Georgia’s Election Spending is Obscene
A half billion dollar election campaign has almost become a yawner until you consider the warped values it represents
Pity the pill pushers, ambulance chasing lawyers, and car dealers in Georgia. Sales of capsules that cure what ails you, calls from crash victims ready to sue, and orders for new king-cab pickups must be cratering. The problem: instead of their advertising spots blitzing the Peach State’s TV screens 24/7, midterm election campaign ads are running wall-to-wall.
Election day may be Tuesday, but Georgia’s political drama is far from over. The state’s record voter turnout will produce one of the country’s most closely watched ballot counts. Add the antics of its bogus election fraudsters and a possible Senate runoff in December: Georgia’s politics will continue to capture the headlines. Unfortunately, the campaign spending bonanza that fueled the spectacle won’t, although there’s every reason it should. The numbers are obscene.
Massive spending on elections isn’t new, of course, nor is the steady upward climb in its totals. Considering who benefits, the campaign is paying off handsomely for the usual suspects again this year. From consultants, ad agencies, and pollsters to the media that, like coke heads, hunger for hits from advertising to bring their biannual revenue highs, this year’s $9 billion-plus midterm elections are filling the political industry’s coffers coast-to-coast.
By now, the catechism accompanying the staggering sums also is all too familiar. Reformers bemoan the rising costs and call for change. Among the talking heads, so-called “strategists”—former politicians, consultants, and political flacks—opine on what the financial tsunami’s ebb and flow means. And journalists dig into details. Each year, for example, their work illuminates a bit more the dark money donors whose generosity, thanks to the Supreme Court, buys political favors and the politicians that grant them in bulk.
Despite the scrutiny, however, the numbers fail to capture the scale of the spending story. For one thing, in state and local races financial reporting rules and their enforcement vary. Numbers from the Federal Election Commission also lag. As of two weeks ago, the candidates vying in Georgia’s one US Senate and 14 US House races had raised $191,945,200, give or take. Based on the data from Open Secrets, a spending watchdog, the growth in those totals looks likely to accelerate as well as set records on Tuesday when the polls close.
Tracking only the federal races in Georgia, the final spending sum for the US Senate and House campaigns almost certainly will hit $200 million or more. In fact, the Senate race between the incumbent Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker already is the nation’s costliest. The two campaigns raised $136,139,557 through October 19. If that seems impressive for a state with seven million active voters, as Al Jolson put it in The Jazz Singer a hundred years ago, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
Last week reporting by the Atlanta Journal Constitution made clear that the combined $136 million in funds raised by Warnock and Walker through mid-October was just for starters. Citing data compiled by Rick Dent, a political strategist, the AJC reported that only one-third of the $250 million spent so far on political advertising in Georgia has come from the contenders’ campaigns. In other words, outside groups to date have spent some $165 million on political ads. Add that contribution to the tab and the final price tag for Georgia’s federal races is likely to be well over the $360 million mark.
The campaigns to win seats on Capitol Hill aren’t Georgia’s only record-setting money machines. According to the state’s Campaign Finance Commission, through October 25, Governor Brian Kemp’s re-election campaign pulled in $81.5 million. His challenger, Stacey Abrams, brought $105.3 million her way. Together, the two gubernatorial campaigns have raised $186.8 million. Combining the totals from the US Senate and House races with Georgia’s election fund raising in the gubernatorial contest, the tally hits $546 million—a half-billion-dollar midterm election campaign.
Set aside the usual flag waving, understandable pride, and teary-eyed praise for the American democratic way; the country’s religious reverence for the Constitution; the legal edifice surrounding how elections work in a federal system; and even the need for cash to fund virtuous efforts to “get out the vote.” The staggering sums spent in Georgia to put tuchuses in one Senate, 14 House, and one governor’s seat should raise a question. Does the cost of democracy American style make any sense?
Consider France, a country with 68 million people and a respectable democracy. French law prohibits a presidential candidate from spending more than $22 million on his or her campaign. It also discourages deep pocketed donors by mandating that the government reimburse half that amount. And France’s law has teeth. In 2021 a French court sentenced former president Nicholas Sarkozy to a year home confinement after his conviction for taking money under the table in his 2012 election campaign.
Or for those who want the freedom to write big checks, examine Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden where donations aren’t limited. The three parliamentary democracies manage to have elections that work well but don’t break the bank. The reason: big spending on campaigns is money down the drain. Their laws limit costly television advertising as well as provide free airtime and public funding. They also impose statutory start-stop times on their elections, rather than allowing American-style, perpetual campaigning.
Or maybe the best way to mull Georgia’s campaign spending lunacy is to think about what else a half-billion dollars could do. Health care is one place to start. Some 1.4 million Georgia residents, nearly 14 percent, lack health insurance. Roughly a third of them—408,000—neither qualify for Medicaid nor because of their income levels, for programs that could help buy private insurance. In Georgia private health insurance averages $5897 a year per person, or $18,060 annually for a family of four.
What does helping Georgians afford health care have to do with a half-billion dollar election campaign? Actually nothing; in a state that ranks third highest in the country for uninsured, it’s a question of values. On the stump this fall, Governor Kemp has rejected the idea of expanding Medicaid, asserting that it’s too expensive for Georgians to foot the bill. Funny thing about that. Kemp somehow doesn’t think it’s too much to ask the same people to give whatever they can to top up his share of Georgia’s half-billion dollar election campaign.