Why Will Barbara Win?

Several factors have gone into Barbara Boxers win on Tuesday.

• California has 19 million more registered Democrats than Republicans
• On October 1st Boxer had a 5 to 1 advantage in cash on hand
• The governor's race is going to go to the Democrat, Brown, by a huge margin and Boxer will ride his coattails with some voters
• Proposition 23, a clean air issue, is winning by a substantial margin and Boxer chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee in the Senate
• Fiorina's image of a failed CEO of HP 
• Boxer had no opposition in her primary, Fiorina's win gobbled up a large part of her cash on hand
• President Obama is still popular in California

Among the negatives:

• The anti-incumbent aura across the nation
• Boxer is a career politician
• Unemployment is at 12% and doesn't look like it's coming down anytime soon
• Boxer was unable to shine during the debates, the last two gave Fiorina a slight advantage

Taking all this into account and noting that the polls have shown her ahead, although never enough to make it less than a statistical dead heat, Boxer should win her fourth term as Senator from California.  I predict she will receive 48% of the vote to 44% for Fiorina.  The remaining votes will be split among the four other candidates on the ballot although I don't believe any of them will get over 5%.

WOW!!!

How's this for a headline:

House and Senate shatter fundraising records for midterm election and may exceed $2 billion

Our California race made it into the top ten of spending by special interest groups at $7,775,144 but didn't make it into the top ten for this past week. Total spending by the candidate in this race through September 30, the last report filed with the FEC, stands at $19,442,684 for Boxer and $16,616,855 for Fiorina.   The Republican senatorial committee will be spending another $3 million this next week but it's hard to determine exactly how much the total has been.  

Hopefully, changes will be made during this next Congress but I wouldn't count on it.  Too many of the incumbents will owe their success to the spending by the special interest groups.  It will be hard for them to bite the hand that feeds them.  President Obama has been opposed to the spending by special interest groups and the Democrats were late in starting their push.  Unfortunately, they will get the message that they can't afford to fall behind and in two years the spending will get worse.  I don't foresee any major changes in the law from now to then.

It's Down To The Wire

The latest polls give varying views of how the race is going:

• LA Times/USC poll shows Boxer up by 8 points
• Rasmussen Reports poll shows Boxer up by 2 points

Maybe a better picture can be obtained by looking at what is going on in other areas.  For example, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is pouring an additional $3 million into the race this week.  That's on top of the $4.5 they have put in the past two weeks.  They wouldn't be doing that if they were writing this campaign off.  The Chamber of Commerce has spent almost $2.5 million in October opposing Boxer.  They wouldn't do that if they thought California was a lost cause.  

All in all, this race is going to come down to the wire.  The debates are done with neither side making major gaffes.  The spending on both sides goes on unabated.  All the political web sites count this race as a toss up.  It looks like it's going to be a fun night next Tuesday.

Remember to vote if you know what you're voting for.

A Race to the Finish

A new poll conducted for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee shows this race to be dead even, 44% to 44%, although a poll released Wednesday showed Boxer ahead 43% to 38%.  We all knew this race was going to be close, both Republicans and Democrats are counting it among the top 6 tossups in the nation.

The one advantage Boxer has is the amount of cash on hand at the start of October.  She had 6.5 million compared to Fiorina's 1.8 million.  If Boxer prevails in the end, she may well owe it all to Fiorina's primary campaign which took most of her cash to win.  Boxer started the general election phase of the contest with almost 10 million in her war chest, Fiorina had to start from scratch.

See this article for a more in depth discussion of the financing of this race.

Using Electronic Media

In 2008 the Obama Campaign revolutionized the way campaigns spread the message about their candidate.  They used electronic media to raise money, introduce the issues they wanted to stress, and sell campaign material to their backers.  Email was used more during that campaign than any other campaign to date.

You would think that all the Democrats running for office during this election cycle would have learned from the 2008 campaign how to use email to their advantage.  But my experiences with the Boxer campaign have shown that not all the candidates have followed that path.  I signed up as a supporter on the home page for both Boxer and Fiorina.  So far, I have received 13 emails from the Fiorina campaign and only 3 from the Boxer campaign.  I can't help but think this will work to the detriment of Senator Boxer.  In a state where the electronic industry has always been in the forefront, you would think the candidates for Senate would be more innovative on the use of electronic media.

Open the Floodgates

In the past 3 weeks, interest group spending has surged in the California Senate and it has all gone to Fiorina.  The US Chamber of Commerce contributed $853,00 and the equally conservative American Principles in Action has contributed $69,000.  This is only a small portion of the $80,000,000 that special interest groups have spent so far this election season.  Of this amount, one half has been donated by donors who don't have the balls to let their identity be know.  The money has been spent overwhelmingly to support Republican candidates, actually to attack Democratic candidates, which is not always the same thing.  The money has been breaking 7 to 1 for the Republicans.

The US Supreme Court in their Citizens United decision ruled that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and so can not be limited in the free expression of their views.  Unfortunately, whereas people are subject to a moral compass, corporations are guided only by the bottom line.  And where people who commit a felony can be imprisoned, corporations file bankruptcy or dissolve and laugh all the way to the bank.  To see the impact of this Supreme Court decision, one only has to compare the spending by interest groups from four years ago.  At this point in that election, interest groups had spent $16,000,.000 or only 20% of this year's total.

With California being one of the nine Senate seats currently being called a toss up, look for more money to be flowing into the state from special interest groups.  The attack ads financed by the many special interest groups are mean spirited and create a bad taste in the mouths of many voters. We can only hope that voters recognize the ads for what they are but if history is a guide, many will be swayed and use their vote to vote against a candidate instead of for a candidate.

Let the Air Wars Begin

Both Boxer and Fiorina have unleashed attack ads this past week. Negative ads by the candidates, let alone by interest groups, have outpaced issue ads by two to one in the contest. I hate watching but obviously negative ads work.  How do I know they work?  Because there are so many of them. Why are there so many of them?  Because they work.  Campaigns have a limited amount of money to spend on ads.  If negative ads didn't work, they wouldn't be aired.  Campaigns would use their money in different types of ads.  This year, with the Supreme Court decision which unleashed corporate and union cash with no restraint, we have seen more negative ads than ever before.  Hopefully this will be fixed in the next Congress.  But don't hold your breath.