Bush’s Unlimited Spending Has Limited Effect

To comprehend the staggering scope of George W. Bush’s campaign spending, consider this fact: The Texas governor shelled out money last month at the rate of more than $400,000 a day, or $288 every minute.

How exactly did Bush manage to burn through $60 million overall--and counting--without locking up the nomination? Was his spending profligate or a rational, upfront series of investments that simply hasn’t worked out as planned?

The wisdom of Bush’s spending will be judged only in the 20-20 hindsight of whether he ends up capturing the Republican nomination and ultimately the White House. But a close reading of the thousands of pages of spending reports filed with the Federal Election Commission so far depicts a campaign in which little expense was spared: 34 offices rented from Anchorage to Atlanta and a hefty staff of 174. By contrast, John McCain has 10 offices nationwide and a staff of 80.

Bush has built a national infrastructure and spent heavily, and early, on media and phone banks. Because Bush decided not to take federal matching funds, he was freed from the spending ceiling of about $40 million during the primary season and has shelled out money at a pace unmatched in modern presidential politics.

“Bush has pursued a classic front-runner strategy, appearing in as many places as possible,” said Colby College political scientist Anthony Corrado. “What’s different is he’s pursued it with the view of having unlimited resources. We’ve never seen a candidate do that before.”

His only close competitor was multimillionaire Steve Forbes, who dropped out this month after spending more than $40 million. Bush’s spending halfway through the primaries is approaching the $66 million in federal funding that the Republican and Democratic nominees will each receive to run their general election campaigns this fall.

Campaign spending experts say there is no single category of Bush campaign expenses that appears out of line when taken as a proportion of his overall spending. Rather, the difference is the sheer size of the entire enterprise: With $71 million collected so far, the Bush campaign is much like a house built for giants, with accouterments to scale.

Bush has devoted more money to media than any other candidate in history, and it accounted for more than any other category of his spending, nearly $13 million by Jan. 31, more than a quarter of the $50 million he had spent by then. In one example, the campaign spent an estimated $230,000 on television advertising in Norfolk and Richmond, Va., last month, well in advance of Tuesday’s primary, and in a state where Bush had appeared comfortably ahead.

Bush’s $5-million spending on travel is about the same as Democrats Bill Bradley and Vice President Al Gore combined, and 2 1/2 times McCain’s $2 million. While McCain flew on loaned corporate jets or on commercial flights with small groups of aides, the Bush campaign chartered its own plane, with Bush accompanied by 15 to 20 aides, and moved in presidential-style motorcades.

Corrado likened the Bush campaign to an Internet start-up company. “It had a very successful IPO [initial public offering], which raised a lot of money, and now it’s running through money with an incredibly high burn rate,” he said. In February, some GOP observers estimate, the campaign is shelling out $4 million weekly, about half on advertising.

The sheer size of Bush’s campaign spending is impressive on many fronts--$147,307 spent on Federal Express deliveries, for example; $88,111 for parking; $377,000 for sound and lighting at events; and $475,811 for rent--and that doesn’t take into account spending in the first six months of 1999, which is not available on computer.

“The campaign is getting a bad rap,” said one aide involved in the campaign’s financial operations. “The dollars are so staggering that when you spend X or Y, people gasp. But is it excessive? No.”

Responding in part to criticism that the campaign has mismanaged its funds, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said aides have clung to every dollar for back-office functions that have no effect on voters, while spending generously on commercials, phone banks and mail solicitations. “We have one of the highest, if not the highest, percentage of any presidential campaign devoted to voter contact,” he said.

Bill Dal Col, who managed Forbes’ campaign, said Bush’s spending was a rational response to what the campaign had anticipated to be its biggest threat: magazine publisher Forbes, with his seemingly bottomless bank account.

For the Bush campaign now to find itself in the predicament of hearing its spending strategy questioned even by some of its own fund-raisers is a particular irony. Bush aides made a show of their thrift last summer by serving potato chips at a high-rollers’ fund-raising event and giving donors a thank-you card: “Enjoy your peanuts and snacks!”

At the same time, the campaign was preparing to spend huge sums on early TV and radio ads, phone banks and glossy mailings in several primary states.

An analysis of campaign spending reports from July 1999 through January shows that Bush’s staff costs, while far greater than McCain’s, are in line with those of Bradley ($5.6 million) and Gore ($6.7 million).

One of Bush’s top expenditures, nearly $11 million on fund-raising since his campaign began, is actually a relatively modest 16% of his total raised; most presidential candidates spend 20% to 30%. “His fund-raising was so efficient,” Corrado said. “It was the best preestablished fund-raising base of any presidential candidate in history.”

However, Bush spent far more on direct mail and telemarketing than the other candidates, and, unlike them, mounted his efforts in every contested state.

Some Republicans also question whether Bush’s heavy spending on “voter identification”--the work of locating Bush supporters by phone--and “voter contact” in some early states was worth the money invested. “The voter ID operation the Bush campaign had in December and January didn’t penetrate like you’d expect it to, and it had quite a few mistakes,” said one New Hampshire Republican.

Bush has already tapped into far more $1,000 donors than campaign finance experts believed existed, and he may have difficulty coming up with more. Meanwhile, McCain’s campaign benefits from the momentum of his wins in New Hampshire and Michigan. Having raised only $15.5 million as of last month, McCain has a large pool of potential donors to whom to reach out.

McCain also has the benefit of receiving federal matching funds for the first $250 of every contribution he receives; Bush, in order to be freed from spending limits, is not accepting matching funds. With Bush’s reserves down to about $10 million and shrinking, the actual resource gap between the two candidates may be as little as a few million dollars. Bush campaign officials argue that they are actually in better shape than that because they have bought some advertising time in advance but will not say how much.