As the 2024 election season gets underway in earnest (although it has actually been going on for quite some time already), it is probably useful to look behind the curtain of (a) political “consultants” and (b) political contributions through organized groups.
It seems to have become fairly standard and expected for political candidates in our state to hire a so-called political consultant, supposedly to assist in their campaigns. Some holding themselves out as political consultants are based in our state, while others may be based in Washington as if being based in Washington is some type of badge of honor when clearly it is not.
The usual arrangement with a political consultant typically takes the form of a written contract that is supposed to spell out the duties of the consultant as well as how the consultant is to be paid. The typical payment arrangement is for a monthly payment during the campaign, often with bonuses available if the candidate prevails in the primary and another in the general election.
Further, many consultant arrangements provide for the consultant to handle the candidate’s appearances, advertising, and handouts such as brochures, palm cards, signs, and the like. But there is often an insidious factor involved in which the consultant is able to mark up the charges from outside vendors and/or receive commissions from those vendors, all of which ends up coming out of the campaign coffers.
Does it really make sense to agree to such arrangements when there are vendors, some based in NH, such as Spectrum from Manchester, who can provide all printed materials, mailings, and signs without payment of commissions or markups? Many of those services come with sound political advice without extra charge.
Finally, it is amusing to read campaign news releases announcing that a particular political consultant has been hired for a campaign, especially when examining the history of campaigns in which the consultant has been previously engaged. Some of them have a long and well-known history of being the consultant for campaign after campaign in which the candidate lost, as if to say, in effect, that my history of handling many losing campaigns in the past makes me especially qualified to handle another losing campaign now.
The most successful campaigns seem to be ones in which the candidate is very hands-on without regard, resorting to so-called consultants who seem to exist simply to extract money from campaign coffers without producing wins.
That being said, because of the size of our state and with very limited conservative media outlets, the more successful larger races (i.e. other than for state rep) that are inherently expensive often end up relying on larger campaign contributions from out-of-state donors and groups, and if a so-called consultant can actually produce such contributions in a meaningful way, perhaps they might actually be worth something.
And so now, we turn to campaign contributions.
A famous Dem politician once reportedly said that money is the mother’s milk of politics. Unfortunately, how true!
Although state representative campaigns can be run effectively without huge expenditures, once the political stage moves into larger districts or statewide, whether for the state senate, the exec council, the governor, and our federal senators and reps, the required campaign expenses increase dramatically.
Anyone reading this has probably been solicited for campaign contributions by a variety of sources: some directly by the candidate campaigns and others by groups that seek to “bundle” the contributions and allocate them to who-knows-whom.
If you make a contribution directly to the campaign of a candidate you favor, you will have a pretty good idea of where your money is going. But if you contribute to a group, although the group may claim to be supportive of candidates you support, you lose effective control of where your money ends up.
And to further the problem, many of the groups soliciting contributions incur significant administrative expenses for staff, as well as, in some cases, payment of “commissions” to officials of the group who purportedly bring in contributions. It is not unusual to see at least 10% of a contribution go to payment of such a commission.
But some groups, including some political action committees, are run entirely by volunteers without any paid administrative staff.
So, if you are considering making a political contribution, keep in mind that your contribution will be most effective if you contribute directly to the campaign of your chosen candidate. However, if you choose to contribute to a group, before you make that contribution, inquire as to whether the group pays commissions to anyone and whether it manages to keep its administrative expenses very low.
