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发帖数: 945 | 1 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-11/cantor-wasted-cash-at-
Cantor Wasted Cash at Ritz While Raising Brat’s TV Image
By Annie Linskey and Greg Giroux Jun 12, 2014 12:00 AM GMT-0400
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Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) arrives for a news conference after
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Eric Cantor on Primary Loss, Leadership Post
How does a political veteran with a $5 million warchest lose to an ill-
funded neophyte? One way is to spend it poorly by, for example, airing more
than 1,000 television ads without ever talking directly in them to voters -
- and frequently broadcasting your opponent’s image.
Eric Cantor’s campaign finance reports show hotel bills from places such as
the Ritz Carlton in Boca Raton, Florida, and the Beverly Hills Hilton in
California. Then there’s more than 400 charges for “airfare,” and about $
170,000 shelled out at steakhouses.
Such spending stands in sharp contrast to reports submitted by Dave Brat,
the college professor who upset the U.S. House majority leader in Virginia’
s June 10 Republican primary. Brat’s transportation charges through May 21
totaled $3,035 for gas reimbursements. His top food cost up to that date: $
800 spent at a HoneyBaked Ham outlet.
“This is a rare example of an instance where money really isn’t the most
important currency in a campaign,” Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at
Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, said in an
interview. “When you lose touch with your district, I don’t know that it
matters how much money you spend.”
Money in the bank is usually a strong indicator of support. Cantor’s loss
proves that a well-funded candidate supported by outside groups and super-
political action committees doesn’t always carry the day.
Squandered Cash
It’s a lesson that has emerged before in U.S. politics: Karl Rove’s two
political organizations spent almost $200 million in 2012 on 22 races and
only won seven. Connecticut’s Linda McMahon spent $100 million of her own
money on two U.S. Senate campaigns and lost both times.
Cantor spent roughly $5 million through May 21, his reports show, and much
of it was clearly not focused on his own race. Many of the expenses were
connected to his travels across the country to help other candidates as part
of his leadership role.
Brat had spent $123,000 as of May 21, all of it on his candidacy.
His win “was a homegrown, grassroots conservative revolt against a
politician whose constituents perceived him to be more focused on Washington
than his district, and more focused on power rather than principle,” said
Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia Attorney General who lost the state’s
gubernatorial race last year and yesterday became the president of the
Senate Conservatives Fund.
Tiny Audience
Television ads are among the most powerful weapons campaign money can buy,
yet they carry less of a punch in a primary contest.
“The smaller the target audience, the less effective television is,” said
Will Feltus, a Republican strategist at National Media Inc. in Alexandria,
Virginia. “So many of your impressions are wasted on people who are not
going to vote.”
Cantor ran 1,038 commercials on local broadcast stations through June 9, and
348 were aired on his behalf by an outside group, the American Chemistry
Council, a Washington-based trade group whose members include Dow Chemical
Co. (DOW) and 3M Co.
The Cantor messages may have been off-the-mark and inadvertently aided his
opponent, a political newcomer, develop name recognition. Fifty percent of
the ads Cantor ran were negative spots. They referred to Brat as a “liberal
college professor” who didn’t oppose then-Democratic Governor Tim Kaine’
s tax hikes when the challenger was a member of a state advisory board of
economists.
Radio Ads
Brat mostly used radio spots. His sole television ad aired 65 times
beginning June 4, six days before the primary. “I will proudly stand for
the conservative values that Eric Cantor has abandoned in Washington,” he
said in it.
“It depends how you use your money,” said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor
at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington. Cantor’s
commercials “really didn’t pass the credibility test,” while they instead
raised Brat’s profile in the district.
“That was money that wasn’t well spent,” Duffy said.
In contrast, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham -- like Cantor, a target of some
Tea Party activists -- ran an entirely positive race on television and won
the Republican primary in South Carolina against six opponents on the same
day the House leader lost.
About 65,000 people voted in the Cantor-Brat primary, up more than 38
percent from turnout in the district’s 2012 primary, in which Cantor
defeated a different little-known opponent with 79 percent of the vote.
“We didn’t want it to be this big of a universe” of voters, said John
McLaughlin, Cantor’s polling expert. “We were targeting for a typical
Republican turnout.”
Polling Lead
His surveys showed Cantor ahead by more than 30 percentage points two weeks
ago.
McLaughlin blamed the loss on Democrats and other non-Republican voters
casting ballots in the race. Virginia voters don’t register by party and
are free to participate in any party’s primary.
“Democrats had to be playing games,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “I
guarantee these voters were not on our lists.”
Even if some Democrats crossed over for Brat, that doesn’t explain how
Cantor’s vote total plunged 23 percent to 28,902 votes from 37,369 votes in
the 2012 primary, a difference of 8,467 votes. In unofficial results,
Cantor lost re-nomination to Brat by 7,218 votes.
“There was a lot of insurgency energy in this Republican electorate, the
Tea Party energy, and I think that better explains the increased turnout for
me than any idea that these were all Democrats who turned out,” said
political scientist Kidd.
To contact the reporters on this story: Annie Linskey in Washington at
a******[email protected]; Greg Giroux in Washington at g*****[email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at
j*********[email protected] Don Frederick | b********n
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