Hillary's absurd spending in NY

Today's New York Times features a graphic that illustrates just how disproportionate Hillary Clinton's spending was in her Senate race:

If the Democrats hadn't taken back the House and Senate, people would be asking why Hillary didn't give more of that money to other candidates. She certainly didn't need it.

Update 11/15 5:31 AM: Kevin Drum links to this post and asks:

Was this because she really, really wanted to win by a landslide and figured anything under 65% of the vote would be humiliating? Did she have a bet with Dianne Feinstein? (If so, she won. Feinstein won her race with an anemic 59% of the vote.) Was she trying to scare off her 2008 competition by showing that she has so much money she can literally afford to throw it away?

Here are the two main theories I have on Hillary's spending:

-She wanted to win by a big margin to answer concerns about her electability before 2008. In particular, she may have been trying to (a) improve on her relatively unimpressive performance in 2000 and (b) drag House Democrats in New York to victory to show she has coattails.

-It would have looked bad to roll most of the money donated for her Senate race into her presidential account, so she spent a big chunk of the money to set up a quasi-presidential campaign, campaign for Democrats in key states, and create what her aides described as "a priceless reservoir of speeches, issue research, and financial networks nationally for any future use." And she still has $10 million left over.

My guess: Both are probably true. What do you think?

Comments

[Seth]

Whoa there Brenden. New York is one of--if not the--most expensive media markets in America. It hardly compares to Missouri or even Pennsylvania.

Phil Angelides spent 28 million just to win the Democratic nomination for governor of California. And I'm sure he spent at least that once again over fighting Schwarzenegger.

Yes Hillary spent a ridiculous amount for a safe seat, but lets keep the numbers in context.

That said, a few million dollars might have swung Tennessee.

[Matthew]

Why did Hillary spend that much on such a safe seat? Even factoring in the (possibly) higher market rates for New York, it still seems excessive.

Wow.

[Glenn]

All I can say is, she certainly didn't spend it on NYC television ads. We didn't see any HRC ads until quite late, and then only occasionally. Several orders of magnitude less than we saw of the Menendez/Kean race. And we never got any direct mail from her; I never saw any billboards, subway ads, anything like that. So unless she ran one helluva lot of ads upstate, that money didn't go to advertising but went to other kinds of expenditures.

[Doh]

I think she did want a landslide, but I think the better explanation is that she spends a lot to raise a lot. That money went into florists and catering and salaries for a national set of fundraisers (where she raised more money). It's sort of like the old right-wing mail operations-- they bring in a ton of $, but it costs a lot to bring it in. I also think Hillary has always had access to so much $ (campaign-wise) she has no idea how to do things on the cheap.

[Mysticdog]

Since it didn't go into campaign commercials and flyers much, it most certainly went into campaign infrastructure. New York is also one of the most expensive places to hire people and get work done. So that argument still holds water without a lot of media buys. She probably did a lot of things to prepare a groundwork for a presidential run within the framework of the senate campaign.

"That said, a few million dollars might have swung Tennessee."

A few million dollars might have done a lot of things. Or just been squandered. The net-left seems to have suddenly latched onto the idea that money is everything in politics, and all you have to do is spend a bunch of it to win. I'm pretty sure that has only to do with the effort of self-described "netroots leaders" using the issue to attack candidates they don't like.

At some point, the market is saturated and more advertising without a message people want to hear is only going to piss people off. Republicans outspent the dems this cycle, as they have done every cycle for ages. Unless you are willing to drive up everyones negatives by endless hit pieces on TV, or dirty tricks like the robocalling in the other side's name, another damn flier to every Tennessee resident isn't going to do a thing.

Ford lost because he was a black man running in a still very bigoted state, against an opponent willing to point that out. If Ford could have tailored his message differently, or counter attacked better than "how dare they!", he might have won. 10 dollars or 10 million dollars wasn't going to change that.

[James_G]

Who says it didn't go into ads? I live in upstate New York and saw plenty of ads for Clinton on TV.

[Valcour]

I live in Vermont and saw few ads for Senator Clinton from across the lake.

All the same, Vermont's Independent Senator Sanders spent more than Senator Clinton when calculated on a per capita basis.

Approximately $6M, Population of VT: 623,050.

[Seth]

Mysticdog do you have any evidence to back up your claim that the vote was racially motivated?

[Mysticdog]

That is a joke, right?

Ok, sure then, evidence.

The statement by countless politicians that supporting the civil rights act would lose and had lost the south for Democrats.

Having lived in Kentucky and North Carolina, and travelled many times through tennessee, I know there are plenty of bigots in those states who really, really hate and fear black people. There are far more who would say they don't hate or fear them, but do think they are not as good as white people, are not trustworthy, and while their kids could play with black kids outside, aren't going to be inviting any over without taking a careful inventory of valuable before and afterwards, if at all.

Ford's popularity peaked right before the racially coded ads from corker came out. The ad that got the national attention was but one in the series - I think far worse was the one that put jungle drums on over every appearance of Ford in the ad. The fact that his popularity immediately ebbed after those ads was no coincidence - it reminded a bunch of voters that they still are a lot more comfortable with white people running things, and don't really want an uppity negro as their public face, especially one that might show up in public with a white woman.

You can protest those things aren't enough to make my case, but if you lived there you know its true. There will never be a survey that people will honestly answer the question of exactly how many voted against Ford specifically because he was black. The people who put those ads together knew the code they were conveying, and who they were trying to reach, and the ebb of Ford's polling when news coverage was the most sympathetic shows you they did their job.