Opinion: As long as we’re talking about money

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The news the last couple of days has been dominated by money stories -- who raised how much, and whether candidate X can hang in there. There’s been more than $350 million raised so far, but believe it or not, that’s peanuts.

Take a look at how much the political action committees raised and spent in the 2005-06 election cycle -- more than $1 billion. The $1.086 billion raised was 18% more than the previous two-year cycle, and the $1.055 billion spent was 25% higher than 2003-04.

Remember, the 2004 election was the Bush vs. Kerry slugfest. The 2006 cycle was when the Democrats wrested control of Congress from Republicans.

Details are on the Federal Elections Commission website linked above, and there are all sorts of interesting factoids to digest. One of the more arresting statistics: In 1996, the cycle in which Bill Clinton was reelected president, PACs spent 67% on incumbents. In the last cycle, a decade later, 80% of the PAC money went to incumbents.

According to an FEC chart linked through the report, Republican federal candidates took in nearly $208 million from PACs, whereas Democrats received a little more than $161 million. The impulse is to decry the swamp of cash in which campaigns are mired, but a curious thing happened in the 2006 election cycle -- Democrats picked up seats in the House and the Senate.

So the big money went to the losers. But given how nasty some of the campaigns turned, it’s hard to argue that the spending was good for the public discourse.

-- Scott Martelle