The nationalization of political campaigns is basically complete. More than 90% of the ads so far in the Senate race were produced by national outside groups. And they spent almost $8 million. Candidates are becoming little more than proxies for ideological organizations with seemingly bottomless pockets.
It’s a terrible trend. Campaigns are losing control of their messages since they are drowned out by the noise from SuperPACs dominating the airwaves. And almost all of those messages are negative. So, elections, more than ever, will be about who you like least, not who you like most.
The trend has been moving that way for years, particularly in federal races. Party committees have been picking and choosing favorites for several cycles and putting their money behind them. In 2010, the national Democrats tried to choose nominees and made a mess. They got involved in Senate primaries in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas and Colorado and came up one for six in November. Granted the year was bad for Democrats but, from the perspective of the states, the optics were horrible.
It’s worse now. At least the groups influencing primaries before were party organizations. Now, they’re shady groups of corporate interests who remain anonymous.
While both sides are playing the game, this year it’s the Republican establishment that is trying to pick and choose nominees for the states. They don’t want a repeat of the 2010 and 2012 primary season when candidates like Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell killed their chances to take over the Senate. The money is dwarfing what has been spent in the past and tracing it is almost impossible.
While money can’t be taken out of politics, it can be directed, limited and made transparent. It’s an issue on which political activists of more modest means should agree, regardless of party affiliation. Anonymous rich people and corporations should not be able to buy seats in Congress.
In North Carolina today, the GOP US Senate primary would almost certainly be headed to a runoff without the influence of outside money. We’ll see if the corporations get their man. Regardless, the Brannon and Harris camps should be outraged at the intrusion into a contest that should be decided by North Carolinians and is instead being driven by interests on Capitol Hill.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Careful!
This almost sounds like an argument to repeal the 17th Amendment.
🙂
Repeal the entire constitution. When Wyoming gets 7.5 times the voting power per capita as North Carolina the entire thing needs to be scrapped.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/its-official-scientific-study-shows-that-the-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-not-a-democracy/5377987
Princeton University. I read that paper over the weekend. I’m surprised Fox News didn’t explode at the suggestion that the US was something other than a Capitalist nation.
It is a capitalist nation. It’s just an Oligarchic Capitalist Nation. We don’t matter.
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=zg_bs_2581_1
Recent best selling economics books show that this is a capitalist nation…it’s just an Oligarchic capitalist nation.
You and I agreed until the part where you say that the GOP is doing it more. Sorry, you need to convince me.
Granted, the GOP does it different that the Dems. But that doesn’t mean that the Dems don’t pick winners and losers, recruit candidates, and generally try to keep things tidy.
For starters, it appears to me that the Dems have kept their big PAC donors and billionaires safely in the hands of the Dem leadership, which explains why there isn’t a mutiny against Reid and Pelosi. It seems to me that the DNC / power players do indeed pick winners and losers, and would especially pick a loser if a Dem leaves the plantation on some key issue (ACA, climate whatever-Obama-is-calling-it, etc).
This contrasts with the GOP who seem to have lost control of their PACs. Certainly about half of them are outright hostile to the GOP leadership and organization.
Finally, I dispute your runoff idea. In the old days, I’m betting that there would be a smoke-filled room where a GOP nominee would be selected. And since the good old days of the tobacco south was “solid” for the Dems, such a person would probably not have been flattered with such a nomination. In addition, big money would’ve “persuaded” all but one of the TEA candidates in this election to drop out, and at that point, Tillis might’ve been in trouble.
PS – I’m in Mitch McConnell’s turf for a few weeks, and they know how to play politics here fer sher!