Campaign industrial complex
by Tom Sullivan
Aerial view of National Mall, Washington, D.C. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons [Public domain].
Most of what people think they know about party politics they pick up from watching the presidential contest every four years. First, because it’s the only time they are paying close attention. Second, because the news coverage is inescapable. But it leaves a false impression of how parties work day to day.
Men (it always seems to be men) call the Democratic office here every presidential cycle to ask about their favorite primary candidates. They want to know when [your candidate here] is coming to town. Explain you don’t know, and they get an attitude. You’ve confirmed Democrats are as much a waste of their time as they already believed. The voices suggest Jimbo Jones from “The Simpsons.”
“Well, this is the Democratic Party, isn’t it?”
Yes, but (I do not reply) I’m not the one who called the guy at the motor pool with his hands in a Humvee transmission to ask for the base commander’s itinerary. Callers’ grasp of force structure is a tad fuzzy.
Let’s examine another aspect of party operations not so obvious at a remove.
Forty-two (or more) college chapters of Young Democrats announced a boycott in March of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC, the campaign arm of the House Democratic caucus) to protest a policy of blacklisting consultants, pollsters, and strategists who work with candidates to primary Democratic incumbents (even in safe districts). Roll Call reports, “[T]he new policy moves millions of expenditures by the DCCC off the table for firms that work with candidates who challenge Democratic incumbents.”
Bookmark that: millions.
Affiliates like the DCCC (and its Senate counterpart) are party-adjacent. The DCCC (to my knowledge) has no rules-based role in the party organization, but its financial and branding clout may determine who you can vote for on your fall ballot. Their official mission is to elect and reelect House Democrats. Reporting describes the blacklist controversy as a conflict between the party’s progressive wing and a more conservative party establishment. But it is also about the money fueling the Beltway’s campaign industrial complex.
A few freshmen may not fully realize that in winning office they have joined an exclusive and expensive club. There are annual fees ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Euphemistically called “dues,” they are fundraising targets the leadership expects Members of Congress (MOCs) to raise and contribute to the House caucus’ DCCC election war chest.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told the New Haven Independent in 2013, “The one question you have to ask when you’re deciding if you want to run for the United States House or the United State Senate is: Are you willing to become a telemarketer for 24 months?” MOCs are expected to spend as much as four hours per day on the phone “dialing for dollars.” In this instance, it’s true: both sides do it.
To win DCCC support as an aspiring congressional candidate, Ryan Grim and Lee Fang found, one may first have to pass the Rolodex test:
In order to establish whether a person is worthy of official backing, DCCC operatives will “rolodex” a candidate, according to a source familiar with the procedure. On the most basic level, it involves candidates being asked to pull out their smartphones, scroll through their contacts lists, and add up the amount of money their contacts could raise or contribute to their campaigns. If the candidates’ contacts aren’t good for at least $250,000, or in some cases much more, they fail the test, and party support goes elsewhere.
Source: Open Secrets
There is logic behind this. (Chart above.) Candidates who raise the most money tend to win, and winning is not cheap. I checked the cost for Democrats to flip some congressional seats in 2018 (no particular order, via Open Secrets):
- Jennifer Wexton spent $6 million to flip a seat in VA.
- Jared Golden spent $5.5 million in ME.
- Lucy McBath spent $2.5 million in GA.
- Harley Rouda spent $8 million to turn out Dana Rohrabacher in CA.
- Abigail Spanberger spent $7 million to unseat Dave Brat in VA.
- Sharice Davids spent $4.7 million to win in KS.
- Jason Crow spent $5.6 million to win in CO.
- Dean Phillips spent $6.1 million to win in MN.
- Debbie Mucarsel-Powell spent $4.6 million to win in FL.
- Colin Allred spent $5.9 million to win in TX.
- Ann Kirkpatrick spent $4.5 million to win in AZ.
- Abby Finkenauer spent $4.6 million to win in IA.
- Ben McAdams spent $3.4 million to win in UT.
- Torres Small spent $4.6 million to win in NM.
- Sean Casten spent $6.1 million to win in IL.
- Antonio Delgado spent $9.1 million to win in NY.
- Lizzie Fletcher spent $6.1 million to win in TX.
- Lauren Underwood spent $4.7 million to win in IL.
Average spending from above: $5.5 million to flip a seat. Fundraising skills are a necessity.
Getting back to the DCCC blacklist, each MOC represents a revenue stream for the Beltway’s campaign industrial complex. (Similar ecosystems exist at the state level.)
Money has no political philosophy. But organizations substantially dependent on MOC fundraising not only for campaign field work, but for office rents and staff salaries and benefits have strong instincts for self-preservation. DCCC funding comes with strings attached: If you take their money, they insist you spend it with a pre-approved, in-complex network of consultants, many former colleagues. The caucus’ campaign arms react badly when colleagues go rogue and primary a revenue stream.
If a challenger wins, then loses the general election, the DCCC (or its Senate counterpart) loses a revenue stream. If MOCs have to spend down their campaign war chests to fend off primary challengers, they may throw less into the DCCC’s kitty. If the DCCC does not use its considerable leverage and MOC-raised money to fend off primary challenges, its MOCs will have less incentive to pay their dues. Hence, the blacklist.
Sure, a challenger might win the primary, the general election, and become a prodigious fundraiser in office, but an incumbent is the caucus’ a bird in the hand. Political philosophy and what voters want are secondary. Beside contributions, the party rank and file have no influence over these organizations other than electing new MOCs. But MOCs come and go. On both sides of the aisle, the campaign industrial complex abides.
This is the establishment, more so than the Democratic National Committee, local and state parties. Not people, but a system.
Is this system tilted towards centrists? The Hill reports that DCCC spokesman Cole Leiter argues his group “spent a total of nearly $26 million to elect candidates who would later join the Congressional Progressive Caucus.” If progressives are good fundraisers, the DCCC will protect them from primary challenges as well. That’s the system.
When we speak of getting money out of politics, we tend to think first of the corrupting influences of dark money, special-interest money, and the lobbying revolving door for former politicians and Hill staff. The insane, raw costs of modern campaigns leave party caucuses at the state and federal levels in a perpetual, financial arms race. The dues culture that evolved to fuel that competition not only takes away from public service, it spawned a system that sustains itself hand in glove with a fraternity-like network of former staffers who move from public service into the private campaign industry and back.
I wrote of the idealistic, budding political careerists that enter that system:
They begin as Young Democrats and interns. They cannot wait to attend political functions and rub elbows with high-profile elected officials. They angle for selfies with the “poohbahs,” as one friend put it, and can’t wait to get the pictures up on Facebook to show family and friends just how connected they are. Perhaps they graduate to a legislative assistant position for some state representative or senator. They transition to employment with another one. Or perhaps, even to a permanent position with a committee in the legislature or Congress.
Or perhaps even a job with one of the caucus’ campaign arms or a consultant shop. Once politics becomes your source of income, how you practice it changes, especially in a company town. Perhaps not for all, but for many it is a go along to get along culture.
The system is not exclusive to either major party nor is it exclusive to Washington. Charlotte-based Red Dome Group billed 2018 NC-9 Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris over $400,000 for, among other things, paying McCrae Dowless, the contractor indicted for absentee-by-mail ballot fraud.
In analyzing how Republicans outside the president’s circle lost their souls to Donald Trump, Max Boot notes what keeps them in line is “fear of the professional consequences” of crossing him. “Fear of economic extinction is a powerful inducement” for viewing him in the best possible light. In the case of Red Dome, the money was a powerful inducement for not looking too closely at the activities of McCrae Dowless.
Fear of professional consequences and economic extinction is the weapon the DCCC’s blacklist deploys to keep its stable of consultants from going rogue and bucking the system that funds them all.
Reform campaign finance. Provide public campaign financing. The campaign industrial complex that turns politicians into telemarketers may not wither, but it may weaken and allow democracy to breathe more freely.