Should Vanity Candidacies Have Us Worried?

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Should Vanity Candidacies Have Us Worried?
July 31, 2010 ⋅


A new study says super-rich candidates who personally bankroll their own campaigns almost always lose. But that, unfortunately, doesn’t make the rest of us winners.

By Sam Pizzigati


The ticker on billionaire Meg Whitman’s personal outlays for her California gubernatorial campaign has now hit $91 million. But Whitman, this election season, is hardly spending alone.

In Connecticut, entertainment impresario Linda McMahon appears likely to spend $50 million, from her family fortune, on a U.S. Senate seat bid. Down in Florida, former for-profit hospital CEO Rick Scott has invested almost $23 million out of pocket in another gubernatorial race. And a host of other awesomely wealthy candidates, from coast to coast, have dipped into their fortunes for millions more.

This year, in fact, will almost certainly set a record for campaign cash spent by self-financed wealthy candidates, and this impending record, predictably enough, is already sparking some sober reflection in America’s chattering class. Should we, the columnists are asking, be fearing this flood of personal fortune into our political system? Or are the super wealthy just wasting their money?

The National Institute on Money in State Politics can help us answer these queries. In June, this Montana-based Institute released a careful analysis of how wealthy, self-financed candidates have fared in state races since 2000.

These deep pockets, the Institute study concludes, have fared not particularly well. The study identifies 6,171 campaigns for state office where candidates received over half their campaign contributions from themselves or their immediate families. These candidates, from 2000 through last year, gave their campaigns $700.6 million of their own money. In the end, they won only 11 percent of their races. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/should-vanity-candidacies-have-us-worried/

[aquart]

1. And then there's Bloomberg, who bought himself a city.

No man should be so rich he has nothing left to buy but his government.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Very much so. Bloomberg is the prototype.

Unlimited private capital trumping the function of gov't as guardian of the general welfare.

Used to be that it was a harder sell: i.e. too many safeguards in place ( e.g. independent diversified media) to counteract this phenomenon. But take a look at NYC, folks; the rules have changed. Everything and everybody is for sale.

[political_Dem]

3. Yes. Meg Whitman, for example, is an abomination.

Because this woman is outspending Jerry Brown, there are some who think that Mr. Brown does not care about his campaign. Furthermore, Whitman's commercials run ad nauseam on all stations to the point of sensory overload. Not even turning on the mute button stops the irritation factor of those ads. However, when it comes to Whitman being interviewed in public, she is pretty much like W.: controlled press conferences with specially picked reporters. There are no questions from the crowd. If someone does ask a question, she ignores them. Other than that, she lacks substance and is rather poorly knowledgeable when it comes to humanitarian issues.

(You think Frau Brewer was a holy terror, watch out for Queen Meg.)

Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, George Deukmejian and the gubenator have already laid waste to this state. California cannot afford Meg Whitman if it wants to thrive well into the 21st century.

Above all else, vanity candidacies are not good in a society in which leadership and pragmatism is sorely needed. We need thinking individuals who can get us out of a quagmire. Those who are in it for only the power and the prestige won't help their constituents one bit. Instead, they willfully cause further trouble and destruction that will cripple the institutions of their given representative seat. In other words, having someone parked there in a seat doing nothing is like having a wildfire out of control without any means to put it out. :(

[bluestateguy]

4. I remember Tony Sanchez in Texas in 2002

75 million dollars to get exactly 40% of the vote.