How to Finance Your Political Campaign

The modern Senate campaign requires a lot of people. Among the important senior advisers necessary are a communications director, chief strategist, marketing director, and campaign finance committee chairman. At the junior level, possibly the most important people on your staff are the campaign coordinators. They do the long, hard work of traveling all over the state, meeting with local and county officials, and setting up your grass roots network. You also will need numerous paid staffers to help organize and manage your campaign, put out press releases, set up fundraisers, and coordinate campaign events.

Here is a summary of major campaign expenses.

Advertising: The largest single campaign expenditure in any modern campaign is advertising. The more media markets, the more expensive it is; in large states, media purchases can easily run over $15,000 per day. Slick campaign spots produced by professional advertising agencies are not cheap. Figure a minimum of $150,000 per month.

Direct mail: What good are your supporters if you can't ask them for money? Sure, it's obnoxious to repeatedly hit the same people up for donations, but direct mail works and is more efficient than $1,000-a-plate dinners. Add $50,000 a month.

Campaign staff: For a truly professional campaign, big-ticket outside experts (advertising people, pollsters, and media consultants) are a must. Yet aside from senior advisers, whose annual salaries run well into the six figures apiece, campaign staff comes fairly cheap. You can hire recent college graduates hungry for experience for a pittance. You also will need numerous volunteers for any number of menial tasks like answering phones, doing data entry, and passing out leaflets. Campaign staff is a bargain at $75,000 per month.

Incidentals: Office space, telephones, travel, and other miscellaneous expenses (catering, yard signs, bumper stickers, buttons, silly hats) all add up. Tack on another $125,000 per month.

Total budget: $400,000 per month in an average-sized state and up to 10 times that amount in a large one. Now you just need to figure out how to pay for it.

How to finance your campaign

Spend your personal fortune. The easiest way to be worth $100 million is to start with $150 million and run for the Senate. Just ask Jon Corzine, who blew (or invested, if you prefer) a record $63 million-almost all of it his own money-in his 2000 New Jersey Senate race. Corzine, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, outspent his challenger, Congressman Gary Franks, by 10-to-1. Personal fortunes launched the Senate careers of Herb Kohl (department stores), Peter Fitzgerald (law), Mark Dayton (department stores), and Jay Rockefeller (great-grandfather's dimes). Voters don't seem to mind rich candidates because they presume anyone who can buy an election is beyond the reach of moneyed special interests.