WASHINGTON: Michael E. Toner, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, has some friendly advice for presidential candidates who plan to be taken seriously by the time nominating contests start in early 2008: bring your wallet.
“There is a growing sense that there is going to be a $100 million entry fee at the end of 2007 to be considered a serious candidate,” Toner said in a recent interview. The jockeying for the presidential nominations in both major parties is already vigorously underway, as illustrated by the parade of GOP contenders on display this weekend at a meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis. For now, however, the main arena of competition is financial, as candidates prepare themselves for a race most analysts believe will involve sums vastly larger than those spent on previous presidential campaigns.
Many political operatives are expecting that the gradual breakdown of the public funding system — federal funds in exchange for spending limits — that has taken place in recent years will become complete in 2008. The result would be candidates in both parties racing far past old spending records, and facing new pressure to begin raising money far in advance of the election year. Not all political finance experts and campaign operatives agree with Toner that raising $100 million over the next 22 months is the price of admission for candidates who want to establish credibility and compete on an equal footing. The $100 million is nearly three times the previous threshold for being regarded in national political circles as a first-tier candidate. But it is plain that a number of factors have converged that will render obsolete old assumptions about what it costs to run for president.
First among those factors is the 2004 precedent. President Bush and Democratic nominee John F. Kerry decided then to do without public matching funds in the nominating phase of the campaign — money that came with a requirement to limit spending to just $44.7 million each.
They went on to raise $274.7 million and $253 million, respectively, before accepting public funding for the general election campaign in the fall. Their success established what many strategists believe will be a new norm in presidential politics.
What’s more, many analysts believe that 2008 will be a clash of such titanic intensity that the nominees will reject public funding — and the spending limits that govern it — even for the fall campaign. If so, most bets are that each major-party candidate would need to raise in excess of $400 million by the November 4, 2008, election.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service
