Where the Money Goes: Tough Decisions

Some of the toughest decisions candidates have to make concern where to spend the money they raise. I've done a lot of work recently for Chris Hershey's campaign for Public Administrator in Platte County, and how to spend campaign funds is one of the most stressful decisions he's had to make. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm dating Chris. That means I get to be a part of every conversation about the campaign. One of the decisions he labored over the most was about how to reach the most amount of people with printed material. 

Printing flyers is really expensive. Placing ads in newspapers is even more expensive. Putting out a mailer is by far the most expensive. 

Chris has been going door to door for weeks now, passing out his printed "handbill" with information about him as a candidate to each house. Purchasing the flyers was a huge expense for the small campaign - a few hundred dollars. 

Looking at the money he had left in his campaign fund after purchasing the flyers, Chris had to decide between placing newspaper ads and doing a mailing. 

First of all, mailings are extremely expensive. A good mailing costs anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000. This includes printing the materials, paying a company to put a mailing list together, and the actual mailing of the materials. 

Chris certainly didn't have a big enough war chest to do all of that, so he looked at doing an extremely targeted mailing for just a few key areas of the county. 

He then looked at placing ads in all of the local newspapers. There are a handful in Platte County; The Citizen, The Landmark, The Weston Chronicle, The Independent Platte and The Kansas City Star all serve the area. 

The Flyer

Chris looked at his demographic. Which towns read the newspapers? Which towns would he have a harder time going door to door in because of the sheer number of people? 

He determined that a newspaper ad would best fit in the northern part of the county, which reads the Citizen, Landmark and Chronicle. He thought a mailing would do best in the southern part of the county where he wouldn't be able to get to every house with his flyer. 

Alas, one of the downfalls of running a very small local campaign is that there's just never enough money. Chris eventually had to make the call that advertising in the newspapers the week before the election was really all the campaign could handle. 

I share this story because I think it illustrates a phenomenon that we don't hear a lot about in the media's coverage of elections. Local candidates often don't have the large donors like Presidential candidates do, which means they end up choosing the least expensive option the majority of the time. While Senate candidates get to run new television ads every week, local candidates are stuck running one ad in the local newspaper. 

What's impressive about this story is that the lack of funds really forces local candidates to use the "free" means of campaigning. Chris has knocked on doors every night for weeks upon weeks to try and make up the slack from not being able to do a mailing. 

It won't be dollars that win this election, it'll be blood, sweat and tears.