On the menu: Tariffs taxed in new poll; Senate Dems get their man in New Hampshire; California primary getting crowded; Peter Navarro, 'Drumline' enthusiast; At least he didn't add Jeffrey Goldberg.
People keep telling me that money is the big problem in politics. But if that's true, how come nobody can ever seem to buy a danged election anymore?
In 1980, then-West Virginia Gov. Jay Rockefeller coolly noted to the press that he was willing to devote whatever millions of dollars of his family's fortune were necessary to win a second term in a rematch with Republican Arch Moore, the man who had defeated Rockefeller in 1972.
The boast won a reply in bumper-sticker form from Moore's supporters: "Make him spend it all, Arch." And while Moore didn't make him spend it all, Rockefeller did outspend Moore 12 to 1, dumping what would be in today's dollars $45 or $50 million on the race.
Is that why Rockefeller won by 9 points instead of losing by 9 points, as he did eight years earlier? It may have been that in 1972, Richard Nixon was the only Republican to carry the Mountain State between 1956 and 1984 and had coattails; or that in the first race, Moore was the incumbent and Rockefeller was the challenger, and in the rematch the roles were reversed. But spending what today would be more than $115 for every vote he received surely had to be a good bit of the difference for Rockefeller.
Nor was that Rockefeller the only Rockefeller to figure out that carpetbagging was a value proposition. Unlike his uncle Nelson who stayed in New York, where elections are pricey, Jay's uncle Winthrop headed out to Arkansas where grandpa John D.'s compounded profits went a lot farther.
So now it's Teslas instead of Standard Oil, but the impulse remains the same for some of the very rich. Elon Musk, the richest man in America (and therefore the world), tried a similar maneuver in Wisconsin this week, dumping gobs of money and his manic campaign presence into a contest for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Through direct expenditures and his super PACs, it looks like Musk put at least $25 million into an effort to elect Brad Schimel, the state's former attorney general, to fill the swing seat on the state's high court. Musk and the Muskovites ran millions in ads, wrote $1 million checks to two young Wisconsin Republicans as "spokespeople" and one of his PACs offered $50 for anyone uploading a photo of a Wisconsin resident outside of a polling place. In West Virginia, when you bought somebody's vote back in the Kennedy era, it was customary to include a pint of whiskey as a courtesy, so the Wisconsin picture payola represents a step backward for electoral compensation but a great advance in convenience.
Musk's loud, early entry into the contest, of course, drew in the aspiring election purchasers from the other side. America's Dairyland overflowed with cash from Democratic billionaires, including Hyatt Hotel heir JB Pritzker, the governor of neighboring Illinois, who has an obvious appetite for even higher office. In all, it looks like the race will have consumed more than $100 million for a single seat on a seven-member court in the 20th biggest state in the union.
Woof.
So what did all that money buy? Wisconsin had an almost identical race with similar stakes in 2023. That time it was a Republican-backed justice who was retiring, so the GOP was trying to maintain control of the court, while this time the roles were reversed. But the result was the same: In both races, the Democratic-backed candidate won by 10 points.
The major difference was that turnout this year was through the roof. An astonishing 520,892 more people voted this time — a 28 percent increase from two years ago.
Musk was explicitly testing the premise of whether he could solve his party's biggest political problem of the Trump era: what to do about midterms and special elections when the Republicans rely on lower-income, lower propensity voters to fuel presidential victories. Musk is broadly unpopular, but is a beloved celebrity in the very online MAGA world. Could his famous name and deep pockets mobilize the younger and more downscale voters who are unlikely to get jazzed up for a judicial election?
The answer was yes, but, unfortunately for Musk, he also proved to be a powerful motivator for Democrats, too. Turnout went up, but it went up across the board; a very expensive way to get an exact repeat of the election two years ago that cost half as much.
Musk claimed after the loss he expected the Wisconsin effort to fail but that it was worth "losing a piece for a positional gain," the premise presumably being that Musk and his team are honing their methods for the future in Wisconsin and elsewhere. It seems obvious that placing such a big bet and walking away with nothing to show for it will tend to increase the willingness of Republicans who have grown resentful of the mercurial methods of the tech billionaire to oppose him. But perhaps even the "positional gain" idea for methods is flawed.
In 2024, Musk showered Donald Trump with money, spending something like $200 million in the swing states to help the Republican nominee. But nowhere was Musk more active or liberal with his checkbook than in the most important swing state, Pennsylvania. That was where Musk first tried out his idea of paying voters and where he appeared again and again, with and without Trump.
And yet, when the votes were counted, the shift in Pennsylvania was smaller than in the nation as a whole. The Keystone state was 2.9 points more Republican in 2024 than it was in 2020, compared to a 6-point shift in the national popular vote. OK, fine. Democrats weren't spending any time or money in the places where the biggest shifts were happening, mostly metropolitan areas in blue states. So maybe Musk made the difference where it counted.
But the shift in Pennsylvania wasn't even big compared with the six other states where Democrats did spend all their time and money. Pennsylvania's drift to the right was the fourth largest of the seven, smack in the middle. It was half of what it was in Arizona, where Musk spent comparatively little time or money.
Musk's massive cash infusions no doubt helped a Trump campaign that at the end of last summer was in a deep financial hole. But so did the money from other Republican billionaires who were mostly content to let the very effective and well-run Trump campaign proceed as it wished. It wasn't so much that Trump got the bonus of Musk's involvement along with the money, but that he had to accept Musk's meddling as a condition of getting the cash. Whether or not there was any truth in that in 2024, Musk's low, low favorability ratings now certainly suggest that it is the case today.
Polls tell us that the influence of money in politics is a top concern of American voters — 72 percent in a recent Pew Research survey — and it is certainly an easy target for people looking to complain about the rotten way we've been running things in recent years.
But looking at Wisconsin and the astonishing failures of overfunded candidates like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, it suggests that elections are awfully hard to buy. Yes, you don't want to get swamped like Arch Moore did back in 1980, but once you're in contention, more money doesn't equal more votes — especially if the money is coming from one of the most polarizing figures in American life.
There are only two pertinent amounts of money in campaigns: enough and not enough. Everything else is just spoilage.
