Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

David B. Magleby is a distinguished professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He has published thirteen books on campaign finance, including five in this series. He is also known for his work on direct democracy and party identification and is a coauthor of a leading text on the American government, Government by the People.

Anthony Corrado is the Charles J. Dana Professor of Government at Colby College and a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is a coeditor of Campaign Finance Reform: A Sourcebook and coauthor of The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook, both published by Brookings.

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Financing the 2008 Election

Brookings Institution Press

Contents

Acknowledgments...............................................................................................ix1 Adaptation and Innovation in the Financing of the 2008 Elections David B. Magleby..........................12 The Regulatory Environment of the 2008 Elections Anthony Corrado...........................................483 Financing the 2008 Presidential Nomination Campaigns John C. Green and Diana Kingsbury.....................864 Financing the 2008 Presidential General Election Anthony Corrado...........................................1275 Financing the 2008 Congressional Elections Paul S. Herrnson and Stephanie Perry Curtis.....................1666 Political Parties and the Financing of the 2008 Elections David B. Magleby.................................2107 Interest Groups and the Financing of the 2008 Elections Allan Cigler.......................................2498 Lessons for Reformers Thomas E. Mann.......................................................................290Glossary......................................................................................................307Contributors..................................................................................................321Index.........................................................................................................323

Chapter One

DAVID B. MAGLEBY

The 2008 elections were by any standard historic. The nation elected its first African American president, and the Republicans nominated their first female candidate for vice president. More money was raised and spent on federal contests than in any election in U.S. history. Moreover, the way money was raised by some candidates and party committees has the potential to transform American politics for years to come. Barack Obama raised a record-setting $745 million for his campaign. While Obama's fundraising was extraordinary, other federal candidates, political party committees, and interest groups also raised and spent record-setting amounts in the 2008 election cycle.

The 2008 election was the second in a row in which the Democrats picked up more than twenty-eight seats in Congress, something neither party has done since the Republicans gained twenty-eight seats in 1950 followed by a gain of twenty-two in 1952. Part of the reason for the Democrats' recent ascendancy is the success of their party congressional campaign committees in raising money in limited amounts from individuals. The Democratic congressional campaign committees substantially outspent the Republicans.

Other components of the Democrats' dominance in 2008 included their skillful use of technology in voter contacting, fundraising, and volunteer recruiting. Compared with their efforts in previous years, Democratic-leaning interest groups cooperated much more efficiently in 2008, sharing membership and contact information through a new database that appeared to best the microtargeting capacity of the Republican National Committee's voter tracking system. Another Democratic advantage was the absence of successful Republican front groups. While interest group spending overall rose in 2008, no group mounted attack ads on the scale of those used against presidential candidates in 2000 or 2004. Perhaps the most important advantage for Democratic candidates was the national issue agenda, especially public disapproval of President George W. Bush.

Issue Agenda

The election was in many respects a referendum on the Bush presidency. Many in the public strongly linked the Bush administration with increasingly negative opinion toward the war in Iraq. The war became a distinct liability for Republicans in 2006 and 2008, though they had used the issue to their advantage during the 2002 and 2004 elections. Opposition to the Iraq War provided presidential candidates like Obama and Republican Ron Paul with an early springboard in recruiting supporters and raising money. Support for the war, especially for the 2007 troop surge, was a major focus of the McCain campaign, but the issue faded in importance following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, two large financial firms, in mid-September. President Bush and senior ad ministration officials sought to calm an anxious public as stock values dropped and the possibility of an economic depression loomed. John McCain suspended his campaign to return to Washington to attend to the crisis, while Obama did not. Instead, Obama announced that he intended to participate in the first presidential debate, with or without McCain. President Bush convened a meeting at the White House attended by McCain and Obama. After the meeting McCain returned to campaigning and participated in the presidential debate. The sense of uncertainty about the government response to the economic crisis was amplified when House Republicans initially voted against the administration's bailout proposal. Early in the crisis, McCain repeated a statement he had made earlier that the "basics of the economy are sound." The Obama campaign used this statement as an example of McCain's lack of understanding about the economy.

President Bush's declining popularity helped the Democrats not only in the presidential race but also in key congressional battlegrounds. Democratic congressional candidates, including some freshmen incumbents and Democrats running for open seats that had been Republican going into the election, also ran against Bush at least as much as against their Republican opponents. In the North Carolina Senate race between Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole and Democratic challenger Kay Hagan, for example, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ran an effective ad in which two elderly men sitting on a porch debated whether Senator Dole is ninety-two or ninety-three—highlighting the fact that she voted in agreement with President Bush 92 percent of the time and was ranked ninety-third in effectiveness in the Senate.

More generally, the Obama campaign established change as the overriding message of the election and reinforced that theme repeatedly. Obama promised to make changes in international relations (particularly the war in Iraq) and domestically in energy, health care, education, and economic and regulatory policy. Also central to Obama's campaign was the theme of changing the tone in Washington. Obama's nomination itself symbolized a dramatic change, and his possible election as the first African American president became a subtext for the entire election. McCain tried to change the theme of the election from a referendum on Bush and eight years of Republican control of the White House to a referendum on Obama, highlighting, as Hillary Clinton had done in the primary campaign, his inexperience. But those efforts largely failed.

More Candidates, More States in Play

As is the norm in presidential election years, the focus in 2008 was on the contest for the presidency. The absence of a current or former president or vice president seeking the nomination, for the first time in more than half a century, attracted a wide field of candidates in both parties. Three sitting U.S. senators became the central players in the nomination phase: Republican senator John McCain of Arizona all but secured the Republican nomination after the Super Tuesday primaries on February 5, 2008, and with Mike Huckabee's concession in early March the contest was over. Democratic U.S....