Political Campaigns: Incumbents and Fundraising
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When conducting a political campaign race, early money is an advantage because it helps to increase visibility and spread the message; however, it is by no means the greatest factor in a campaign’s ability to gain traction. The greatest factor will always be the message. In the 2012 presidential race, Ron Paul gained a great deal of traction with supporters. In the 2016 race, Bernie Sanders did the same. Both were overwhelmed in spending by their respective opponents—Paul by Romney and Sanders by Clinton. The establishment favorites were certainly helped by money, but Paul’s campaign was able to continue to raise funds from supporters throughout the duration of the campaign, as was Sanders’. Establishment politics ultimately blocked both candidates from succeeding—and that calls into question a whole other type of money. But in terms of fundraising, early money certainly does not help; but maintaining funding throughout the campaign is pivotal and that will depend on the traction of the message.

As Edsall (2013) notes, early cash can be wasted: “What we discovered on our side, to our surprise and disappointment, was that there were some superb pro-Romney ads, but there was little impact on voters, not what we would have expected them to have,” stated Romney’s chief strategist following the candidate’s defeat to Obama. The problem was not a lack of early funding: Romney’s campaign was flush with cash from the beginning. The problem was that Romney’s message simply did not resonate. In his case, the message was what mattered. Early cash may have given an advantage in the primaries—but not down the stretch.

Bry (2017) states that “early money is like yeast: it makes the dough rise.” While this concept does have its advantages, there is no replacement for a well-run and well-organized campaign. Early money may make the dough rise, but the bread still needs to be kneaded and baked and that requires a great deal more finesse than simply throwing money at it. Romeny’s campaign lacked the vision needed to make effective use of the money he had.

The keys to a successful fundraising strategy are to maintain a strong connection with the grassroots voter base and with larger, wealthier supporters who also believe in the message that the candidate is getting out. The message above all else is what will draw financiers to the campaign: if the message is on...…promises to voters during their campaign—but delivering on those promises once they are in office is not so easy. A challenger can pick apart virtually any incumbent’s record and find areas where he or she fell short of promises to the American public. The challenger can use this to attack the incumbent during the campaign and undermine the incumbent’s brand value, so to speak.

The other strategy would be to use voter fatigue and voter angst against the incumbent—much as Trump did in the 2016 election. Trump recognized that a large portion of the American public was dissatisfied with the general trend of governance in Washington and he leveraged this dissatisfaction in a big way. First, he used it as the basis of his campaign motto: he pledged that he would do what his predecessors had been unable to do—and that would be to make the country great again. Trump ran on the idea that he could rebuild the country and that anyone who voted for Clinton would just be voting for more of the same: it was like she was an incumbent or Obama 2.0. Trump played on this idea, which helped to undermine support for her.