How candidates spend your donations

You may have read a little something or other in recent months and days about the importance of money in U.S. presidential campaigns. This week one of those presidential candidates -- we won't use the name to save her embarrassment -- said she had to loan herself $5 million.

Fact is, they all need a lot of money -- probably $1 billion total before they're all done with conceding and popping balloons.

Some campaigns go through their hard-won donations like lawmakers writing earmarks with taxpayers' money. Sen. John McCain, the former and current Republican front-runner who is campaigning as a fiscal conservative opposed to those legislative spending gimmicks, seemed to run through his multimillion-dollar campaign treasury awfully quickly last spring.

And he ended up firing staff and flying commercial alone back in the economy section.

Other campaigns are frugal to the extent they require staffers to use both sides of fax cover sheets to save on paper.

A certain national chain of economy motels decided to save on its own advertising budget by creating an online meter that takes each candidate's estimated hotel expenses and figures out how much each could have saved by staying at that chain. Executives over there knew the media could never resist such a fun thing during the political season and would provide free advertising of its economy theme.

How true! Our LATimes.com sister blog (or is it brother blog?), Daily Travel & Deal Blog, has the fun story here. You'll be shocked, sincerely shocked, at how much each candidate could have saved.

And you too, next time you're running for president.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Comments

[dave]

any kid able to press a search button these days is likely to have seen information freely available such as google video, 'the clinton chronicles' etc - so any hillarious little media distractions like pretending shortage of money was one of the problems in this business are serious
'misunderestimations' if not downright insults to the people's intelligence.

[Tom J]

Just offhand, I'd guess the Secret Service find some of the cheaper chains don't meet their security requirements.

But that brings up a related question: Who pays for the rooms for those Secret Service guys?

[dave]

i don't quite see what you're talking about, but usually it's tax money unconstitutionally pressed and blackmailed out of poor hard working people by the irs that pays for unconstitutional activities - it's money that can be used without having to be previously 'laundered' for that purpose, it can be directly handed out to the organizations and agencies. where this is not deemed sufficient, and for additional private illegal ambitions at other people's expense, there are always those
'business models' certain people buying their way into power do not mind to engage in, that under ruling law would easily condemn them to a million lifetimes in prison - if that was ever applied to them.

[Sophie]

I want my donated money spent as seen fit for purposes of carrying out the campaigning functions. There are no strings attached or other requirements of reporting back to donors. Personally, I expect that candidates are provided with the necessary accoutrements to regenerate energy reserves given the unrelenting stresses of the campaign trail.

Selecting a luxury hotel versus the hard linen and polyester blankets of the lesser priced lodging is a wise choice. Oh yes, maybe they could get the five star price cheaper online - but as a practical matter, I just can't imagine the candidates' travel staff, especially during this hectic time, putting efforts to comparing prices at the top of the list of priorities

Lest we forget - the trillions in wasteful spending on the unlawful war in Iraq is, at best, a heinous atrocity on the taxpayers of the USA. How about keeping that fact in the upper most levels of reporting to the victimized citizenry as we voluntarily fund small donations to candidates who offer a glimmer of light and the hope of transparency to the darkened depths the elected bottom feeders have plunged this country into.