Here’s one candidate for Comeback of the Year: the Republican money machine.
The GOP sweep in this year’s midterm elections marks both a power grab for Congressional Republicans and a remarkable turnaround story for Republican donors. In 2012, Republicans spent more than $3.2 billion and ended up with very little to show for it, losing the presidential race and basically settling for the status quo in Congress. This year, however, Republican money played a decisive role in several key races and in flipping control of the Senate from Democrats to Republicans. Some of the biggest Republican spending groups enjoyed a “phenomenal rate of return,” Bill Allison, editorial director of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, tells me in the video above.
The Sunlight Foundation calculates “return on investment”—the percent of money spent on winning races-- for more than three dozen prominent spending groups. Here’s a sampling of the biggest Republican and Democratic donor groups:
Karl Rove may have the most to celebrate this November because his two Crossroads groups, which support Republicans, went from ROI of less than 20% in the 2012 campaign to an ROI of 80% or more. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is largely funded by corporate donations and lobbies for policies favorable to big business, enjoyed a similar turnaround in the effectiveness of its campaign funding.
Big money has dominated politics for decades, but the most important recent trend is the growth of third-party groups that typically fund ads on behalf of candidates, often with incomplete disclosure on where the funding comes from. Such SuperPACs and other similar groups have thrived thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions allowing vast amounts of money from corporations and wealthy donors to flow to campaigns. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that such groups spent close to $600 million this cycle.
Evidence is mounting that billionaire donors basically control the entire political system, with one recent study arguing that “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
But money can’t buy everything. One new entrant into the megadonor club is Tom Steyer, a California hedge-fund magnate who funds NextGen Climate Action, an environmental group that typically backs Democrats and opposes Republicans. NextGen’s ROI in 2014 was a weak 32%, not the kind of number a successful hedge funder is likely to find satisfying.
As disheartening as the influence of money in politics may be, Allison points out that power shifts in one or both houses of Congress—in 2006, 2012 and now 2014—show that neither party has figured out how to muster enough money to keep a prolonged hold on power. That could be because neither party has followed an electoral sweep with a pragmatic policy agenda that transcends partisanship.
“Sooner or later, one of the political parties will figure out set of policies that gives them a much longer hold on power,”Allison says. “The big question is which party is going to do it.” Maybe we’ll get an idea during the next election.
Rick Newman’s latest book is Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback To Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
