen. I just don't think you can dismiss the significant contributions from small donors and mid-range repeaters as more of the same, as the CFI seems to be doing with this study.
Steve Rhodes (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 17:17
But the Obama campaign did give more access to high-roller donors. The more money you gave, the more access you had to senior level advisors for "policy briefings," just like the old days. Nobody who gave $200 got private briefings from David Plouffe or, say, Austan Goulsbee. The Obama campaign also aggressively used bundlers. It's major fundraisers were the traditional fundraisers of campaigns past, and its biggest giving sectors were hedge funds and Wall Street. So where was the difference? Now, the CFI study didn't say that there weren't some unique characteristics to Obama's fundraising; we know there were simply by his use of the Internet. But what the study challenged was the campaign narrative that small donors were the financial engine of the campaign. The facts show that they weren't. The campaign achieved this effect in part, as Lynn Sweet reported repeatedly, by publicizing small-donor events and keeping secret big money fundraisers. Most of the media, however, bought what the campaign was selling. And that's not acceptable no matter which side you're on.
Josh Kalven on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 18:07
When it comes to the issues surrounding campaign finance, I'm less concerned about media narratives constructed by a campaign (though I see your point there, Steve) and more worried about the actual ways donors/bundlers/special interests ultimately influence policymaking.
While bundling and access-oriented fundraising were certainly utilized by the Obama apparatus, it stands to reason that his administration will be less beholden to high-level donors and the interests they represent (than say, George W. Bush) because they were responsible for a minority of his total contributions. Again, he's simply not as dependent on them as previous presidents.
Maybe my assumption about influence will be proved wrong over the next four years. If so, Obama will likely have far fewer small donors to rely on next time around.
By the way, it's worth noting that the CFI numbers only go through Aug. 31. I'll be curious to see the percentages once the complete data has been analyzed.
Mark Garrity (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 20:22
I think you have to look at when most of the small contributions came in and take into context the other campaigns he ran against. I haven't looked at the numbers but I think you'll find in the beginning Obama's campaign was almost completely funded by small contributions and Silicon Valley big contributors Clinton ignored. She had a lot of the rest of the big money sewn up. Edwards had a lot of trial lawyers (as he did in 2004), union members, and some of the netroots money.early on.
Most of Obama's big money contributors didn't jump on the bandwagon until he'd all but won the nomination in the spring.
That's a huge honkin difference from Bush 2000 and Hillary 2008 who tried to amass monster warchests to run off competitors and make the press accept them as fait accomplis.
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