Does Money Buy Presidential Nominations?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
It is well known that the news media cover presidential primary seasons and general elections overwhelmingly like horse-races in which nothing is more important than who leads, who has still a chance to win, and who is out of the competition. But this time around, the newsrooms have found another campaign “competition”—what they call the money race. To be sure, the newsrooms were cued by campaign spin doctors. But that is not an excuse for hyping the tally of campaign donations taken in during the first three months of 2007 just as Wall Street hypes corporations’ quarterly performance reports. Yes, it is remarkable that Barack Obama collected $25 million and only $1 million less than fellow-Democrat Hillary Clinton just as it is noteworthy that on the Republican side Matt Romney received $23 million in donations compared to $15 million for Rudy Giuliani and $12,5 million for John McCain. But it does not make sense to take the candidates’ placements in the “money race” as indicators for candidates’ viability this early in the campaign.

While raising lots of money is unfortunately a precondition for mounting credible campaigns, the largest amount of money raised early on in campaigns does not guarantee a presidential nomination. Otherwise, Steve Forbes would have won the Republican nomination in 2000 and Howard Dean the Democratic nomination in 2004. Yet, many in the media have echoed in one way or the other the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza (“The Fix”) who adjusted his grades for presidential contenders and placed Obama (A) ahead of downgraded Clinton (B).

Just as it was foolish for pundits to cast Hillary Clinton into the role of frontrunner and likely nominee of her party because of her and her husband’s fundraising muscles, it is just as foolish to consider her less viable now and Barack Obama more so. Obviously both candidates are very successful fundraisers—far more successful so far than John Edwards and other contenders on the Democratic side. But some 9 months before the first decisions in the primary season, it is far too early to pick winners and losers. The same is true for the Republican side. You can bet that his competitors would have loved to raise as much money as Romney did—but there is no reason to write off the chances of McCain because he raised only about half of Romney’s sum. It may well be that Senator McCain will not win the nomination of his party, but that would likely be because of his staunch support for President Bush’s failed Iraq policy.

Editorials in leading newspapers, among them the New York Times, called once again for campaign finance reform. According to the Times, “The one thing established by the private fund-raising binge is that the nation needs the alternative of limited public financing as a rational option for seeking the presidency just as much as when it was enacted in response to the Watergate era of big-money corruption.” But editorial boards know full well that spending limits have little chance in a system that cannot force candidates to accept public funding and the caps that come with it. If wealthy New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg were to decide to compete for one of the major party’s nominations (I am sure he has no intention to do so), he could write himself a check for many more millions than all the declared candidates combined collected so far and will collect in the future. But, to return to the false “money race” presumptions, all that money would not at all guarantee him a nomination.