Spending In The Race For The Blaine House

We’ve already taken a look at the gubernatorial candidates’ donations. What about the other side of the balance sheet? How are the five candidates spending their money?

The simplest question to answer here is who’s spent the most money thus far, including the primaries. Eliot Cutler has outspent his partisan opponents, putting $829, 251.49 in so far; Libby Mitchell is second with $741,912.45; Paul LePage a distant third, having spent $184,072.08; Shawn Moody fourth, with $150,857.45; and Kevin Scott a very distant last place, spending just $8,113.39. For comparison, in 2006 both John Baldacci and Chandler Woodcock spent about $1.3 million each.

However, the finance reports allow us to get more detailed than simple totals. Every expense is identified by payee, date and category, giving us a more clear picture of how campaigns are spending their money overall. In particular, comparing spending by category shows us a bit about strategy, especially for the three biggest spenders.

First, a few words of explanation: we’ve simplified the names of the categories supplied by the Ethics Commission. Their category names tend to be a bit more verbose and descriptive than ours. So, we should explain that all of the advertising categories includes production costs as well as the cost of running the ad; “Office Expenses” covers rent, utilities, phone/internet and such; “Staff” is salaries; and “Food” covers both food at campaign events and food purchased for volunteers. We have also combined Ethics’ two miscellaneous categories, “Other” and “Other professional services” into one. With that brief explanation, here is the comparative chart (click to enlarge):

The first thing we noticed as that advertising – specifically television advertising – was the largest item in each campaign’s budget. Mitchell spent the most, 60%, on advertising; LePage was next with 39%; then Cutler with a little more than 28%. Mitchell and LePage’s much higher advertising percentages is likely reflective of their having run in competitive primaries.

It is also worth noting that Cutler has spent the most on staff (24%) and consultants (16%). Together, they account for about 40% of his budget; advertising and staff gobble up two-thirds of his budget altogether. That proportion of spending on staff and consultants is much higher than LePage (24% combined) or Mitchell (14% combined). Given that Cutler has also spent the most, this means he likely has some very well-paid staff, more paid staff overall than the others, or both.

This may reflect one of the inherent differences between being an unenrolled candidate and a partisan one. The partisan candidates have a pre-built network of activists they can tap into to assist their campaign. This makes it easier for partisan candidates to find volunteers and build a grassroots campaign – even when they are in a competitive primary. Indeed, this would have been especially true before the primary, when most partisan activists were happy to work for one of the eleven gubernatorial campaigns. It will be interesting to see whether this changes for Cutler.

So as one would expect, advertising and staff take up most of each campaign’s budgets. There are, though, a few interesting differences tucked away here and there. First, Cutler and Mitchell have both spent money on polling; LePage has not. He has, however, spent more on campaign literature than anyone else: it accounts for almost a fifth of his budget.

The two partisan candidates have both put money into phone banks, while Cutler has not. This isn’t entirely surprising, as phone banking is most often used later in the campaign. Cutler is putting far more money into internet and e-mail services than the other candidates; whether he’s doing more or just paying more is hard to tell from the reports. Mitchell has spent far less on equipment than the others; they’ve all spent relatively similar amounts on more miscellaneous categories like postage and food.

Another important question is when the candidates have been spending their money, and the results aren’t too surprising:

As you can see, Mitchell and LePage ramped up their spending in May, then dropped off dramatically in June – hardly surprising. LePage had to focus on raising more money for the general election, while Mitchell had to conserve the money she’s received as a publicly-financed candidate. Cutler, meanwhile, established a pattern of alternating months of increasing his spending steadily – until June. With the party primaries settled, Cutler went full on into general election mode, seeking to establish himself as a viable alternative to the two party nominees.

What will be interesting to track is the spending patterns over the rest of the summer. The next financial reports at the end of September will give us a clear picture of the candidates’ expenditures in July and August. We will be especially interested in whether Cutler keeps up his June spending rate all summer, and exactly when LePage and Mitchell begin their ramp-up towards November.