Dwight David Eisenhower, our thirty-fourth President, had all the proper qualifications for a Presidential candidate. He was the product of the small Kansas town of Abilene. He came from a modest family background, went to work after high school, then went on to West Point (though disappointing his deeply religious and pacifist parents), and later became one of our nation’s greatest military heroes. “Ike” fitted right in with the other common folks in the White House—“Old Hickory” (Andrew Jackson), “Old Rough and Ready” (Zachary Taylor), “The Farmer of North Bend” (William Henry Harrison), and “Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter” (Abraham Lincoln).
But in 1968 General Eisenhower was upset about politics in America. The former President said: “We have put a dollar sign on public service, and today many capable men who would like to run for office simply can’t afford to do so. Many believe that politics in our country is already a game exclusively for the affluent. This is not strictly true; yet the fact that we may be approaching that state of affairs is a sad reflection on our elective system.”
It sounded as though the general had just begun to realize the “high cost of political conviction” in the United States. One would hardly suspect that at least $140 million had been spent on campaigning during the 1952 election, when the general was first elected President. Or that the general himself had raised $4 million for his own campaign, speaking on closed-circuit television to a fifty-three-city, $100-a-plate Republican dinner.
Nor would one suspect that Winthrop W. Aldrich, a New York banker, had headed the Republican 1952 finance committee, which is credited with having produced $2,250,000 for the campaign. Less than a month after the general became President, Mr. Aldrich was rewarded for his efforts with an appointment as Ambassador to Great Britain.
But the general knew more about the prior costs of conviction than he was letting on. He knew that folks giving big dough must be rewarded. In his reelection campaign in 1956, $26,500 was given by the owner of a chain of dress shops. A few months later the contributor was appointed Ambassador to Ceylon. During public hearings by a Senate committee trying to determine whether or not the appointment should be confirmed, the proposed appointee could not name the prime minister of India or of Ceylon.
The issue the general raised is quite real, and it puts to shame the old American myth that every little boy can dream of being President someday. And the myth is even more shameful for politically minded, ambitious little girls. Somewhere along the line he or she must tie into some big dough, which means selling out to rich individuals, corporations, the party machine, or preferably all of them together.
Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago is a poor boy who made good in politics. He sold newspapers as a youngster, then worked in the stockyards by day and went to DePaul University by night. With a law degree in hand, he tied into the Democratic machine, got into the state legislature, was beaten in his bid for sheriff, and then got an appointment from Governor Adlai Stevenson as director of the state department of finance. Daley moved into the Stevenson organization, got himself elected Cook County Clerk, and four years later he was Mayor of Chicago with his hands on the nation’s most powerful political machine. Perhaps he could not dream of becoming President, but he could certainly dream of controlling the nominations of those who would.
Had Richard Daley been content simply to save his newspaper money, he couldn’t have gotten very far. That $140 million spent in election campaigning in 1952 was up to at least $327 million by 1968. A hard-working kid dreaming of being President one day would have to make $1 million a year from the moment of birth to the age of qualification, and not spend a penny, to have even an outside chance at the office! And certainly it would be an outside chance. Figures of reported campaign expenditures indicate that it costs anywhere from $35 million to $60 million to become President (an estimated $100 million was spent to elect a President in 1968), $50,000 to $6 million to become Governor, $250,000 to $5 million to become Senator, and $30,000 to $300,000 to become a member of the House of Representatives. And, of course, reported figures do not even begin to tell the whole story of campaign spending. Local committees can bury funds, and Senators and Congressmen can conceal campaign income and expenditures by only acknowledging money collected and disbursed with their “knowledge and consent.”
Of course, if a kid is born with enough money, he can let his dreams run wild. The kid can not only dare to dream, but his family fortune can afford to pay the fare of his particular political fantasy. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York is a good example. He reported that he spent $5.2 million in 1966 to get reelected to a $50,000-a-year job. His next reelection bid, in 1970, cost him $6.8 million, according to his own figures. Estimates of Rockefeller’s actual spending range from $10 million up to $20 million. With that kind of money, I could run for God—and win!
But even rich kids can have their well-financed fantasies frustrated. Richard L. Ottinger used the resources of a family fortune to run for the Senate on the Democratic ticket in the 1970 New York election. Ottinger took the primary, continued to spend more and more bread on the general election, and ended up losing to the Conservative Party candidate, James L. Buckley. Ottinger reported spending $2 million to lose, but the actual spending was double the report.
The Republican opponent of Ottinger, incumbent Senator Charles E. Goodell, reported that he spent $1.3 million to lose, while the winning candidate, James Buckley, reported spending about $2 million.
Losing can be very expensive, and not just on the Presidential level. It cost former Senator Albert Gore more than $500,000 to lose to Representative William E. Brock III in the 1970 Senatorial election in Tennessee. That was more than five times the amount Gore had spent in either of his two successful Senatorial bids (1958 and 1964). Brock spent over $1 million to win, at least three times the amount spent by any previous Republican candidate in the history of Tennessee.
In Pennsylvania, in 1966, Democrat Milton Schapp spent $1.4 million to win his party’s nomination for Governor. He spent another $1.1 million in the general election. But his Republican opponent, Raymond P. Shafer, won the election. Perhaps Mr. Schapp saw it as an investment in the future, for he won the Governorship in the 1970 election. Also in 1966, Haydon Burns spent $1.6 million trying to get the Democratic primary nomination for Governor of Florida, but he lost.
If you have a good emotional issue going for you, so that the voters persuade themselves and don’t have to be convinced by radio, television, newspaper advertising, and the like, you can get by relatively cheap. Riding the surf of a wave of segregationist sentiment, Lester Maddox became Georgia’s Governor and supposedly only spent about $40,000. But in the same election it cost Ellis Arnall more than $1 million to lose the Democratic nomination to Maddox, and Howard H. Callaway, a Republican, the same amount to lose the general election.
So Maddox only spent his first year’s salary. A Georgia Governor makes the same as a Congressman, $42,500 a year. But even with segregationist sympathy going for you, campaigning can be expensive. The late Lurleen Wallace spent half a million dollars to become Governor of Alabama, even with the strong prestige and backing of her husband, George.
A large part of the high cost of political conviction is getting the message aired on television. Since a large portion of the electorate spends a good deal of its leisure time in front of the television tube, a candidate must pay for a part of the potential voter’s viewing time.
Just after the 1970 mid-term elections a team of Washington Post reporters looked into the matter of campaign television spending. They found:
That in California, Representative John V. Tunney, Democratic nominee, spent $800,000 in his successful Senatorial race against incumbent Republican Senator George Murphy, who spent about $500,000 on television advertising.
That incumbent Democratic Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana spent $246,000, quite a bit less than the $441,000 spent by his Republican opponent, Representative Richard L. Roudebush. That election was so close that it remained in dispute for some time after the votes were counted. But Hartke returned to the Senate.
That in Texas, at just five major stations in Dallas and Houston, Democratic Candidate Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr., spent $115,540 to win a Senate seat. His Republican opponent, George Bush, now the Ambassador to the United Nations, spent $68,000 more at the same five stations, or a total of $184,000.
That at the six major television stations in New York City, files showed that winning Senatorial Candidate James L. Buckley spent $310,557; Democrat Richard L. Ottinger spent $554,740; and incumbent Republican Senator Charles E. Goodell spent $463,854.
Of course, the obvious question is, where does the money come from? It certainly does not come from a spontaneous display of financial affection from the rank-and-file voter. In 1964 in Saginaw, Michigan, a community-wide experiment was conducted to see what kind of campaign revenue could be raised. There was wide publicity, detailed planning, and civic and political support for a door-to-door canvass. The canvass of 6,830 voters raised a total contribution of $410.86 from 372 donors.
In Chicago, Illinois, and in many other states Two-Percent Clubs are standard procedure, which means that those holding down government jobs kick back 2 percent of their monthly salary into the party machine. With the rise in the cost of living, some clubs have been inflated to Five-Percent Clubs.
A study of Indiana’s financing of campaigns showed that the Democrats have installed a collector in each state agency to pick up employee contributions at each pay period. Sometimes employees were required to give another 1 or 2 percent of their income to county chairmen. From the 1930s to the 1960s, when the Republicans were in power in Indiana, workers were usually required to give one week’s pay a year to the Republican state committee. The system applied to about 6,350 government workers.
Indiana also has a party practice of assessing candidates for statewide offices, the money obtained going into a common campaign fund. Thus candidates for Senator or Governor must pay $2,500. A place on the ticket for a Supreme Court judge costs $2,000; $1,250 for Lieutenant Governor and Appellate judges; $1,000 for attorney general; $750 for secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, and court reporter.
So there is a very high cost involved in getting the chance to express one’s political convictions in public office. And both the underworld criminals and the corporation criminals are eminently able to underwrite that cost. The Kefauver hearings of the 1950s paraded leading underworld figures before the national television-viewing public, and their links to leading politicians became clear. With regard to campaign spending, for example, the Kefauver Committee discovered that a service which provided racing news for illegal bookmakers and gamblers paid $600,000 in political contributions over a three-year period. A Chicago and Miami race-track operator, closely associated with gangland operations, gave $100,000 toward the campaign of a Governor of Florida.
Probably the most thorough study of campaign contributions was done in 1956, the year General Eisenhower was elected once again to the Presidency. One presumes the general knew how much money was coming in, where it was coming from, and what it was being spent on. So even then the “dollar sign on public service” was rather pronounced. Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen in their book America, Inc. summarize some of the findings of the 1956 Congressional study:
For example, contributions of $500 or more yielded to the Republicans $8,064,907, and of $5,000 or more $2,894,309, compared with $2,820,655 and $860,380, respectively, for the Democrats. Twelve selected families gave the Republicans $1,040,526 (with the du Ponts accounting for $248,423, the Pews $216,800, the Rockefellers $152,604 and the Mellons $100,150) and the Democrats $107,109. Officials of the 225 largest corporations gave the Republicans $1,816,597, the Democrats $103,725. For officials of the 100 largest military prime contractors the figures were $1,133,882 versus $40,975; for officials of the 29 largest oil companies $344,997 versus $14,650; for officials of the 10 leading radio and television station licensees, $37,800 versus $1,000; for officials of 17 certificated airlines, $132,150 versus $31,609; for officials of 37 leading advertising agencies $51,600 versus $0; for officials of 47 leading underwriters of investment bonds, $237,800 versus $2,000; for officials of 13 professional, business and other selected groups, $741,189 versus $8,000, and for officials of 88 corporations participating in the atomic energy program, $387,342 versus $34,700.
That, of course, was an election year when President Eisenhower was a sure winner. But the 1956 study is a reminder today of who not only puts men in office, but calls the shots after they get in, a topic which will be discussed in the next lesson. The high cost of conviction is not only the financial price tag involved in running for office, but the sad fact that convictions themselves must be sold to the highest bidders. What gaineth a man if he sell his own soul? Most of the time, public office.
A Guide for Ambitious and Dedicated Kids Interested in Fulfilling Some American Dreams
(A sample survey of what you can expect to spend and what you may get in return, brought to you through the courtesy of the American political system)
| Expenditure | Realization |
|---|---|
| PRESIDENT | |
| $60 million | $200,000 a year salary, or 3/10 of 1 percent back on what you spent |
| GOVERNOR | |
| In New York, if you are running against a Rockefeller, $7 million to $20 million | $50,000 a year salary, or 7/10 to 1/5 of 1 percent back on what you spent |
| In North Carolina, at least $1 million | $35,000 a year salary, or 3.5 percent back on what you spent |
| In Pennsylvania, $1 million to $2 million | $45,000 a year salary, or 2.25 to 4.5 percent back on what you spent |
| In Georgia, $40,000 to $1.5 million | $42,500 a year salary. It helps to have segregation on your side. You might make money. |
| In Arkansas, why bother? | $10,000 a year salary |
| US SENATOR | |
| Anywhere from $250,000 to $5 million. (Pick your state carefully. By all means, stay away from New York, especially if you hear a fellow named Ottinger is running. He’ll run your bill up considerably.) | $42,500 a year salary, or the best you can do is get back 17 percent of what you spent |
| US REPRESENTATIVE | |
| Anywhere from $30,000 to $300,000. (Unless you are an incumbent of long standing, better count on the higher figure.) | $42,500 a year salary, or the best you can do is get back 17 percent of what you spent |
Review Questions and Further Assignments