Predictably Bonkers

How much is one congressional seat worth? Lost chances, massive spending, misspending, and more on politics and “not running a business”

There have been several themes to this newsletter over the last year, and recent news stories have reinforced a few with descriptions like “bonkers” and “old habits”.

Here are five with fresh evidence from the closing month of the midterms:

1. There are winnable GOP-held Congressional seats that don’t have competitive Democratic challengers this November

The Boston Globe’s David Scharfenberg flew out to Michigan’s fourth district to explore this unfortunate (and preventable) reality in a recent deep-dive on the problem of swing seats lacking competitive Democrats:

“In the Fourth and at least a dozen other districts like it — reddish but winnable for Democrats under the right circumstances — the party hadn’t recruited a strong candidate. That could cost Democrats their majority in a narrowly divided House — teeing up two years of GOP obstruction of the Biden administration. And maybe far worse.”

With $5B to spend this cycle, one would think that “The Democrats” could make every potential swing seat competitive to maximize the chances of retaining a fragile House majority this fall. But you’d be wrong. More on that below.

2. Spending on (some) House races is exploding, more evidence of the massive value of each individual seat

Back in January, we asked “What is the value of one U.S. House seat?” and concluded that, whatever your estimate, it’s higher than it appears (and getting higher).

A dozen years after Citizens United and six years after Trump’s election, the political marketplace still can’t seem to get its ducks in a row when it comes to how much, where, and on what campaigns, party committees, and outside groups should be spending.

But recent analyses make it clear that the value of one seat is skyrocketing: overall spending in recent cycles is up 3X, and that is spent over far fewer competitive seats. That is predictable, but still surprising to many when watching this cycle. Here’s what Punchbowl News had to say last week:

“Some of the spending we’re seeing in these competitive House races is just bonkers. Truly mind-blowing. These are House districts with TV ad spending levels that you used to see in Senate or gubernatorial campaigns not that long ago.

Here are some examples: $33.6 million has been shelled out in Pappas’ race; $31.4 million in Rep. Susie Lee’s (D-Nev.) race; $30.6 million in Golden’s race; $28.7 million in Rep. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) race; and $23.9 million in Angie Craig’s (D-Minn.) race.

That’s close to $150 million in just five districts, with several weeks to go. So yes, gerrymandering has left fewer truly competitive districts. And in those swing districts, the amount of money being spent can be staggering.”

3. Despite massive spending increases, even marquee races are not getting what they need from the broken political marketplace

Tim Ryan is running an incredibly strong campaign against J.D. Vance in Ohio, but (despite Ohio Democrats begging otherwise) national Democratic groups have largely stayed out of investing in the race. A recent deep-dive in NBC News captured this frustrating reality:

“Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, has been a more prolific fundraiser. But because national Democratic groups have provided comparatively little help on the airwaves, Ryan has had to spend cash as fast as it comes in just to keep up with the GOP onslaught…

‘Tim Ryan is running the best Senate race in the country and having to do it all by his lonesome,’ said Irene Lin, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist who managed Tom Nelson’s Senate primary campaign in Wisconsin this year. ‘If we lose this race by a few points, and the Senate majority, blame should squarely fall on the D.C. forces who unfairly wrote off Ohio.’”

4. A proliferation of PACs continue to siphon off small donor cash — even as campaigns ask them to stop

One example, “The Democratic Coalition” PAC — which has had questions raised about its practices since at least 2018 — capitalizes on the hype-saturated online political marketplace. The group has been using the likeness of Democrats running for critical Senate seats this fall (including Tim Ryan and John Fetterman) to raise money for itself, a grift that has been called out directly by top brass in both campaigns.

A piece in POLITICO this week quoted Fetterman’s campaign manager on the group:

“‘These people are only pretending that the money they raise goes to John and our campaign. In reality, they are tricking thousands of donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars,’ McPhillips continued. ‘Not only is this wrong, it also puts us at a major disadvantage.’ 

The object of McPhillips’ ire was an ad backing his candidate launched earlier that week by the Democratic Coalition, a progressive super PAC.”

Meanwhile, here’s what Tim Ryan’s CM had to say:

Dave Chase @dchase

@liamkerr @steveschale @Lis_Smith @ZacMcCrary Like once a month, I email a scam pac or two and demand they max out/split send or stop using Tim's name. Most don't respond but it entertains me at least. I can't email the ones filed as SuperPACs so figured I'd try tweeting at them.

5. When PACs do spend, it is often less efficient

Tim Ryan might be lacking in official party support, but he’s spending his dough far more efficiently than major GOP groups are on behalf of his opponent.

This week, The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher dug into the massive disparities between the cost-effectiveness of candidates and SuperPAC spending on TV:

“On WJW, the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, last week’s Big Ten college football game cost (Tim) Ryan $3,000 — and $30,000 for (Mitch McConnell’s SuperPAC).”

There have been many headlines in recent weeks over Mitch McDonnell bailing out JD Vance with $30 million in ad buys. Rarely mentioned is that “the Republican super PAC was paying four or five times more than Mr. Ryan for ads on the same shows”.

So, in effect, the GOP establishment’s spending only had the effect of about $6 million in campaign spending — or just one-third of the $17.2 million Ryan raised last quarter.

Goldmacher’s story cites “old habits” as one reason for the lack of rational investments in politics. A GOP consultant summed it up here:

“They’re not running a business in the sense that shareholders are going to be outraged that they have to spend more for the same asset. It’s a cost of doing business.”

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Not Running a Business

In last Sunday’s Boston Globe, David Scharfenberg explored a shocking question: do Democrats, with an aggregate $5 billion at their disposal, really have zero full-time employees dedicated to recruiting a competitive candidate in each of the few dozen potential swing districts left? Is there really no single person responsible for ensuring the party is able to compete seriously in a particular district (say, Michigan’s 4th)?

Scharfenberg flew out to Southwest Michigan to see the effects of Democratic under-investment in recruiting and supporting a candidate to take on anti-democracy incumbent Rep. Bill Huizenga, who signed onto the Texas amicus brief that attempted to overturn the 2020 election.

Electoral volatility is very real and Donald Trump only won Huizenga’s newly-drawn MI-04 with 51% of the vote in 2020, at least theoretically making the district ripe for Democrats to recruit and back a compelling challenger to punish Huizenga for siding with Trump over our democracy. But Huizenga’s current Democratic challenger, Joseph Alfonso, patriotically stepped up to run when the party neglected to recruit anyone else and has received next to no support — financial or otherwise. Alfonso has been working immensely hard but (according to the latest available FEC reports) has only managed to raise a little $4,000 over a large part of the cycle, giving Huizenga an advantage he doesn’t deserve.

Joseph Alfonso canvasses in MI-04 (Daytona Niles/The Boston Globe)

But you don’t have to fly all the way to Allegan County, Michigan to grasp the stark reality Scharfenberg describes.

WelcomePAC has chronicled this issue in its regular analyses of quarterly FEC filings paired with 2020 Trump vote share data. Since launching in fall 2021, these reports have consistently captured the extent and depth of Democrats’ chronic underinvestment in potentially winnable Republican-held districts across the country.

WelcomePAC’s Q3 analysis found that Democrats running in five of the seven GOP-held districts where Trump received 50-51% of the vote in 2020 (including Joseph Alfonso) kicked off the quarter with less than $200,000 in cash on hand. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s opponent is flush with cash. Every updated analysis begs the increasingly pressing question: are Democrats conceding democracy by neglecting to even compete?

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It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

While Democrats’ fate in the House this November is largely sealed by now, there’s a lot that can be done to support more strategic risk-taking heading into 2024. Here are a few vital steps:

Educate the market on what a House seat is worth. In the venture approach to saving democracy (and securing everything else that comes from having a durable governing majority), it seems well worth it to spend $5 million per potentially winnable seat in order to have a 10% better chance at winning that seat. That money should be spent earlier and more holistically, too: it shouldn’t just go to candidate support but also to on-the-ground recruiting. In today’s market, there are some very good people doing critical work in recruiting and supporting candidates in flippable districts — but investments are required earlier and differently. There should be at least one (if not two, three, or four!) full-time employees on the ground tasked with early candidate sourcing, recruitment, and support in every potential battleground in the country.

The “Party” cannot solve this problem. The formal Democratic Party apparatus is not organized to operate beyond a two-year, cycle-to-cycle investment horizon. The structural dynamics in an ecosystem in which there is no such thing as “The Democrats, Inc.” demand that nimble outside groups steward the kind of long-term investment and strategic risk taking required to operationalize this kind of venture approach to flipping House seats.

The far-left has shown a path. Precisely because there is no centralized decision-making (or resource-allocating) apparatus for the Democratic Party, there is an opening for entrepreneurial efforts to change the party. Insurgent progressive groups like Justice Democrats and Our Revolution achieved an outsized impact in just a handful of election cycles by making strategic bets on far-left candidates in a number of districts. The vast majority of those bets failed, but a handful succeeded in 2018 and 2020 — and the Squad now touts seven members. As we wrote in NBC News last year, the co-founder of Justice Democrats

“...believes in what he calls a ‘startup mentality’ and explicitly appeals to the venture capital portfolio model in which Justice Democrats would be ‘okay losing 90 percent of our races’ as long as the wins have huge returns.”

A moderate faction wins the middle. The far-left’s insurgent success is a case study in the value of building an intra-partisan faction capable of making coordinated investments in pursuit of shared goals. There’s a strong business case for a robust center-left faction that can recruit and support the kind of brand-differentiated moderates who have demonstrated an ability to appeal to the crossover voters required to win in right-of-center districts.

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The path forward is clear.

Recognize the problems — and the value of winning. Acknowledge that the solution cannot come from the party itself. Adapt the venture approach of the far-left to win in the middle. And have fun doing it (even in a political environment that is predictably bonkers).

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