Opinion: Elections Are for Rich People

(June 10) -- Would Meg Whitman have won the California primary for the governorship if she hadn't spent $71 million of her own money on her campaign? Probably not -- since she was running against another mega-millionaire, Steve Poizner, who spent $25 million of his own money on his campaign. That's almost $100 million spent to buy a millionaire the chance -- just the chance -- to run for office. For a job that pays slightly higher than $150,000.

John Corzine. Michael Bloomberg. Mitt Romney. By now, we're used to ridiculously rich people spending ridiculous sums on campaigns. These people are so rich they make other millionaires look like simple folk of modest means -- what, Carly Fiorina spent only $5.5 million of her own money on her Senate campaign? Wow. Hope she's not embarrassed about being so poor.

High office has always been more accessible to the rich, of course -- about two-thirds of Senators are millionaires (and members of the House aren't exactly pikers, either). Power and money tend to go together, and one tends to seek out the other. Both, of course, lead to opportunities that a regular Joe just doesn't have. Now, it seems, it's not even enough just to be rich -- you have to be rich enough to buy the election, too.

You can buy TV ad time, but winning goodwill is trickier (see: those cringe-worthy BP ads) (but then again, see: Alvin Greene). You can't help but wonder: Do those high-priced political consultants ever mention the backlash and bad PR of a self-funded campaign? Because I've heard more than one commentator muse over how much Whitman's money could have done for, say, the broken California education system. And read more than one article about how gross it seemed to spend such an amount. (Tina Dupuy at True/Slant put it best: "It's not just scary in an undemocratic way. It's obscene.")

Never mind that, coming out of this victory, the lede of every story was about how much money Whitman spent. Take this from the AP: "Chartered jets that offer 'white glove service,' fancy fundraisers in Beverly Hills and beyond, and enough high-priced political consultants to fill an auditorium. Those are a few of billionaire Meg Whitman's favorite things as she carries out her remarkably lavish campaign for California governor."

In what universe does that constitute positive coverage? Whitman could not sound more spoiled and out of touch. For this she paid her Washington-based advertising agency $47 million? Get this -- they're called "Smart Media Group." Ha. That sounds like the biggest oxymoron ever. Then again, they got Whitman to give them $47 million, so they can't be that dumb. Just their media strategy.

In my view, those consultants would have best served their candidate -- and the electorate -- by saying this: "How about asking your constituents where they'd like to see you spend that money?" It's the age of social media -- actually speak to them, and let them speak to you. Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, all of it to hear what the people of California think is important. Hold a town hall to get feedback. And then cut a very large check and make the state of California richer via your generous, generous donation. I'm betting the free media coverage -- and overwhelming goodwill -- would be more than worth it.

Ha ha, how naive. Why on earth would a candidate for powerful elected office actually want to spend their own money on their constituents? How silly. That might imply that they cared about the people they want to represent more than the power of the office and the title. If I had a dollar for every rube who thought elections were about people, I might just have enough to run for governor of California. But probably not.


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