Big Spenders Can Be Losers in Campaigns

By JANET HOOK

June 5, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

The Beatles were right: Money can’t buy you love. Or, at the least, votes.

By sending three millionaire candidates down to defeat this week, Californians delivered a bracing reminder that being loaded with dough is not always a sure-fire ticket to political office, analysts said Thursday. And it’s not just a phenomenon in California, where the self-financed campaigns of Al Checchi, Jane Harman and Darrell Issa fell flat.

All around the country, wealthy candidates have thrown their own money into campaigns for national office, and many have come up empty-handed.

A rich businessman in Kentucky recently lost the Democratic Senate nomination, despite spending millions from his own pocket. A wealthy lawyer who outspent his rival almost 9 to 1 lost the New Jersey Democratic primary for a House seat on Tuesday.

Nor is the trend peculiar to this year. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 149 candidates for the House and Senate put more than $100,000 of their own money into their campaigns in 1995-96. Only 19 won.

To be sure, vast personal wealth can give a candidate a leg up on little-known challengers who lack the fund-raising clout of incumbents, analysts said. But ready cash is not necessarily enough to get them across the finish line. And in some cases, voter backlash can turn a candidate’s personal assets into a political liability.

“This notion of buying elections is baloney,” said Charles Cook, a political analyst in Washington. “People have to buy into the candidacy.”

California, with its vast size and stratospheric campaign costs, has been the most fertile breeding ground for millionaire political candidates. By the time they had lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Lt. Gov. Gray Davis in this week’s primary, Checchi had spent at least $37 million of his own money and Harman had put up $11.6 million. For their efforts, Checchi ended up with just 21% of the Democratic vote, Harman got 20%.

In his failed bid for the GOP Senate nomination, Issa spent an estimated $12 million of his own money. He garnered 40% of the Republican vote; state Treasurer Matt Fong won the race with 45%.

Parties Recruit Rich to Run

As campaign costs skyrocket nationwide, wealthy candidates are cropping up even in such smaller states as Kentucky and Vermont.

Both political parties have been recruiting wealthy people to run for office--particularly for high-cost Senate campaigns against incumbents--in part because such candidates can help finance the challenge.

“Particularly for candidates who have never held public office before, putting up their own money early is the only way to begin building the momentum that’s required to attract outside funds,” said an analysis of self-financed candidates by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group here.

Self-financed candidates often defend the practice by saying that it makes them less beholden to special interests because they do not rely on outside groups for campaign financing. “I’m putting my money where my mouth is, rather than my mouth where somebody else’s money is,” Checchi said as the California campaign wound down.

Strategists caution that, while free-flowing cash can boost challengers by allowing them to buy early advertising, the exposure will do little good if voters do not like what they see.

“The candidate with the most money does not always have the best political sense and a core understanding of why they are running for Congress,” said Dan Sallick, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They just get lured into it because they have the money. It doesn’t hurt to have money, but you have to have a core of reasons to run for office.”

Wealth Can Spur Voter Resentment

And wealthy candidates who are spending their own money sometimes inspire resentment from voters suspicious of rich people.

“It’s a turnoff to average voters,” said Michael Tucker, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In Kentucky’s Senate Democratic primary, businessman Charlie Owen put an estimated $7 million of his own money into the campaign but won only 30% of the vote, finishing second to Rep. Scotty Baesler.

As a political issue, Owen’s wealth cut both ways. He actually won an important late-stage endorsement from former Gov. Brereton Jones, in part because of his finances. “He’s got intelligence, he’s got integrity, he’s got a heart, he’s got a soul and he’s got a big pocketbook,” Jones told reporters.

But another Democratic rival responded with a radio ad accusing Owen of spending his own money “to buy the election.”

In New Jersey, Princeton lawyer Carl Mayer loaned his campaign nearly $1 million and spent about $580,000 as of mid-May to win the Democratic nomination to run against GOP Rep. Michael Pappas. But Mayer got just 38% of the vote and lost the primary to Rush Holt, a retired physicist who spent a mere $66,000 on his campaign.

In Vermont, Democrats already are trying to make an issue of the wealth of GOP Senate candidate Jack McMullen--even though the millionaire businessman has not yet spent any of his own money on his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy.

Even a fellow Republican, former Vermont Sen. Robert T. Stafford, has expressed doubts about the millionaire challenger, who has had a summer home in Vermont but only began living in the state full time a year ago. “There ought not to be any sense that Vermont is for sale.”

Analysts said that McMullen is a longshot to beat Leahy and that his money--if he uses it--will not help much in a tiny state where politics still is a one-on-one enterprise, not a media event.

Having Money Can Help Campaign

Money certainly can give challengers a better chance than they probably otherwise would have. Michael Coles, a Democrat and a cookie company millionaire, spent $2.4 million of his own fortune on a longshot bid to unseat House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1996. He lost, but he managed a surprising 42% of the vote.

Although personal wealth can buy name recognition, strategists said, it cannot buy victory unless the candidate also has more old-fashioned political assets: endorsements, a strong field organization and the ability to raise funds from supporters.

“We’ve seen some success with candidates who are able to bring some of their personal resources to the table but back that up with a solid grass-roots organization,” said Tucker of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

That, Tucker said, was the key to the success of John Edwards, a wealthy lawyer who put $3 million of his own money into his campaign for the Democratic Senate nomination in North Carolina this year and won. Edwards had a good base of traditional Democratic political support: the endorsements of labor, teachers and trial lawyers.

Edwards will oppose Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth in the fall election.

Rob Christensen, a North Carolina political reporter, contended that a newcomer like Edwards probably would not have won the nomination if he had not spent his own money. But Christensen said that the money would not have been enough if Edwards had not been “an articulate, telegenic and focused candidate.”

“Money is important in politics,” Christensen wrote after the primary, “but it isn’t everything.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

DECISION ’98

$54.21 PER VOTE

Al Checchi

California governor

Out of pocket: $37 million

****

$11.60 PER VOTE

Darrell Issa

U.S. Senate, California

Out of pocket: $12 million