She spent $50 million in August, and he's been
gaining on her.
While both candidates are raising huge sums from donors, their lopsided spending lays bare the difference in the two major party presidential campaigns. Clinton is running a conventional operation featuring multimillion-dollar ad buys and expansive voter outreach. Trump has kept spending down by enjoying seemingly limitless free media coverage and outsourcing the guts of his voter contact duties to the Republican Party.
And he's proud of his chintziness:
"Our expenditures on advertising, our expenditures on people, our expenditures on everything are a tiny fraction. And yet we're minimum tied," Trump said Tuesday at a rally in Kenansville, North Carolina. "If you can spend less and be winning, that's a positive thing, right?"
ADDED: Trump's campaign spent $30 million in August, and Hillary's spent $49 million. She put 68% of that money on ad production and ad buys. His spending — the most he's spent in a month "by far" — was —
as WaPo puts it — "finally investing in some semblance of an infrastructure."
However, the billionaire continued to maintain a small campaign staff, spending just about $765,000 on payroll in August on 131 staffers, up from about $500,000 in July, when he had about 82 people on the payroll. Clinton, by comparison, had 789 people on staff last month.
Trump has bragged about his lean operation, saying Tuesday night at a rally in North Carolina, "If you can spend less and be winning that’s a positive thing, right? That’s the person you want as your president, I think.”
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63 comments:
If frugalness and winning with less money and staff was the most important qualification, then I would gladly vote for Trump.
On money management:
Trump +1
Hillary -10
This is Reason #254234 I hope Clinton fails: Disproving that a US Presidential election can just be bought. I'm tired of people using money raised as some sort of metric for success in elections.
And I really hate the campaign industry. Vast sums of money are wasted on managers, consultants, media specialists, get-out-the vote people, and all sorts of minions various and sundry to run it all. And all with the goal of convincing you who to vote for with lies, stories, narratives, and "messaging" of one sort or another. It's repulsive.
Too many politicians of both parties think that the only way to solve any problem is to throw money at it. Trump is a refreshing change from that mindset.
Over at CNN, the designated Trumpian victim sacrificed nightly on their panels, Corey Lewandowski, still gets paid $20,000 per month by Trump for consultant fees. He sure earns it too.
I do hope that if nothing else this election does change the way campaign money is raised and spent. TV ads can be useful (and are often necessary for non-celebrity candidates) but they've really been overrated over the years.
Isn't this the liberal way? Throw money at it and think the turd has been polished?
You see it in education at all levels. If you throw money at it you can claim it's about the children, and then wash your hands of any real structural changes, or actual improvements.
Colleges run by liberals piss money away, run up debts for their customers, and increasingly diminish the actual value of their product.
These numbers more than anything illustrate what is wrong with gov't. Then Businessman is going to spend less money and win than the elitist lifetime bureaucrat.
A popular managerial philosophy right now is that companies need to be agile. That is, not laden down with a huge bureaucracy and unneeded procedures that prevent the organization from reacting to changing circumstances in a quick and intelligent manner.
That is a very different mindset than the one you find in governments where the the primary goal is to get as many of your friends and allies on the government teat as you can.
Buh...buh...buh...but Citizens United.
We have to keep people from buying elections.
We must replace the first Amendment.
Thus saith progressives.
John Henry
Spouse and I were discussing this. I said this is one reason why I would be happy if Trump pulls it off. Perhaps we'd stop hearing so much about big money buying elections. I just finished reading The Intimidation Game. Very eye opening.
Thank God someone finally did something about the evil influence of money in politics.
I read somewhere that all the local network affiliates are angry with Trump because he is not making the ad buys, thus depriving them of revenue. The ones in swing states anyway. Ad buys are basically a kind of payola. A way to transfer money from the parties donors to the media. I don't understand why Republicans participate in it since most of the recipients are going to be hostile to them.
Oh, wait. The money has to flow through some middlemen first and a good deal of it stays with them.
Trumpy's strategy (?) will be seen as brilliant only if he wins. Of course instead of trash talking about the process he could state if elected as president I will be a steward of your tax money just like I am with with my campaign funds unlike Hillary and the Democrats who only know who to waste other people's money, your tax money.
I'd vote for Trump gladly if he could make Mexico pay for his campaign.
But why anyone would think that TV adds would be useful is also a mystery. Its 2016. Just about everyone has a DVR and fast forwards through commercials. A friend of mine who had some joints replaced is in rehab right now and the fact that he can't fast forward through commercials on the TV in his room is driving him nuts.
So you might reach some elderly people, but what's the cost/benefit ratio?
You need to do what Trump is doing. Get on the news and talk shows and stay there. Be part of the entertainment that those shows are meant to deliver. Adds belong on the Internet and need to be forwarded and shared. People are a lot more likely to watch a commercial if a friend recommends it.
I thought the Democrat party was supposed to be the plugged-in techno-wizard party.
One of the benefits of a Trump victory would be seeing Citizens United mantra exposed as a distraction the left wing elite uses to keep the footsoldiers enthused.
Draw Hillary dangling a CU string in front of kittens with the faces of various activist groups.
You probably don't need to take frequent, long breaks from campaigning when there is less than 50 days to the election. Especially when the entire world saw you collapse in the street and get heaved into a black panel van because you had "pneumonia."
But then what are you going to do if when you do face the press you sound kind of like you may be on some sort of mind altering substance?
I am repeating something I posted in a different thread yesterday, for those who may have missed that it has been deemed that Trump's campaign is finished - guess he lost more Mojo than Hillary has:
Just opened my new issue of Rolling Stone - don't read it much anymore, but I have a lifetime subscription, so I figure I will let them continue to spend money mailing it to me & then it goes in the recycle bin.
However, this issue is going to stay around until after the election - Matt Taibbi has declared that Trump's campaign is over. This issue might have that "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline staying power.
How Donald Trump Lost His Mojo:
Flailing on race and immigration, his campaign in chaos, the candidate who made a brilliant farce of the election is now finding the joke is on him
That's all folks, everyone go home, nothing to see here, it's all over now, it's all sewed up for Hillary.
Trump is running a ground game that's based on rallies and press baiting. Judging by his rally attendance, he's doing very well. If that translates to motivated voters showing up on election day, it'll be great for him.
I'm not sure how I'd judge Trump's minimalist approach to a Presidential run as it applies to a Presidency. His style of speaking will be a problem if he wins and every single word will be judged. I think we'll get used to it. He certainly won't be the only world leader that with a philosophy of "don't listen to what I'm saying, listen to what I mean", but I think he'll be the first US president like that. Maybe Kennedy was like that, but he was stoned out of his gourd.
Between all the creepy clown reports/panic and Hillary Clinton's antics and the fact the Donald Trump might be elected POTUS I am starting to think I might be a minor character in a Stephen King novel.
Foreshadowing what a Trump presidency might look like. Entrenched intractable problems distrupted by small changes in behavior lead to impossible results.
Vast sums of money are wasted on managers, consultants, media specialists, get-out-the vote people, and all sorts of minions various and sundry to run it all.
Why do you think they all hate Trump ?
The Charlotte riots are a preview of what to expect if it looks like Trump is winning.
"However, this issue is going to stay around until after the election - Matt Taibbi has declared that Trump's campaign is over."
Rolling Stone - the rag that used the fantasies of a delusional woman to push an entirely fictional UVA rape story and who listed "Derringers" as one of the "5 Most Dangerous Guns in America."
Yeah, it's always my source for hard-hitting journalism.
@Alan Markus
The last time I read The Rolling Stone was in 1982. I was reading a album review and came upon the phrase "politically correct" as in the album was not politically correct.
Thus saith progressives.
And John McCain. I can foresee the unholy trinity of McCain, Feingold, and Hillary re-writing the 1st amendment.
Ah, for a modern Thomas Paine to really roast their chestnuts on the political fires.
I also have to wonder what would happen if/when Trump starts hitting Hillary hard with attack ads. Will the needle move? And if so, which direction?
If his poll numbers are growing, to a statistical tie no less, in spite of the withering attack ads against him, that doesn't bode well for her.
If you can spend less and be winning that’s a positive thing, right? That’s the person you want as your president, I think.
He just lost the civil service vote.
Just kidding. He never had a shot at the civil service vote.
I also have to wonder what would happen if/when Trump starts hitting Hillary hard with attack ads. Will the needle move? And if so, which direction?
I think going all-in on negative would hurt Trump. His campaign, as I've said, is a positive campaign overall. It's largely "Things aren't good, but we can make them great". A constant drumbeat of negative will kill one of his pluses. People are normally drawn to a positive campaign. You need some negative, and he has had no problem going there, but the positive must be the central thing.
1%er or a wannabe. Clinton will sustain the Obama legacy in war, abortion, and debt. The minimum wage will necessarily need to be raised, the refugee crises (i.e. immigration "reform") will necessarily progress, and the value of human capital will be destroyed in a final solution.
I have to believe Hillary's meds ain't cheap either!!
The frequency and intensity of anti-Trump TV ads tell me more about the Clinton camp than they do about Trump. During the primaries we got to see a biographical ad for Hillary, with clips from her youth through middle age. They did not have the desired effect; they only showed that she had been a pain in the ass all her life. These ads were pulled, and only the intervention of Harry Reid kept Bernie from taking the Nevada primary.
Althouse, you are becoming Drudge, with prettier photographs.
damikesc said...
...
I think going all-in on negative would hurt Trump. His campaign, as I've said, is a positive campaign overall...
LMFAO. Low-energy Jeb, Little Marco, Lyin' Ted and Crooked Hillary would beg to differ.
I wish he would spend a little on ads. There is so many good ones he could do on Hillary's lies and corruption; in her own words. I believe they would 'break the tie', so to speak, in his favor.
Chuck "who ya gonna believe, me, or those lyin campaign disclosure documents?"
Michael K said... [hush][hide comment]
Vast sums of money are wasted on managers, consultants, media specialists, get-out-the vote people, and all sorts of minions various and sundry to run it all.
Why do you think they all hate Trump ?
The Charlotte riots are a preview of what to expect if it looks like Trump is winning.
Expect the same sort of continuing behavior if Hillary is elected. Dems encourage it. I would hope it would be less "tolerated" if Trump wins.
Chuck, you missed the last word in my post in your desire to dribble how evil Trump is.
"Make America Great Again" is a positive slogan. One of the better ones.
Another engine of GDP growth sputtering?
Oh, wait. The money has to flow through some middlemen first and a good deal of it stays with them.
Yes. Someone did a story yesterday on David Brock at Media Matters. Just using his public facing disclosures, they showed how he had been fleecing his donors in taking a cut of the donations by setting up what was clearly a solicitation front within his organization. It worked by intra-organizational transfers that allowed a cut to be taken multiple times by the designated solicitor. I imagine a lot of these political middlemen do this on both sides of the political divide.
16 Republicans lost to Trump. Each one of them had more access to the political establishment than did Trump. They lost.
I would like the Hillary supporter, Chuck, to expound his grand theory of voting again. It did so well predicting the primaries.
I will not hold my breath waiting for liberals to rake Hillary over the coals because of how she is exploiting citizens United.
She is following that great, winning, strategy she employed in 2008! Only this time, there is no Secretary of State consolation prize. I drove past Chappaqua on the Saw Mill River Parkway on Saturday. It's been a while since I drove that route toward the Tappan Zee Bridge[they're building a new bridge next to the current one]. Chappaqua is just one exit from the Reader's Digest Building exit. Now, there's a metaphor.
If you really want to see the money out of national politics (cough)SoS pay-for-play(cough), then get the power out of Washington. Bring back Federalism.
A big problem is that we've seen and heard ALL of these advertisements before. Thousands of times. And we know they're just pure bullshit, no matter what the source. Most people now understand that heavy advertising is a sign of desperation.
So tell me which party is the Millionaires party?
Citizen United = bad! Money is not speech! Those dirty millionaire/billionaire Republicans!
Oh wait, Never mind.
Real Republican Chuck hardest hit.
http://law.marquette.edu/poll/
A new Marquette Law School Poll finds 44 percent of Wisconsin likely voters supporting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for president and 42 percent supporting Republican Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup. Twelve percent do not express a preference, saying they will vote for neither candidate, will not vote, or don’t know how they will vote.
Can you tell who's worried? Clinton takes the whole week off to get pumped full of drugs so she doesn't collapse on stage. Trump sticks to his schedule of mostly two-a-days and says he'll be ready for the debate. As I pointed out elsewhere, if she has any signs of illness, she's done. Her staff have to be on pins and needles. The interesting thing to me is if the stress she's under needing to win, will betray her with an episode. That's all I'll be looking for. OTW, I expect a draw which means Trump has won.
She wants to get money out of politics, and it is certainly true. She has gotten a lot of money out of politics.
"I also have to wonder what would happen if/when Trump starts hitting Hillary hard with attack ads. Will the needle move? And if so, which direction?"
I doubt it would work any more than it worked for her--both are such known quantities, with enough negatives about each other shared through free media and social media, that it's hard to imagine someone having their mind changed by watching a commercial. That sort of thing works more on candidates where the voter doesn't have a fully formed opinion of the candidate.
Money at this point is better spent on ground organization--it's going to be close, and I wouldn't be surprised if some swing states come down to the single digit thousands of votes. Every bit of turnout is going to matter.
" As I pointed out elsewhere, if she has any signs of illness, she's done. "
I'm not sure of that--I wouldn't vote for Hillary in any event, but if say a candidate I liked (say Romney in 2012) was suffering a bad cold and it showed in a debate or event, would I be less likely to vote for him? I think it would only matter if I thought the VP choice was a clown and the illness in question would be bad enough to make the Prez drop out.
On the other hand, some voters will be discouraged by weakness, and illness can look like weakness. I just don't know if those sort of voters haven't made up their minds yet.
suffering a bad cold and it showed in a debate or event, would I be less likely to vote for him?
Worked for JFK. I don't see why you would discount this even in lesser degree and even in a less hyperpartisan environment.
And her problem isn't a cold, don't kid yourself. Coughing fits. Esotropia. Disorientation/confusion. Collapsing like a sackful of ...whatever you think she is full of. A stroke.
"Worked for JFK. I don't see why you would discount this even in lesser degree and even in a less hyperpartisan environment."
Yeah, I guess as far as the "weakness" it would project it might swing some votes. But the hyperpartisan environment is why I think it may not have such an effect--if you prefer one candidate and think the other one is the sign of end times, you'll support even their rotting corpse if it means getting them over the finish line.
"And her problem isn't a cold, don't kid yourself. Coughing fits. Esotropia. Disorientation/confusion. Collapsing like a sackful of ...whatever you think she is full of. A stroke."
Cold or otherwise, the symptoms we'd be most likely to see would be watery eyes, coughing, sneezing, fatigue--normal cold symptoms. But I think if she's ailing, they'll drug her regardless. We're probably not going to see anything noticeable health wise.
"We're probably not going to see anything noticeable health wise."
That's what the pharmacopeia is for but the Hillary team has to be tense to see of she has a freeze.
What we are seeing, I think, is advanced Parkinson's with L-Dopa dykinesia. Stress or visual stimuli can set that off.
The debate will probably tell us what is the matter with her even if she does not have a freeze. The questions will be slowly stated and an attempt will be made to shield her from any stressful episode. Will it work ?
You remember how sluggish and dissociated she seemed, responding to the question on "was Trump stupid to call it a bombing before Simon Said or was he crazy" on the plane. I don't actually fault her for answering what she did, but she was off, off. Wonder why - did they pull her out of sleep? Does Ambien make you dopey like that?
Color me not terribly impressed with the news that the Donald is being outspent. Guess he just hasn't come up with more ways to funnel more campaign money into his family's coffers through rent, purchases of branded products, etc. We are truly supposed to be impressed with him as a business genius? i just don't see it.
Frugral Trump is great unless that comes to get filtered through the humiliation of losing a very close election.
JEB! spent $100M+ and all he got was three delegates and this lousy t-shirt.
Does Ambien make you dopey like that?
Diazepam
This is Reason #254234 I hope Clinton fails: Disproving that a US Presidential election can just be bought.
This is one of the reasons the GOPe and their consultant camp followers despise him so much.
So ella, what you're saying is that as a liberal, you literally despise the wise use of resources?
Lefty, did you ever hear "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes?"
"i just don't see it."
How about the tale of your business success ?
I think chintziness is a desirable attribute in a president.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/08/ride-lives
vs
An article I can't find that came out about the same time about a park in New York. Parents were concerned that it wasn't safe because it included rocks and there was concern that the children might fall down and injure themselves while playing.
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