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 “
