Iowa Caucus
Fox News: Cruz wins Iowa GOP caucuses; Clinton appears to hold off Sanders
Early Tuesday, the Iowa Democratic Party said Clinton had been awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents while Sanders had received 695.49 state delegate equivalents with one precinct outstanding. That precinct was worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents — not enough for Sanders to make up the deficit.
The Clinton campaign quickly issued a statement declaring victory, saying, “Statistically, there is no outstanding information that could change the results and no way that Senator Sanders can overcome Secretary Clinton’s advantage.” However, a number of news outlets, including Fox News, did not immediately call the contest for the former secretary of state.
In at least three precincts, the Democratic outcome was so close that party officials ordered a coin toss to determine which candidate should receive an extra county convention delegate, a longstanding tiebreaking method. The Des Moines Register reported that Clinton won all three coin flips at precincts in Des Moines, Davenport, and Ames.
Washington Post: How Ted Cruz won Iowa
Philip Bump and Scott Clement
Cruz earned the support of 4 in 10 “very conservative” voters in the state, a group which made up 40 percent of the electorate according to preliminary entrance poll data. Cruz was also backed by 1 out of every 3 evangelical voters — an important victory in a group that accounted for nearly two-thirds of the electorate.
Donald Trump may have been hampered by two unexpected factors: Weaker than expected performance among new voters and a late surge by Marco Rubio. In the last Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll in Iowa, Trump led Cruz among first-time caucus-goers by 16 points. On Monday night, Trump’s margin among this group was closer to half that.
CCP
Larry Lessig and the Barriers to Political Campaigning
Scott Blackburn
In “Why I Dropped Out,” a post-mortem of his failed presidential campaign appearing in The New Yorker, Lessig appears to have run into a very different set of obstacles. Ironically, the problems “Candidate Lessig” faced illustrate just how wrong “Reformer Lessig” is about money’s role as a barrier to entry in politics.
In fact, the only successful part of the campaign was Lessig’s ability to attract donors and financial support. His failure, by his own admission, is due to resistance from virtually every other avenue of influence that exerts itself in a presidential race. Let’s run down the list of obstacles Lessig, as an outsider, faced in his campaign. As we do, keep in mind that Lessig still believes that the outsized influence of “big money” is what ails our political system.
Campaign Spending Effectiveness
NPR: Wesleyan Media Project Sees Disconnect Between Election Ad Spending and Poll Results
Diane Orson
When we talk about advertising in elections, I think the most important thing to remember is that advertising is not a silver bullet. Advertising matters most at the margin, and so we are seeing a big disconnect this year between advertising and polling.
Part of it has to do with Donald Trump dominating the — what we would call free or earned media cycle. Jeb Bush and his allies have been spending large amounts of money. Despite the fact that he was up on air, his message didn’t seem to be gaining traction, and with such a crowded race, advertising is actually harder in that context.
It’s easier if you have one clearly defined opponent who you can go after, but you see even in the ads today, they are going after multiple candidates and there is still a lot of uncertainty about who will be the nominee.
Vox: Do Trump and Sanders show us the limits of money in politics?
Lee Drutman
Many, myself included, expected very large donors on both sides to do their usual vetting and gatekeeping function once again, keeping the field of serious candidates limited to varieties of neoliberal and supply-side economic policy acceptability.
But something weird has happened this time around. For the first time in a very long time, there are now two leading candidates — Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders — who are not at all what the donor classes on either side would want. Both are economic populists who see an expansive role for protectionist government and a significant entitlement state.
Which invites the question: If wealthy donors play such a powerful role in American politics, why is a Trump-Sanders race a real possibility at this point? How is that both of these candidates are approaching 40 percent of their party’s potential voters without the support of the all-powerful 1 percent? Is American democracy not broken after all?
Independent Groups
Bloomberg: The Power of the Super-PAC Wanes as Trump Prepares for Iowa Test
Tim Higgins, Bill Allison and Peter Brusoe
About 17 donors gave $1 million or more to groups backing Republican presidential candidates in the last six months of 2015, 60 percent fewer than the number who gave that much in the first half of the year, according to Federal Election Commission filings. And outside groups that can accept unlimited contributions accounted for about 27 percent of Republican fundraising in the second half, down from 78 percent.
Many donors contributed large sums early to create the perception that their candidate was financially viable to go the distance. Now, with the first-in-the-nation caucuses taking place today in Iowa and several other primaries happening in the coming weeks, much of that money isn’t being replenished as candidates enter a grueling and expensive phase of the campaign.
Washington Free Beacon: Experts: David Brock Pushing Campaign Finance Boundaries
Lachlan Markay
Time reported in September that Brock “had to cut off operational discussions” with American Bridge 21st Century, a pro-Clinton opposition research super PAC that he founded, in order to comply with legal restrictions on campaign coordination.
However, financial information filed with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday reveals that American Bridge paid Brock more than $58,000 during the second half of 2015, primarily through bimonthly installments of nearly $5,000.
American Bridge did not respond to questions about Brock’s continued role with the organization. David Brock also did not respond to a request for comment.
Brock is also being paid by Correct the Record, a super PAC that has pushed the legal boundaries of campaign coordination by directly working with the Clinton campaign on Internet-based pushback against the controversies that have dogged her presidential bid.
Buzzfeed: The Jeb Bush Hatchet Man Who Might Accidentally Elect Donald Trump
McKay Coppins and Christopher Massie
The famed 53-year-old political consultant runs the Right to Rise super PAC, where he has spent the past year on a mission to mow down every viable Republican candidate standing between Jeb Bush and the White House. The campaign waged by Murphy has been, by turns, vicious, strange, and comically ineffectual — but always expensive. With Jeb flatlining in national polls, the group has blown through at least 60% of its $118 million — and developed, along the way, a blooper reel of widely mocked stunts. In New Hampshire, they mailed small video players to voters with a 15-minute Jeb! documentary pre-downloaded. In Iowa, they splashed messages across digital billboards so head-scratching that even Bush himself reportedly asked, “What the hell is that?” when he drove by one.
The Intercept: New York Times Gets it Wrong: Bernie Sanders Not “Top Beneficiary of Outside Money”
Lee Fang
While more money has indeed been spent on a certain type of campaign spending in support of Sanders, the article leaves the wrong impression by suggesting that pro-Sanders Super PACs have outpaced outside groups supporting Hillary Clinton. If that sounds confusing, that’s because the Times article hinges on a technicality in campaign finance law.
When total Super PAC spending is measured, Clinton groups are leading the way.
The newspaper calculated totals using only “independent expenditures” spent by Super PACs. If the Times had taken into account all pro-Clinton Super PAC campaign spending from this cycle, outside money spent in support of Clinton is more than twice the amount spent in support of Sanders.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: $1 out of every $16 Donald Trump spent in the past three months was spent on hats
Philip Bump
On Oct. 1, the first day of the fourth quarter, Trump loaned his campaign a million dollars, followed by another $9.8 million through December. He took in $2.6 million from individuals (and gave himself a little over $100,000) in the last three months — meaning that he himself was actually paying for most of the $6.6 million the campaign spent between October and December. Self-funding after all.
But that’s not the thing that’s interesting here — at least, not for non-campaign-finance nerds. Here’s the interesting thing:
Six cents of every dollar Donald Trump spent over the past three months was spent on hats. Every time Trump spent $16, one dollar of that was spent on hats. Donald Trump is making the baseball cap industry great again.
New York Times: What Is Marco Rubio After in Iowa?
Robert Draper
Still, no one has worked harder to keep expectations lower than the high-energy Rubio. Going into today’s caucus, as one member of Rubio’s team put it: “the best Cruz can do is what everybody expected him to do. The worst we’re going to do is a strong third, and that looks like a big success for us.” Rubio’s aides perversely relish the fact that, as one of them told me, “Marco is every voter’s second choice.” Rubio has spent far less money on television ads than his former mentor Jeb Bush. His crowds have been large, but nothing on the order of Trump’s gladiatorial throngs. In Iowa, Rubio — who tends to ramble and look rundown when pushed beyond his physical limits — has not tried to match Cruz’s marathon slog through all of Iowa’s 99 counties, instead focusing on about 20 of the most densely populated among them. And Rubio has spent comparatively little time attacking the two front-runners. His campaign has embraced what seems to be the most risk-averse strategy in the Republican field, one that is in fact filled with risks despite its basic logic.
Daily Caller: Hillary’s Best Bundlers Lobby For Big Pharma, Private Prisons, And Anti-Obamacare Health Insurers
Chuck Ross
Campaign finance records released on Sunday show that Capitol Counsel lobbyists Richard Sullivan and David Jones raised more than $540,000 for Clinton in 2015. More than $225,000 of that came in the last quarter of the year.
Sullivan bundled the second largest amount of cash for Clinton, raising $274,891 for the year and $69,363 in the last quarter. Jones came in third, raising $266,286 for the year and $158,286 for the quarter.
But both lobbyists represent companies and trade groups in the pharmaceutical industry, health insurance field, oil exploration business and private prison industry — all fields that Clinton has criticized throughout her campaign.
The States
New Mexico Political Report: Campaign finance report modernization effort moves forward
Matthew Reichbach
She says that in the current model, there has been “no inter-connectivity” between different sections of the current system making it “extremely arduous to try to track the money from one to another.”
This means it is difficult to compare spending by lobbyists against campaign finance spending or spending by PACs compared to candidates spending.
The panel’s questions largely focused on technical aspects and they made two small technical changes, including changing a reporting threshold from $75 to $100.
WEKU Lexington: House Speaker Makes Case for Campaign Finance Bill
Stu Johnson
A campaign finance bill that would clear the way for larger donor contributions is on the move in the Kentucky House. The Elections Committee approved the measure Monday. Among other things, it would allow for individual and political action committee donations to increase from $1,000 to $2,000 dollars. House Speaker Greg Stumbo is chief sponsor of the bill. “One of the things that’s wrong with American politics these days is this influx of huge out of state dark money, soft money, whatever you want to call it,” said Stumbo. “All this does is try to level the playing field a bit.”
