The PAC mentality (continued)

New Hampshire will also have plenty of hard-fought races, where fundraising will be much appreciated. "Some nationally known figures can give a couple hundred dollars to a candidate — it’s significant here," says Carole Appel, secretary of the New Hampshire Democratic State Committee. "It might be laughable in New York City, but a little goes a long way in New Hampshire."

Those candidates and party committees will accept more than money, says Ray La Raja, political-science professor at UMass Amherst. If Romney’s smart, La Raja says, he’ll send some of the high-level political consultants on his payroll, like Mike Murphy and Rob Gray, out for pro bono consultations with candidates who could never afford that sort of help. "They fly in to Iowa and look at the books, and while they’re sitting over a table eating pizza and Doritos, they’re making friends," La Raja says.

That kind of help sticks in people’s minds, and not just the people whose name goes on the ballot. Campaign workers, special-interest-group leaders, and grassroots organizers pay very close attention to things like the 35th District election, and which party gets control of the state Senate, La Raja says. "Your strategy is to make Republican leadership in the state think that you tipped the scales" — and of course, the same holds for Democrats.

Not everyone is so cynical. "It’s not about buying anyone’s vote," says Alan Solomont, a fundraiser for John Kerry’s 2004 campaign. "I begrudge Mitt Romney a lot of things, but introducing himself to voters in South Carolina is not one of them."

It’s true that high-ranking politicians, like John Kerry or Bill Frist, want to help local candidates in their party get elected, regardless of their presidential ambitions. But when a leadership PAC focuses disproportionately on crucial presidential states, it’s pretty clear what motive is at play.

Some office-holders get the full treatment regardless of their state’s role. "A lot of this is also targeted at superdelegates," says Ridder. Superdelegates include congressmen, governors, and party leaders who get to vote at the nominating convention — 802 Democrats and 650 Republicans in 2004. Presidential hopefuls start wooing them early, Ridder says, and a good way to do that is to speak at the superdelegate’s own fundraising dinner. "You get up and say, ‘Me and my wife think it is so important that you get re-elected, and here’s $5000 from my Great American Political Fund,’" Ridder says.

Romney’s federal Commonwealth PAC, for instance, contributed to 31 House and Senate candidates last year — 19 of whom live in the five states that will probably be most important in the Republican nominating process: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona, and Michigan.

In 2002, Democratic presidential candidates gave more than $300,000 to South Carolina Democrats, the Charlotte Observer reported. Dick Gephardt gave $130,000 to candidates for offices ranging from coroner to mayor of Lincolnville, population 904, according to the Observer. John Edwards gave $117,000.

You can see why local pols lobby so hard to hold early primaries — it’s not just the benefit to the hotels and diners, it’s the benefit to their own campaign accounts. If South Carolina’s primary were in May, it’s unlikely the state coroner would have gotten that check from Gephardt.

Love: Priceless

Money can’t always buy love, however. Neither Gephardt nor Edwards, for all their early spending, won the Democratic nomination. In the 2000 election cycle, the top money-raising leadership PACs among Republican presidential candidates belonged to Gary Bauer, Dan Quayle, Lamar Alexander, Alan Keyes, John Ashcroft, John Kasich, Newt Gingrich, and Jack Kemp, according to Democracy in Action, a program at the George Washington University. Losers, all of them.

One problem these politicians faced — and Romney faces now — is a prohibition on actually saying that they want to be president, which is the one thing that would get people to start paying attention to them. A leadership PAC can’t promote a candidate who is explicitly running for any specific national office. So, for example, Commonwealth PAC recently sent out a mailing describing Romney’s attributes and policy positions to Republicans in 17 states. But it suggested no reason why the recipients should care.

Dean, in fact, opted to make that trade-off in May 2002, after raising barely $150,000 through his PAC, the Fund for a Healthy America. He decided to abandon the leadership PAC, open the Dean for America presidential-campaign committee, and start talking about being president.

The other candidates all waited until after New Year’s Day 2003. That’s when money raised through presidential-campaign committees became eligible for federal matching finds.

Edwards, nearly as unknown as Dean when the primary campaign began, took in and spent roughly $3 million in 2001 and 2002 through his New American Optimists PAC, primarily from wealthy trial lawyers like himself. "It allowed him to travel and to create a perception that he was a major player," says Rick Ridder, Dean’s early campaign manager. "That was a route that he sought to take, because the only thing to judge at that point is money."

At first glance, Edwards’s strategy seems to have failed: during the time his PAC operated, and long afterward, he polled in the single digits, while Dean was the first to break through as the favorite. Dean also led Edwards in pledged superdelegates prior to the first caucus voting, despite his lack of leadership-PAC donations.

But in the end, Ridder points out, Edwards surged to finish a close second place in Iowa to John Kerry. We’ll never know how much of that might be attributable to the groundwork laid earlier by the $3 million spent by New American Optimists. "You want good service at a restaurant," says La Raja, "you slip $20 to the maitre d’."

David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein[a]phx.com