Congressional Quarterly via New York Times:

Parties Spent More Than a Billion on 2006 Congressional Campaigns

By Greg Giroux

Published: March 8, 2007

The national, state and local party organizations of the Republican and Democratic parties spent a combined total of about $1.1 billion on elections for federal office in the 2005-06 election cycle, according to data released Wednesday by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Of the total, Republican Party committees spent $608.2 million, or 56 percent, and Democratic Party committees laid out $472.4 million, or 44 percent.

The numbers refer to “hard money” receipts, or those monies that are limited by the federal campaign finance law. A 2002 revision of that law— the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — barred the national party committees from raising unlimited “soft money” dollars upon which they had come to rely heavily.

The data do not include activity from so-called “527” committees that file their organizing documents with the Internal Revenue Service — and which have received an upsurge in soft money contributions, which they can legally accept, since the enactment of the 2002 law.

The FEC’s findings point to the congressional party committees’ increased use in the 2005-06 election cycle of “independent expenditures.” These are funds that party organizations put into television advertisements, mail and other communications to try to boost the victory chances of favored candidates, as long as these efforts are not coordinated with those candidates.

Republican Party committees reported $115.6 million in independent expenditures in 2005-06. Of this amount, $82.1 million (71 percent) was spent by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which was unsuccessful in defending the party’s House majority.

But the Democratic campaign committees were highly competitive with their partisan counterparts, laying out $108.1 million in independent expenditures as they overcame the 15-seat advantage in the House and six-seat edge in the Senate that the Republicans brought into the fall 2006 elections.

Of the total, the party’s House campaign unit, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), spent $64.1 million — a 74 percent increase over the $36.5 million the DCCC spent on independent expenditures in the 2003-04 cycle.

The parties spent heavily even in districts where the principals already were well-funded. In Pennsylvania’s 6th District, a politically competitive district anchored in suburbs and exurbs of Philadelphia, Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach spent $3.5 million to narrowly hold off Democratic lawyer Lois Murphy, who spent $4.1 million in a rematch of their similarly close 2004 contest. The parties chimed in with a combined total of more than $6.8 million in independent expenditures, bringing the price tag of the Pennsylvania 6th race to no less than a whopping $14.4 million — or about 87 times the $165,200 salary of the office that was being contested.

It is not unheard of for the party committees to spend more than the candidates themselves. In Ohio’s eastern 18th District, the parties spent $5.8 million on independent expenditures, or more than double the combined spending of Democratic nominee Zack Space ($1.6 million) and Republican nominee Joy Padgett ($850,000).

On the Senate side, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) reported $42.6 million in independent expenditures in 2005-06, more than double the $19.2 million in independent spending during the cycle by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). The DSCC’s figure also was more than double what the Democratic committee spent on independent outlays in 2003-04 ($18.7 million).

The NRSC actually put slightly less into independent expenditures during the 2005-06 cycle than in the 2003-04 cycle — while the Republican National Committee took the extraordinary step of waging its own independent expenditure campaigns in several Senate races.

• Too Much of a Good Thing. At first glance, it seems intuitive to think that candidates would always welcome outside assistance from the campaign committees of their own political parties.

But because independent expenditures cannot be made in coordination or collusion with the candidates, the themes and tone of the party messages are determined by strategists who usually are from outside the targeted districts — and sometimes can conflict with or overshadow the candidates’ own messages, to their exasperation.

Moreover, candidates risk losing control of their own campaigns when the national parties flood the airwaves. Most members of the voting public don’t really distinguish between party-run ads and candidate-run ads.

The 2006 contest in New York’s 24th District to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert is a case in point.

Republican state Sen. Ray Meier, who lost that race last November to Democrat Michael Arcuri, recently told the Boston Globe that his bid was hurt by an NRCC advertising campaign that included a spot (which was publicized but never aired) that accused Arcuri of making a call to a phone sex line while on official business. Arcuri’s campaign produced phone bills that backed up the Democrat’s explanation that an aide had reached the sex line by accidentally dialing the wrong area code and hung up immediately after realizing his mistake.

With Democrats and the local press excoriating the Republicans for an unfair smear, the incident surely didn’t help Meier, even though he had nothing to do with planning or producing the ad. He ended up losing to Arcuri by 9 percentage points.

• Democratic Incumbents’ Share. Another key finding from the FEC data is that Democratic officeholders were more generous than their Republican counterparts in transferring funds to the party committees from their personal campaign accounts.

According to the FEC data, the DCCC received $33.4 million in such transfers, compared with the $30.2 million that was transferred to the NRCC. (There is no limit on how much a member of Congress can transfer to a national party committee from his or her personal campaign account).

Top donors to the DCCC included California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, now House Speaker, and New York Rep. Charles B. Rangel, now Ways and Means Committee chairman, who transferred $820,000 apiece. They were followed by Maryland Rep. Steny H. Hoyer ($720,000), now majority leader, and Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel ($700,000), who chaired the DCCC during the 2006 upsurge and then segued to the chairmanship of the House Democratic Caucus.

On the Republican side, the top giver to the NRCC was Ohio Rep. John Boehner, now the minority leader, who gave $1.1 million. Louisiana Rep. Jim McCrery transferred nearly $1 million to the NRCC — money that had boosted his effort to become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee had the GOP held its majority. McCrery is now the committee’s ranking Republican.

The imbalance in member giving to the Senate was more lopsided in the Democrats’ favor. The DSCC received $11.8 million, two and a half times the $4.7 million that the NRSC reported receiving. The top three Democratic donors actually were up for re-election in 2006, but weak Republican opponents enabled them to part with surplus campaign funds: Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York ($2.1 million); Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts ($1.25 million); and Dianne Feinstein of California ($1 million).

The top Republican donor was Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell ($1 million), who is now minority leader and whose own seat is up for election in 2008.
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