Hustling Candidates?

This article is actually a perfect article to follow up with last week’s blog; it taught me a new phrase, “walking around money.”  According to Fox News “walking around money” or “street money” is actually very common in quite a few states.  The acts of “walking around money” happen at the end of the campaign used as a last minute attack.  Fox News describes the situation as “campaigns forking over cash payouts to local officials and organizers who in turn spread that money around to anyone willing to knock on doors and drive up turnout for them.”  How is this any different from campaigning?  It’s said that as long as every dollar is documented and that money is not directly used to buy a vote, then it is legal.  So basically as long as you don’t say while giving cash to anyone, “So I have your vote?” you will not be committing a crime.

 The article then brings up the point of a situation in Nevada, where a candidate gave out free food at rallies and gift cards to voters.  I do not agree that these acts were made to “steal” the election, but rather to have a higher turnout to gain more ears to hopefully gain their votes.  I have been enticed before with free vacations but with high pressured salesmen trying to get me to become a shareholder of their timeshare.  However, I don’t become a shareholder, and I still receive my free vacation.  There are plenty more examples with many more people that receive similar incentives.  The point I am trying to make is the free food and gift cards are simply there to get more people out and make them feel obligated to at least hear the candidates since they are the ones providing all the free stuff, but if they don’t like the candidate or what they have to say, it will not alter their vote just because they received a free slice of pizza.  As a matter of fact, the candidate might put themselves in jeopardy because the people that came down for the free food received their most disliked food, pizza, now out of anger they want to vote against that candidate.  I believe the only reason these incentives are wrong is because it creates more “noise” then “signal.”  When giving a speech, you must have a crowd, but the candidates have a choice of giving a speech to a crowd that already supports them or by adding members to the crowd that give them opportunity to gain more votes from what they already know they have.  So again, in my opinion, the candidates are not using these strategies as ways to pull votes but to get people in, and rely on their speech to do the work.

$400 Million Does Count!

Robert Frank wrote a blog on Wall Street Journal named, Wealthy Candidates to Spend More Than $400 Million on Elections.  He talks about how Jeff Greene, Linda McMahon, and Meg Whitman spent a total of $400 million on their campaigns.  He goes on to say that it became a small stimulus program with all the money that was being put back into the economy due to needing food, consulting, and advertising, and so on for their campaign.  He also makes a small comment on how they are not spending all this money just to get into the office and we should know that money does not get you into office, and that there are several examples of candidates spending a significant amount of money and still not winning the election.  He then makes a comparison to Michelle Obama's spending with the pet project, and ends with the reminder of the $14.6 trillion deficit.

Frank makes a strong point of the candidates creating a small stimulus project for the communities that they are visiting by putting a portion of their total $400 million into the economy and by it being rephrased the way Frank did, it truly makes the campaigning a lot more desirable in all cities.  However, I would have to disagree when Frank said that the candidates are simply spending all this money just to buy their way in.  Now of course it'll take a little more than just money however, I believe that the more you have to spend the more businesses you'll have supporting you.  Also when comparing the total spending of 3 candidates campaigns to one project and having the same dollar amount attached to it may seem a bit ridiculous, however, I don't see the harm in trying to provide all children with nutritious foods.  It seemed as though Frank wanted to show a little of the colors on the flag he waives.  When bringing it back to perspective of perhaps putting that $400 million towards the $14.6 trillion deficit and explaining that it may not wipe the debt but at least it will get us that much more closer because it really seems like we're getting that much more further everyday.