What Will The Republicans Do With All That Money?

Posted by Bob Lord

Commentators love to speculate, but so far I've seen no speculation on how the Republicans and their Super PACs will spend all the money they're raising for the Presidential race. It seems the assumption is that it all will go to advertising in the swing states, but is that necessarily true? Consider the following:

First, the total raised will approach One Billion Dollars. Sheldon Adleson himself will do $100 Million. Second, there only is so much ad time to be bought in the media markets that cover the swing states. Third, televions ads in campaigns generally are subject to the law of diminishing returns. I say generally because there is a need to reach a threshold level of repetition with viewers in order for the message to sink in, although why an American viewer needs to see the same 30 second ad 10 times before he gets it is a mystery to me. Once the saturation point is reached, however, additional bombardment with ads has less and less effect and, at some point, the continued airing becomes counter-productive. There of course is a benefit to creating different ads, but that too is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

The amount spent in prior Presidential campaigns pales in comparison to the amount the Republicans have on hand this year. Even in those prior races, however, the level of advertising in swing states was over the top, and in many cases irksome to voters. How much room is there to ramp up the level of advertising in swing states?

So, can all this money really be spent only on television ads in swing states? If not, how will it be spent? I suppose some could be spent on field efforts, but it's hard to imagine Crossroads GPS investing huge dollars in a field operation, especially since there can't be outright coordination of efforts with the Romney campaign. True, the rules against coordination are broken routinely, but it's relatively easy to conduct clandestine discussions regarding messaging of TV ads. Coordinationg field efforts would require far more communication. And besides, field just isn't that expensive.

Which causes me to speculate about where all the money will be spent. Will some of it be diverted into states that are not swing states but that the Obama campaign would have to defend if the Rs started blasting ads? Minnesota, Maine, Oregon and New Jersey come to mind. Will some of it be diverted to Congressional races, where a couple million bucks still go a long way? What would the result be if the Republican Super PACs diverted ten percent of the amount they have on hand for the Presdential to those Congressional races where the polls had the candidates within 7 points of one another? Remember, this would be on top of the money already being spent in those races. In 2008, the Presidential race was locked up by early October. What if the same thing happened this time around, and the half a Billion or so the R's had left all were diverted to Congressional and Senate races?

I have no idea as to how all this plays out. But I do think those D's who think it's as simple as "we're going to be outspent but we have enough money to get our message out" are delusional. It's way more complicated than that. And I'm concerned that the resource allocation game among races and media markets, from election cycle to election cycle beginning in 2010, will play out in the same manner as the end stages of a lopsided chess game. It may last an indefinite number of moves, but the end result is baked into the cake.