The final spending totals for 2014 will not be known for months, and in this era of increasingly dark, dark-money campaigning, some of the details will never be adequately revealed or understood. But even the bare minimum figure established just prior to the election by the Center for Responsive Politics is acknowledged as a record.
"Every election since 1998 has been more expensive than the one before it, and predictably the 2014 election will follow that path, CRP has projected -- though the total projected cost of $3.67 billion is only a slight uptick over the price tag of the 2010 midterm," the center noted. "Counting all forms of spending -- by candidates, parties and outside groups -- Team Red is projected to have spent $1.75 billion, while Team Blue's spending is projected to ring in at $1.64 billion."
The final figures will be much higher for several reasons. First, many types of spending are not revealed until weeks, sometimes months, after elections. Second, formal filings and investigative reports will over time reveal more details of supposedly "independent" and dark-money spending. Finally, and most significantly, details of spending on state and local contests will boost that $3.67 billion figure dramatically. The able researchers at CRP focus on federal races for the US Senate and the US House. Yet, some of the biggest spending of 2014 took place in competitve state races for governor, for attorney general and for control of key legislative chambers. Additionally, spending skyrocketed in state and local judicial races in 2014. And spending on initiatives and referendums was in the hundreds of millions.
Add all this additional largess in, and the 2014 spending figure will be well in excess of $5 billion.
This spending does not buy higher turnouts -- 2014 saw the lowest level of voter participation since 1942, when World War II created some complications.
The spending does not produce better debates on a wider range of issues -- the 2014 campaign was broadly derided as "the election about nothing."
And it does not result in better or more responsive governance -- on the eve of the 2014 election, the approval rate for Congress fell to 8 percent.
That final factor is the most consequential. While much is made of the impact that election spending has on particular contests and on the broader struggle for control of the Congress, there is far too little consideration given to the reality stated by Congressman John Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat who says, "A lot of the moneyed impact, and in some ways, the most sinister is on the governing that happens after."
Americans recognize this. An April 2014, national Reason-Rupe poll found that 75 percent of Americans believe all politicians are "corrupted" by campaign donations and lobbyists. Other surveys, asking the question in other ways, have found even higher levels of cynicism about arrangements between economic and political elites.
The American people also know that without the restoration of basic American ideals and standards with regard to elections -- rooted in the premise that corporations are not people, money is not speech and votes must matter more than dollars -- each new election cycle will be more expensive and more negative and much less likely to produce high turnouts and results that reflect the will of the great mass of citizens.
There is a sense of urgency, well expressed by US Senator Jon Tester, D-Montana, when he said just after the 2014 election: "If we don't move quickly and forcefully to get big money out of our elections, it will give the wealthy a vice grip on our government. It will drown out the voices of regular folks. And it will embolden those with the deepest pockets to take further action to keep shaping the electorate how they see fit. We need action, and we need it now."
Most importantly, Americans are acting on that knowledge. The hidden story of the 2014 election cycle was that, amidst all the shameless fundraising and spending, a popular revolt was brewing at the polls.
