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Chapter 9: Nominations and Campaigns

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This activity contains 2 questions.

	Money and Campaigning As noted in the text, the cost of running political campaigns has steadily risen with the growth of television. Since federal law limits how much money can be given to individual candidates, the national parties have served as an alternative for large contributors such as wealthy individuals and corporations. So long as the national parties used this money for "soft" activities such as party building and grassroots organizing (thus the contributions are often referred to as "soft money" contributions), it wasn't considered a problem. Over time however, parties began finding ways to direct their party building and grassroots operations in ways that helped candidates directly thus violating the spirit of the law. This led to calls for reforms, which were finally passed by Congress in 2002, taking effect the day after the elections of November 5, 2002. To get a sense of how much money was involved, let's see how much money the Democratic and Republican parties raised over the past decade. Search Tips Go to the Campaign Finance Institute and review non-federal (also called "soft money" contributions to the Democratic and Republican parties over the past decade at http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/cfsdd/cfsded2005.pdf. Review the numbers. Questions to Ask Based upon your review of this data, what is your overall opinion of the amount of money the two political parties raised in the 1990s and early 2000s? Where does most of this money come from? Why might it be problematic for the parties to be able to raise and spend these large amounts of money? Why it Matters In a democracy elections are supposed to be open to everyone eligible to participate. When large amounts of money flow to political parties and candidates from a very few there is a perception that the elections are not fair and open to all. Get Involved Find out how much money your local members of congress raised and spent in the last election at http://www.opensecrets.org/.   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

	The Campaign Game We've already learned how expensive political campaigns can be. The primary reason for the increased cost of campaigning is television. Candidates for office know that in order for them to have any chance at winning they have to raise lots of money so they can run political advertisements on television. Some critics contend that television stations have a vested interest in keeping political campaigns expensive. Let's review one of those critique's and then see how much money our local television stations make off of political advertising. Search Tips Go to BetterCampaigns.Org at http://bettercampaigns.org/. Scroll down to the "Play the Game" link and click on it. Play the interactive game and then click on the link that allows you to look at the amount of money your local television station earned by running political ads in the last election. Examine a few other states and compare your findings with your state. Questions to Ask Based on what you've seen, what is your overall opinion of the amount of money political campaigns spend on television ads? Do you think the campaigns are getting their money's worth? Why or why not? Why it Matters When political campaigns are conducted in the media they tend to be more negative, which in turn tends to reduce voter turnout. Get Involved Do you think your local station is making too much money off of political ads? If so, send them an e-mail to complain.   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

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