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Journalism of Courage
With less than two weeks to go for the Presidential election, the parties, candidates and independent groups that have turned this year’s contest into the first billion-dollar campaign are still raising and spending money like never before.
During the first 18 days of October, organisations spent more than $42.8 million on advertising alone, the Federal Election Commission disclosed yesterday. The top spenders were the political parties, the United Auto Workers and the National Rifle Association.
Other so-called independent 527 groups, which are governed by the tax code, continued to pour money into television ads. Since October 1, the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth spent $3.4 million on ads attacking Senator Kerry.
These record levels of spending led the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group, to project that the cost of this year’s presidential race would top $1.2 billion. With congressional races included, the center projected that spending on all federal elections this year would cost $3.9 billion, compared to $3 billion four years ago.
Part of the reason lies with a change in a new campaign finance law, which banned corporate and union contributions and increased the limits for individual donations. Women also are contributing a bigger share. The center’s executive director, Larry Noble, said wealthy donors were bolstering their donations by getting their spouses to contribute as well.
Former President Clinton recovering from open-heart surgery, sent out a fund-raising appeal yesterday to 5 million Democrats via e-mail. The Bush campaign reported spending $32 million on advertising in September, beginning the month of October with about $30.5 million in cash. Kerry’s latest spending figures were unavailable. —(LAT-WP)
