(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Nov. 30, 2015)
Well, we’re starting the holiday season for Kansas House and Senate members, where the real gifts will finally be unwrapped on Monday, Jan. 11.
What?
No, the holiday tree will be put out at curbside—or disassembled and stuffed back into the box for next year—but the real unwrapping will be Jan. 11, when candidates for the House and Senate will reveal just how much money they have in their campaign finance accounts. And, there’s a whole bunch of tactics that surround that initial filing.
Look for most incumbents to show thousands of dollars ready to be spent to woo your votes in the upcoming August primary election, and for a newcomer or two to have loaned themselves thousands of dollars in the hope that it will scare off challengers.
The deadline is Dec. 31 for contributions which will be reported on Jan. 11, after the candidates and their treasurers have had the time to fill out the forms to report the size of their campaign fund.
No matter the budget balance for the state, or the fight over expanding Medicaid, it’s the Jan. 11 announcement that will have legislators and their challengers scouring the list to see whether they have as much money as the lawmaker in the next district over, or how much more money they have than their challengers. Oh…and why the neighbor gave money to the other candidate… Does your dog bark at night? Did you forget to sweep up your lawn trimmings from the neighbor’s sidewalk?
Remember, there are challengers—those folks who have always wanted to have some signs printed up and walk in some parades and take cute picture of their grandchildren trying to hammer yard signs into the dirt—and there are real challengers.
That’s where things get a little fuzzy, maybe fuzzier this year than in the past.
See, until you’ve formally filed for office, you aren’t in the race. If you file in December, well, who’s going to imagine that you will have raised tens of thousands of dollars in the holiday season? Or, if you wait to file until you’ve lined up contributions, who would have thought that a newcomer comes out of the starting gate that fiscally strong?
And, if you file after Dec. 31, there’s no report necessary until next July. So it becomes a stealthy campaign, doesn’t it? One candidate shows his treasury, the other doesn’t, and the incumbent has no idea how big a challenge he/she faces.
Does the incumbent order hundreds of new campaign signs, or just dust off the old ones, maybe adding a sticker that says “re-elect?” Does the challenger start ordering up a few leaflets that stress that his/her probation has ended or toss out an issue that the incumbent will play to—and spend thousands of dollars countering—and then switch the campaign theme as the election nears? The strategies are all out there.
Yes, we’ll learn the numbers, the early numbers, in January, and then see who surprises whom in July with the just-before-the-primary election second round of reports. That’s another strategy. Report tens of thousands of dollars of contributions before the primary, and the opponents scramble to put every dollar they have into signs, ads, phone calls, pamphlets, all of that and don’t have any time left for standing on doorsteps where they can actually win votes.
But the real holiday surprise will be which candidates, after the fund-raising strategies have played themselves out, support or oppose the things that voters support or oppose. …Or said last election cycle that they supported or opposed things their constituents supported and then didn’t.
That’s when it really takes a lot of campaign money to win election or re-election.