Sandy Bergo stories from The Center for Public Integrity

The rise of 'revolving-door' consultants

2011-09-16T15:14:34-04:00

It happens every day: Lobbyists open the right doors, make the right arguments and push their clients' narrow interests to the front of the line.

The results vary. A Native American chief gets a West Wing meeting to fight for tribal status. Forty-story condominium buildings that will transform the San Francisco skyline are approved. Congress earmarks $239 million for a new bridge over the Mississippi. Copper mining representatives meet White House staffers to discuss acquisition of national forest land.

But the lobbyists fronting these causes all have one important advantage in common: They helped the public official they lobbied get elected. They were political consultants who traveled with the candidate or gave strategic advice on media campaigns, fundraising or get-out-the vote efforts.

Top advisors get to know candidates and can become privy to closely guarded secrets. Relationships are forged in the war-like, us-against-them, sleep-deprived atmosphere of a campaign. Consultants who also lobby then have a unique opportunity to trade on this personal capital when pushing the interests of their other clients for new laws, government approvals or funding.

An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that increasingly campaign consultants are turning to lobbying once elections are over. And unlike federal legislators and their staff members, who are required to wait a year before lobbying former colleagues, consultants are not bound by rules slowing down the so-called "revolving door" between doing campaign work and lobbying.

A Center computer analysis found 22 firms that do both political consulting and lobbying. This was determined by matching Federal Election Commission reports filed on campaign consultants hired in 2003 and 2004 with federal lobbyist registrations for 2003 through 2006.

Chellie Pingree, president of the citizens' group Common Cause, sees the emergence of this breed of well-connected lobbyists as further evidence that ethics reform is urgently needed.

"It's another part of a very unhealthy system," Pingree said. "We've already called for the ban of lobbyists serving as campaign treasurers and lobbyists hosting fundraisers. It would seem to me that lobbyists working on campaigns is just another thing that should come under that ban."

Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., the former House Ethics Committee chairman who retired this month, said lawmakers should rebuff lobbying entreaties from their campaign workers and consultants.

"Not that there is evil there, but there might be the appearance of evil," Hefley told the Center.

A lucrative sideline business

It may not be "evil," but it pays well.

John Whitehurst, a partner in a Democratic campaign consulting lobbying firm in San Francisco, urges fellow consultants to emulate his firm's "lucrative" business model, with lobbying clients providing a steady stream of income during non-campaign years.

"It evened out my finances, because I would go and be buying dinner for everybody in October of the even year and then begging a McDonald's coupon in the off-year," Whitehurst said to appreciative laughter during a March 2006 panel discussion at the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) annual conference in Napa Valley, Calif.

He told the gathering that his firm, Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter, works on campaigns not simply to make money, but to build relationships with elected officials.

"I mean, I have lost significant sums of money on their candidate races. [But] that stuff comes back in volumes — that John Whitehurst helped elect these guys to office," he said.

Through the years, Democratic consultant Joseph Cerrell has found that campaign relationships give him an edge over other lobbyists when approaching an elected official.

"I'm the one who knows him intimately," said the founder of Cerrell Associates, a 40-year-old Los Angeles political consulting firm. "All things being equal … I'll win every time. I'm the guy who just finished running the campaign."

'I think it's wrong'

Some veteran political consultants find the practice appalling.

"I think it's wrong," said Raymond Strother, a Washington-based consultant to national Democratic candidates and former AAPC president. He said he feels uneasy exploiting close relationships developed during campaigns and unqualified to influence the legislative process.

"I don't know about markups. I don't know anything about government. All I know is about getting elected. So why should I make policy? I shouldn't," he said.

Strother recalls the time he walked away from $1 million the founder of a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., steamship company offered him to lobby a Senate committee chairman for whom he had consulted. Strother declined to name the senator.

In the late 1980s, Strother said Hvide Marine Inc. founder Hans J. Hvide, now deceased, wanted a pending bill rewritten to change the definition of a ship bottom. Strother wrote in his memoir, Falling Up, How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting, it could have been accomplished by changing one word.

"I was tempted. And I called a friend of mine who was a staff member and said, 'Would that be possible?' He said, 'Yeah, it wouldn't be that big a deal. We could do it. Why? Do you want to do it?'" Strother told the Center. "I said, 'I don't know.' And I decided not to."

The ramifications that the one-word change would have had remain a mystery to the consultant. "See, that's way beyond me," Strother said, underscoring his lack of legislative expertise.

Sarah Dufendach, a lobbyist for Common Cause, which promotes an ethics agenda on Capitol Hill, is offended that people who are not schooled in the process of getting legislation passed would take on lobbying clients.

"You also have to know the process. You have to know the timing. It comes from experience," Dufendach said. "You could maybe get somebody an appointment with a congressman, but that's the bare minimum."

"As a lobbyist, I am outraged. This is a dumbing down of the profession. I'm really ticked off. And you can quote me," she said.

Republican consultant Thomas Edmonds raises another objection to the practice of consultants lobbying: He feels it violates the loyalty owed to the candidate.

As a campaign consultant for Alaska Republicans Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, Edmonds said he has been approached by companies with interests in that state's energy and natural resource issues. Feeling conflicted, he did not take them on as lobbying clients.

"I could find myself at cross purposes with the congressman or the senator," if also lobbying for an oil firm, he said.

"Let's say, that that oil firm has an agenda and that congressman or senator stands for re-election, and I'm working with them too and getting paid by them too. I might end up saying, 'Well no, let's not talk about that issue. … Let's talk about natural gas, not oil,' because if we talk about oil it might end up bringing something up that could cost me money. So then I have a conflict of interest."

'Ethical dilemma' of the consultant-lobbyist

James Thurber, director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, has studied what he calls the "ethical dilemma" of political consultants who lobby, and believes more consultants are turning to lobbying to build up a year-round business.

In his chapter of the book, Shades of Gray: Perspectives on Campaign Ethics, Thurber writes that "hundreds and even thousands of people involved in campaigns later lobby politicians." His estimate includes individuals who are primarily lobbyists, but who dip in and out of campaign activity as fundraisers, treasurers, volunteers and advisors to candidates or political parties.

The tight relationship between legislators and lobbyists who serve as campaign treasurers was documented by the Center for Public Integrity in a 2005 report. The Center found that lobbyists had acted as treasurers for the campaign committees or leadership PACs of 79 members of Congress since 1998. Critics fear this sort of affiliation with a candidacy is at times rewarded with special access to the lawmaker.

Some of the 22 firms identified in the Center's analysis downplayed any connection between their consulting and lobbying work. A few said they were bit players in political campaigns, not major advisors who got close to candidates; others said they lobbied only on occasion.

One firm, Westhill Partners, said its employees registered as lobbyists only at the request of an overly cautious client, even though they contacted the news media to promote the client's position, not congressional offices.

High-rises by the 'Frisco Bay

The practice of consultants turning around and lobbying the people they helped to elect is also rampant in state capitols and city halls across the country. A vivid example comes from San Francisco.

Whitehurst, the consultant speaking at the Napa Valley conference, described how his firm traded on its campaign connections to lobby for changes in California law and city zoning, paving the way for high-rises that will dramatically alter the San Francisco skyline along the eastern waterfront.

"And they're breaking ground now," Whitehurst told the audience.

Developers Tishman Speyer and Union Property Capital Inc. wanted to build two 40-story condominium buildings near the San Francisco Bay Bridge in the Rincon Hill district, which had been zoned for less dense residential buildings and low-rise commercial structures, such as warehouses.

They pushed for city zoning approvals and a change in state law that would allow developers to sell condo units before building them — and lower their finance charges.

"We asked one of the people who we got elected to the legislature to carry the bill to allow the presale of condo units … which passed," Whitehurst said.

The 2003 bill's author was Assemblyman Mark Leno. His 2002 campaign was managed by the Whitehurst firm for $113,036 in fees, state disclosure filings show. Soon after taking office, Leno presented the bill. It passed both houses unanimously and became law that year.

No one from Whitehurst's firm registered to lobby state officials regarding the bill. His partner, Sam Lauter, said they didn't register because they didn't actually lobby anyone to vote for the bill; rather, another partner in the firm advised Leno on the bill at the assemblyman's request.

"My partner engaged in helping him put all the stuff in the blender until they came out with something that made good policy," Lauter told the Center. According to its Web site, the Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter firm "crafted" the legislation.

Leno said that he asked the consulting firm to review the language of the bill, but that he came up with the idea himself after a developer complained that California was unusual in banning presale of condo units.

"And I am told by developers that this is helping. …It has produced more housing and it has produced more affordable housing. So it was a win-win-win," he said.

But the consultants did register to lobby city government. For their work advocating city zoning changes from June 2003 through June 2005, Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter charged the two developers $325,000, according to city records. The fee was almost three times greater than the fee to run Leno's campaign — illustrating Whitehurst's point that lobbying can pay better than campaign work.

In pushing for the zoning change, Lauter said he talked with members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and with city planning commissioners. One member of the Board of Supervisors whom the firm lobbied was Gavin Newsom, then running for mayor on a platform that included curbing aggressive panhandling. The panhandling issue had a ballot measure campaign of its own, which was run by Lauter's firm.

"We were not involved in the Newsom for mayor campaign. But there was a ballot measure that Newsom was in charge of. We ran a campaign that put his face and name out there. We were very open about doing it. Everyone knew we were doing it. It could be argued and I would not dispute the argument that it helped him in his election," said Lauter.

In November 2003, Newsom and others on the Board of Supervisors voted to approve a favorable environmental review of the high-rises, a step that propelled the project forward.

Then, in February 2004, after Newsom became mayor, the Board of Supervisors voted to lift the maximum heights for the developers' properties from 200 feet to 400 feet, allowing construction of 40-story condominium buildings.

City planners estimated rezoning would increase the properties' value by $98 million. Condo units are selling for a minimum of $700,000 and on the high end, $5 million for two top-story apartments that will be built as one unit, according to Carl D. Shannon, regional managing director for Tishman Speyer.

Land use attorney Tim Tosta, hired by developer Union Property Capital, said the consultants' familiarity with the politicians helped him tailor his presentations.

"A lot of politics is about the right metaphor," said Tosta, who is with the law firm of Steefel, Levitt and Weiss.

With an official who's a devout Christian, Tosta said he may refer to God, "but if you're a good old politically correct Californian, you'll talk about Buddha or your spirituality."

Campaign consultants "sometimes perform miracles," he said.

According to Sue Hestor, attorney for the neighbors who opposed the rezoning, the Rincon Hill neighborhood will become "a very, very tall forest of housing towers," blocking views of the Bay Bridge, "which is one of the iconic things you look for in the city."

When San Franciscans see the results, "they're going to be apoplectic," she said.

The week after condominium towers were approved in 2004, the city passed a law requiring campaign consultants to wait four years before lobbying their consulting clients.

High-level lobbying in D.C.

Federal lobbyists are not required to specify on disclosure forms which lawmaker they seek to influence, and they rarely do so voluntarily. But the Center's investigation found that consultants have been hired to influence the officials they helped to elect.

In 2003 and 2004, a St. Louis business group hired Republican political consultant Tony Feather to lobby for an earmark for construction of a new bridge over the Mississippi River. While an additional river crossing would relieve traffic congestion in the St. Louis area, the estimated cost was $1.6 billion, so local business and government leaders wanted federal assistance.

Feather, whose firm who had helped re-elect Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., was involved in at least one meeting with Bond while lobbying for bridge funding, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. As chairman of the subcommittee that wrote the transportation funding bill, Bond was a key player.

Feather's forte is not one-on-one lobbying on Capitol Hill, but "grassroots" lobbying — the practice of finding constituents who agree with their clients' positions and getting them to support the cause by contacting their congressmen or representatives.

The bill stalled for two years, but when it finally passed in 2005, Bond (who did not respond to requests for an interview for this article) secured a $75 million portion of the earmark for the Mississippi River bridge, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Two senators and a congressman from Illinois, the state at the eastern end of the bridge, claimed credit for the remainder of the $239 million earmark.

The St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association paid DCI Group about $200,000 for its efforts over the two years. The Web site of Feather's political telemarketing firm, now called FLS Connect, lists Bond's campaign as one of 11 U.S. Senate campaigns it has worked for in recent years.

Ironically, the Mississippi River project may be another federally earmarked bridge that goes nowhere. Construction can't move forward because Missouri and Illinois can't agree on how to finance the balance.

Feather's firm was one of the 22 the Center identified that blend consulting and lobbying.

Feather wears many hats. He is a name partner in the phone bank consulting firm Feather Hodges Larson Synhorst — later renamed FLS-DCI, then FLS Connect. The company boasts an endorsement from George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove on its Web site: "I know these guys well. They become partners with the campaigns they work with."

In 2000, Feather acted as political director of the Bush-Cheney campaign. For the 2004 elections, FLS-DCI was paid $26.9 million by Republican candidates and party committees for telemarketing and get-out-the-vote phone calls, including $7.6 million for its work on the 2004 Bush campaign, federal filings show. Feather also co-founded Progress for America, a group that produced some of the most effective television advertisements during the Bush re-election campaign.

Feather also worked as a contract lobbyist for DCI Group. Many of his clients sought access to the White House.

Phones, fuel cells and federal recognition

From 2001 through early 2006, Feather reported lobbying the White House for 13 clients, who paid a collective $3.9 million to DCI Group for work by Feather and other lobbyists, according to Center analysis of federal filings. His clients ranged from corporate giants such as AT&T and General Motors to an Indian tribe seeking federal recognition.

During the first Bush administration, phone giant AT&T was fighting for its corporate life, looking for help from federal regulators. At issue were the rates a phone company could charge competing carriers for access to its lines. Ultimately, President Bush took a position contrary to AT&T's wishes, declining to get the Justice Department involved in the appeal of an unfavorable court ruling.

DCI charged AT&T $1.26 million in lobbying fees through 2006, according to the filings. The phone company's public affairs office did not respond to Center inquiries about its lobbying activities.

Over three years, General Motors paid DCI Group $360,000 to successfully lobby the White House, Congress and executive branch agencies for fuel cell research and development funds and for approval of the sale of its interest in the DirecTV satellite television business.

"It makes perfect sense that we would hire consultants who have the depth and breadth of knowledge in this town," said Greg Martin, GM director of policy and Washington communications.

Another client that wanted White House access was the Nipmuc Nation of Massachusetts. After Bush took office, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had reversed a Clinton administration decision to recognize the group as a tribe. Within months, the Nipmucs hired DCI Group, paying them $160,000 to lobby Congress, the BIA, and the White House. Feather registered as one of the tribe's lobbyists.

Tribal recognition would have allowed the Nipmucs to open a casino, backed by a $6 million investment by Minnesota-based casino resort developer-manager Lakes Gaming Inc.

The Nipmuc chief, Walter Vickers doesn't remember meeting Feather, who is based in Jefferson City, Mo. Vickers said that another DCI lobbyist ushered him into two West Wing meetings with White House staff.

In June 2004, the Bureau of Indian Affairs rejected tribal recognition for the Nipmucs. Their chief was disappointed with DCI Group's inability to get meaningful results.

"I was always questioning what they've done and what they were going to do. And I guess they did open some doors," Vickers said.

Repeated calls to DCI Group seeking comment for this article were not returned.

Opening the right doors

Another man who can open doors in Washington, D.C., is Gordon C. James, a Phoenix-based consultant.

James was an advance man for George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, giving advice that was more technical than political. His company set up lights, sound, and staging for campaign debates, rallies and Bush's election night celebrations. While working on the younger Bush's campaigns and for the George H.W. Bush White House, he developed enduring friendships with the family.

Once the current President Bush took office, James tried his hand at lobbying.

"We can help people navigate the process," he said in a phone interview.

"We have a lot of friends in the federal government," he said, that he calls on behalf of clients. "So would you. … It's all about friends and relationships and trust."

James' fees are modest as lobbyists' go, the largest being less than $30,000 for any six-month period, according to filings. His firm does better financially as a government contractor. For example, it won a $1.5 million job handling the logistics for 55 pandemic flu summits around the country from January through August 2006.

Since 2001, James has registered to lobby for eight clients, including a federal contractor pushing for open bidding on Department of Energy laboratory management contract, a Scottsdale, Ariz., employee assessment firm trying to make a sale to the Department of Education, and a copper mining concern.

Andy Wiessner, a lobbyist who specializes in public land exchanges, worked with James to lobby the White House on behalf of Resolution Copper Co., which seeks to trade private land it owns to acquire a piece of the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.

The proposed swap — 3,025 acres of federal land for 5,539 acres of private property — would give RCC unfettered access to extract copper ore now situated below a campground and recreational rock climbing terrain. According to RCC spokesman Troy Corder, the exchange would include a substitute rock climbing area about 25 miles away.

Some environmentalists say even though the copper company would give up more acreage, the deal would be lopsided.

"This exchange would be the largest loss of [rock] climbing ever," said Steve Matous, executive director of the Access Fund.

Lobbyists Wiessner and James met with White House staffers twice. Wiessner said they were "courtesy calls," but vital because these staffers would later pass judgment on prepared Forest Service testimony for congressional hearings on the bill. By covering all the bases, he said, "there are no surprises."

James also said he'd been in touch with the White House on behalf of the mining company. "We had to keep them informed of what was going on," he said.

Hearings on the land-swap bill were held in May, but no vote was taken before the Congress adjourned this month.

From the outside looking in

James claims the president knows him well enough to chat on the phone — such as, the day after Easter this year, when he says the president called to thank him for organizing the White House egg roll.

Asked whether he's taken up a lobbying issue with the president, he replied, "I'm not sure I want to go into that amount of detail. It's getting very intimate."

Proponents of lobbying reform — expected to be reintroduced in the new Congress — have not addressed the issue of consultants who lobby. Professor Thurber of American University, for one, worries that the undue influence this group of insiders enjoy could undermine the public trust.

"I think in a democracy you need trust in the way decisions are made. You need transparency," Thurber said.

"But it's not transparent and it makes it look like a fixed game to people on the outside."

Additional reporting for this report was done by Chris Landers, Erika Kaneko, Elspeth Reeve and Sarah Laskow. Agustín Armendariz and John Perry served as database editors.

A wealth of advice

2011-11-17T17:02:46-05:00

In the 2004 federal races, more than $1.85 billion flowed through a professional corps of consultants whose influence plays an important, though largely unexamined, role in the unrelenting escalation of campaign spending, a groundbreaking Center for Public Integrity study has found.

The money going to these consultants amounted to more than half of the total spending by presidential candidates, national party committees, general election candidates for Congress, and so-called "527"s — independent political groups.

The high cost of running for office raises concerns because fundraising demands can ultimately bind elected officials to special interest donors and lobbyists who help with fundraising — deepening the widely held perception that politicians serve the interests of large contributors over those of constituents.

Potential candidates who can't meet the fundraising demands are shut out.

The Center conducted a six-month review of thousands of Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service reports on spending during 2003 and 2004 in 471 races. The study involved more than 900 general election presidential, House and Senate candidates; the four other presidential primary candidates who spent $20 million or more; the six major party committees; and 90 nonprofit 527 groups.

The Center's database team sorted through nearly a million individual expenditures. Unlike the other records, Senate candidates' disclosures are not filed electronically. The Center hired a vendor to convert those paper records into electronic form so they could be included in the study.

The study, sponsored by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, found that:

About 600 professional consultants were paid more than a combined $1.85 billion in the 2003-2004 federal campaigns.[correction]
Media consultants, who offer political and strategic advice and handle political advertising, were paid $1.2 billion, or 65 percent of all consultant spending.
Direct mail consultants billed the second-largest amount, $298 million, totaling 16 percent of all consultant spending.
Consultants routinely pitch campaign plans that rely heavily on their own specialty because there is a financial incentive to do so.
Fundraising consultants, whose services are necessitated in large part by the rising amounts campaigns spend on other consultants, cost candidates at least $59 million.

In 2004, it took an average of $7 million to win a seat in the Senate and $1 million to win a seat in the House, an eleven-fold increase since 1976. Candidates running for Congress in 2006 are spending 12 percent more overall than two years ago, according to the FEC.

Interviews with experts, veteran consultants and candidates paint the picture of a competitive industry that thrives on the high-stakes world of campaigning, and is just as competitive about pushing its advice and services for the highest possible price.

"You negotiate the best deals you can," says David Axelrod, the Chicago-based media consultant for Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama's 2004 campaign.

But, Axelrod and other consultants say, the expense is really all about winning.

"We know the person with the most money wins. So let's go make sure we're the person with the most money," says Joe Trippi, the manager and consultant for Howard Dean's presidential bid.

"It's kind of like the nuclear arms race," he says. "No one's willing to unilaterally disarm."

Advice driving up campaign price

Some experts blame rising campaign costs on the proliferation of professional and technical services that candidates and parties feel they must buy.

"Really, what drives the cost of campaigns is just the technology. We do so much more advertising, so much more polling, so much more computerized micro-targeting of voters. I mean what we've really seen is the professionalization of campaigns. The days when someone runs for Congress or Senate, especially in a competitive race, who doesn't have a bevy of consultants is over," says Anthony Corrado, an expert in campaign finance and professor of government at Colby College.

Then, in the name of making sure media expenditures are not squandered, even more money is invested in pollsters and focus groups to critique political ads.

"We don't want to waste any of the money. So therefore before we put any ad on TV, we want to make sure that we've completely studied that ad to see if it's the most effective ad we can put on," says Corrado.

Campaigns hire consultants for their expertise in media, direct mail, polling, fundraising, phone banks, get-out-the-vote operations and a dizzying array of political-tech services.

Media consultants are typically the most important hires of any campaign, and are heavily relied on for political and strategic advice that goes far beyond their specialty of writing, producing and placing television ads.

Since candidates in large campaigns speak to voters through professionally scripted television ads, the media adviser (along with the pollster) helps candidates decide which issues to emphasize and how to frame them, and aids in shaping an image that will win over voters. Media consultants also act as key advisers in deciding how and when to launch negative campaigns, virtually a given in modern politics — particularly in tight races.

Federal campaigns paid media consultants $1.2 billion in 2003-2004. The amount is particularly large because the money used to book commercial airtime on television stations and networks passes through the media consultants or media buying specialists. The consultants typically retain up to a 15 percent commission, but that payment is not shown in reports filed with the FEC. (See "Airtime Is Money" and "The More Media the Better ..." sidebars.)

Not surprisingly, the two largest consultants for the 2004 elections were the media consultants for the Bush and Kerry presidential campaigns. The media group that created the president's television commercials, Maverick Media, was paid a combined $177 million by the Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee. Riverfront Media, the group led by consultant Bob Shrum, worked on John Kerry's media campaign and was paid $150 million by his campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The direct mail firm with the most billings, Olsen & Shuvalov, received $42 million from the Bush re-election campaign and the RNC for the 2004 races.

Driven by 'pocketbook incentive'

As any campaign gets underway, veteran consultants say an internal tug-of-war begins between consultants who specialize in media, direct mail and other forms of communicating with voters.

Cathy Allen, a Washington-state based consultant and board member of the American Association of Political Consultants, says that consultants routinely push campaign plans that emphasize their own specialty because there is a "pocketbook incentive" to do so.

"That's the dirty little secret of political consultants," Allen says.

Direct mail tends to get less attention than television because campaigns send much of it to carefully targeted addresses — tailored lists of voters that their research shows are likely to donate money or be receptive to particular messages. Some of the most negative campaign messages are sent in the mail.

In two races, for instance, voters in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and in southwestern Indiana received mailings from the party committees tagging incumbent Republican Congressman Phil Crane of Illinois as "the Junket King," and Democrat Jon Jennings, running for Congress in Indiana, as supportive of "civil unions for homosexual couples."

Both Crane and Jennings lost.

The anti-Crane literature was designed by MSHC Partners, a direct mail consultant that was paid almost $370,000 by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Three of the five mail pieces show Crane posing on mock postcards that depict him as a tourist wearing a loud shirt and shorts in Rome, Costa Rica, and Antigua — with all expenses paid by "Washington special interests." Another pseudo-postcard shows Crane dressed in a kilt sending "Greetings from Scotland," again blasting his sponsored trips as junkets.

In the Indiana race, a flyer paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) declares Jennings is "Wrong for Indiana" because he moved from Boston bringing its "liberal values with him." The mailer was designed by Arena Communications, a Salt Lake City, Utah firm, which was paid nearly $85,000 for the effort by the NRCC.

Other services get smaller slices of the consultant pie, according to the Center's analysis. Polling and fundraising were each paid about 3 percent of the total paid to consultants, and banks were phone banks were paid 7 percent of the total.

Spending on Internet services was a tiny fraction, accounting for less than one percent in the 2003-2004 election cycle. For all the attention given the role of the Internet in fundraising during that campaign, for the most part, consultants are still trying to figure out how to widely distribute a controlled message to voters using the Web.

These percentages were calculated from the Center's review of the brief descriptions the campaigns included with each expenditure report. The Center labeled undefined consulting expenditures as "generic consulting." Some expenditures were impossible to categorize and labeled "other."

Fundraising pressure

The campaign starts with the push to raise as much money as possible. Fundraising consultants and services identified in the Center study raised money through events, the mail, as well as by phone.

"The role of the consultant is to make sure the candidate knows the urgency of getting all this money. It's also very much of a conflict of interest," says Dennis W. Johnson, a former consultant who is now a George Washington University professor of political management. Consultants pressure candidates to "hurry up and raise all this money so you can pay me," he says.

The urgency of raising money was a constant theme at a training conference sponsored by Campaigns & Elections magazine in June 2006. Before a large crowd in Washington, D.C., hotel conference room, Jefrey Pollock, president of the New York-based polling firm, Global Strategy Group, preached his "Ten Commandments of Campaigns."

"Number one, money is the Lord your Savior. You, both candidate and manager, shall have no other Lord," he told the room. He said candidates should work the phones at least 10 hours a week, calling potential donors and asking for money.

Martin Frost, chair of the DCCC during the late 1990s, says that large donors, such as special interest political action committees, want to hear from the candidate directly.

"The candidate has to spend a lot of time on the phone to raise money," says Frost, who served 13 terms in Congress until 2004. "The fundraiser can't make the calls."

The job of the fundraising consultant is to schedule "call time" for the candidates, advise them what to say, and take care of mundane details, such as dealing with the prospective donor who asks to use a credit card.

"You don't want your candidate spending their time writing down credit card information. 'Ok, what's the expiration date?'" advised Holly Robichaud of Tuesday Associates, a Massachusetts-based fundraiser, in a March 2006 training session run by Winning Campaigns magazine.

"I just think that it has gotten out of hand," says Frost. "We spend too much time raising money, and I think legislators should spend their time legislating."

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the legislative research arm of Congress, the cost of running for office has escalated over time at a much greater pace than the cost of living. Looking at the cost of winning elections in 1976 and then in 2004, CRS found a steep increase in spending.

In 2004, it cost an average $1 million to win a seat in the House and $7 million to win a seat in the Senate. That's eleven times more than it cost back in 1976, when winning candidates spent $87,000 to run for the House and $609,000 for the Senate. Over the same span of time, the cost of living rose just three-fold.

Costs have continued to rise for 2006 races. Candidates now running for House and Senate seats are spending 12 percent more than was spent two years ago, according to the FEC.

For many years, the fact that legislators have to solicit money for their campaigns has troubled those who study politics and government.

"Well, the money has to come from somewhere," says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

"We all have the myth, if not the goal, that we have people in public office that are public servants. [But] if you need a heck of a lot of money, you're going out to specialized interests to get it," he says.

"Now, they're not just investing in — these people giving the money — in the quality of democracy. They're investing in a reciprocal relationship. Not bribes, but a reciprocal relationship — a legal reciprocal relationship," Thurber says. "They'll want something eventually."

Correction: Since publishing this story Sept. 26, 2006, the Center updated the total figure paid to consultants from $1.78 billion to $1.85 billion. This reflects an additional consultant, InfoCision Management Corporation, paid $62 million for phone banks and fundraising services. The Center also identified additional payments to a media and a phone consultant. The additions changed the percentage of the total paid to phone consultants, (from 3 percent to 7 percent), to media consultants (from 67 percent to 65 percent), and to direct mail consultants (from 17 percent to 16 percent).

The more media, the better ...

2011-11-17T17:02:46-05:00

The proof that media consultants abuse their clients, according to Doug Bailey, founder of The Hotline political news service and former Republican consultant, is the sheer volume of airtime they advise candidates to purchase now.

The number of times each political ad airs has risen exponentially over the years — a phenomenon other consultants confirm — and in Bailey's mind, for no valid strategic reason.

He's convinced that bloated ad buys flow directly from the consultants' pecuniary interests.

A study by the Center for Public Integrity found that in the 2003-2004 presidential election cycle, candidates for national office, party committees and independent "527" political groups spent more than $1.78 billion on campaign consultants, 67 percent of which went to media consultants who handle ads.

The silver-haired Bailey says that with each passing year, he sees an escalation in volume of political advertising, which is measured and priced in the television business according to "rating points."

"In the seventies, a campaign that bought 500 gross rating points a week in a market was considered to be either on the verge or having crossed the line [of] too much," he says during an interview in the third-floor lunchroom down the hall from his office at the Watergate. "And yet today, in the closing weeks of any contested campaign, it's not unusual for campaigns to be buying 3,000 gross rating points. Which is just a massive, massive buy."

And why? "Because consultants earn more money, the more ads that are bought," he says.

To put the numbers in perspective, a 500-point buy means the entire viewing audience will see a commercial — on average — five times in one week. A 3,000-point buy means viewers — in theory — will see it an average of 30 times.

Veteran consultants confirm that they now recommend buying several times more commercial time than in past years.

In the early days of political advertising, Republican consultant John Brabender says, viewers needed to see a political ad three times before it made an impact. Then it was six times. Now, it's 10. He and others justify the heavy air campaign as essential to grab the attention of a distracted, multitasking, and somewhat tuned-out audience.

"Now, somebody's got a headset on, somebody else is on a computer playing video games or checking their e-mail. Or changing the channels much more often, because you've got so many different choices than you used to have. And so just getting a commercial to resonate and be seen is much more difficult."

Thomas Edmonds, a former president of the American Association of Political Consultants, agrees.

"Because the 500 gross rating points [buy] doesn't work. That's why the number has gone up," says Edmonds, a Republican consultant based in Vienna, Va. "The commercial may air but you never saw it if you had TiVo. It never got through to you."

Consultants volunteer that something else is also at work: the public is more skeptical and likely to click the remote once they catch on that an ad is political.

"Political commercials just don't have the impact they used to," says Brabender.

That's true, in part, he says, because it's hard to compete in the same commercial space with clever product ads that cost a million dollars to write, shoot, and edit, compared to the typical $20,000 budget for a political ad. Then, scripts can also fall under the influence of pollsters, the candidate's friends and family, with results that are "too vanilla."

"What's really happened is we've decided that since we make such poor commercials in this industry and nobody's paying attention to them, we have the solution: we'll run it more often. And that truly is what's happening," he says during a talk to fellow consultants.

Interviewed after one of his presentations, Brabender sounds even more defeatist about the strategy of bombarding viewers with ads.

"Most political commercials are so poorly produced, they can run them the rest of their lives and I don't think that they're going to have an impact," he says.

Edmonds, the GOP consultant, calls the turn-off phenomenon "association discharge."

"You see that that's an ad for Tim Kaine running for governor [of Virginia], you go, 'Oh crap!' And you just, you know, that's 'I've seen it before, or I just don't care,'" he says.

To answer why, then, ads are repeated over and over Edmonds offers an analogy — to drinking.

"If you could get a buzz at 500 and then you don't get it anymore, then you drink two beers or three beers or four beers so that you get that same impact. And the pollsters [are] measuring this and saying, 'People still don't think that you have a plan to improve the transportation in northern Virginia. Ah! Well, then buy more media!'"

Candidates are starting to question some of these decisions.

"They're suspicious of why you're recommending the media to them," says Edmonds. "Especially people who are incumbents, they are beginning to feel, 'I remember six years ago we did this, and we didn't spend a fraction of this and everywhere I went people said 'I really like your ad.' Now we're spending three times as much and I go there and they don't even know I'm on television,'" says Edmonds. "In their unscientific, layman way, they are beginning to question this escalation that's taken place."

Ultimately, he says, campaign decisions are the candidate's call. "I don't think that makes a candidate a victim if a consultant tries to sell him more than what he needs," he says.

Doug Bailey says he left the consulting business in the late 1980s, disheartened that negative ads had permanently stained political discourse.

During the intensity, exhaustion and paranoia of a campaign, Bailey says, candidates wind up leaning heavily on the professionals they hire for advice. After it's all over, he says he will sometimes quiz candidates about why they put on — in his view — excessive advertising campaigns.

"Almost always, the answer is a form of, 'Well, hell, they were telling me I had to do it.'"

Airtime Is money

2011-09-16T15:24:42-04:00

When people discuss the sometimes prohibitive costs of political campaigns, rarely is the role that consultants play in driving up costs addressed.

Consulting firms hired by presidential candidates who make it all the way to the November election earn millions of dollars. If their candidate wins, the consultants' careers are made.

For work on hot House or Senate races, consultants can make anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 per candidate, according to Raymond Strother, lead partner in the Democratic consulting firm Strother-Duffy-Strother. The most successful firms work for several candidates at a time.

"We make an enormous amount of money here," says Strother during an interview in his new office just north of Washington, D.C. "We make the kind of money a brain surgeon would make."

At political consultant training seminars attended by Center for Public Integrity staff doing research for this study, the speakers invariably advised that more money be poured into their own medium specialties — be it television, direct mail, phone calls or specialized targeting programs — always in the name of conserving valuable campaign resources and making the biggest impact. In that vein, they warned against wasting money on items like yard signs, bumper stickers and other "tchotchkes," or on reaching out to voters who they've decided will never vote for their candidate.

The most influential advisers hired in any big campaign are the media consultants, say experts. They contribute seasoned advice on message and strategy, play crucial decision-making roles in the placement and timing of expensive commercials, and as a result, they have an enormous impact on the campaign's budget.

For every advertising dollar spent, consultants typically are paid a commission that can run as high as 15 percent. Veteran consultants and experts interviewed by the Center say the commission structure creates a conflict of interest because there's an incentive to recommend sizable television campaigns, driving up costs.

These television commercials have the power to make or break a candidacy.

Working on commission

This spring, the boyish-looking media consultant now engaged in the frantic campaign to re-elect Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania paced the width of a Washington, D.C., hotel conference room and delivered his standard message to a group of young, would-be campaign advisers.

John Brabender cuts a different figure compared to other speakers at training conferences for campaign consultants and vendors. Hair flopping down his forehead, he gets out from behind the podium, staying in motion as he shows ads, tells war stories ("Bob Torricelli got out of the race about four days after that [spot] went on the air …"), dispenses pointers ("The first 5 seconds of any ad are critical …") and admonishes the political junkies gathered to consider how unlike most voters they really are.

"It occurred to me, walking in here today, it's a Saturday afternoon in early March. It's 75 degrees out. And we're in here to listen to political direct mail, political radio, political TV, watch commercials," he tells them. "There is something very seriously wrong with every single one of us."

The voters have other things on their minds. "They're trying to figure out how to get their kids home from soccer practice," Brabender lectures. "We're a disruption, an intrusion on people's lives."

Up-and-coming consultants listen, but are not deterred. They covet his job: it's creative, high-stakes, exciting … and lucrative.

The Center for Public Integrity gathered records and analyzed payments to consultants working on federal campaigns during 2003 and 2004. Expenditures of candidates and party committees were reported to the Federal Election Commission; those of "527" political organizations were reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

The Center found that more than $1.78 billion was spent on campaign consultants, and of that, nearly $1.2 billion went to the media consultants who handle ads. The consultants or media buying specialists use most of that money to pay for commercial airtime, but buried in those reported sums are the percentage-based commissions that consultants keep.

Veteran consultants say the standard 15 percent commission can be negotiated to a lower rate. In the most expensive campaigns, such as presidential races, rates have dropped as low as 4.5 percent, according to Joe Klein's book, Politics Lost, but still net generous fees for consultants.

Some of the largest payments identified by the Center's study pass through firms such as Buying Time LLC, which specialize in buying commercial airtime, but do not create television spots. These specialists generally get smaller commissions ranging from 2.5 percent to 4 percent.

Consultants argue that commissions do not create a conflict; rather, they say, the over-arching motive behind buying more airtime is to crush the opponent.

"This sounds Pollyannish, [but] I think the most important thing to a consultant is to win," says David Axelrod, the Chicago-based consultant who advised Illinois Democrat Barack Obama's Senate campaign.

"Sometimes more media is the right answer," Axelrod says. "Part of the art of this is getting the right mix."

No doubt there are consultants who are "unprincipled," he says, but he believes they are few in number, since gouging a candidate would deprive the campaign of funds — a losing strategy.

"If you have any integrity, then you don't do that," Axelrod says.

Doug Bailey, founder of The Hotline political news service, holds the opposite view. A former consultant to Republican gubernatorial candidates and President Gerald Ford, he asserts that media commissions create a clear conflict of interest and ultimately boosts the costs of campaigns.

"TV ad makers make more money the more ads that are bought. And so the money is poured into television and," Bailey, says, mimicking consultants' advice, "'we need more, we need more, we need more.' It's just nonstop to the point way beyond what makes any sense."

With few exceptions, media commissions are not disclosed on records filed with the FEC, which requires neither uniformity in describing expenses nor itemization of commissions.

Take the Obama campaign, for example. Its reports show a grand total of $6.2 million paid to media consultant Axelrod's firm, now known as AKP Message & Media. The firm didn't keep all of the money; $5.7 million was used to buy airtime from television stations. Another $409,000 went for production costs. Only $80,500 was itemized as consultant fees to AKP. But that is just part of the picture, because an undisclosed percentage of the millions spent on airtime was returned to AKP in commissions.

Axelrod wouldn't reveal precisely how he negotiates his commissions, saying that he worries that disclosure would give candidates the edge in future negotiations.

"I don't want them competing with each other," he says.

But he does acknowledge that generally his charge for the first $1 million in billings is 15 percent, with the rate rapidly descending after that.

Like Brabender, Strother, and other sought-after consultants, Axelrod had other clients during the election cycle studied by the Center. They included Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rahm Emanuel. His campaign committee paid $92,000 in consultant fees, mainly in $3,000 monthly installments, though he had a safe Chicago district and no significant media campaign.

Axelrod's highest-billed client was John Edwards, whose presidential campaign paid $10.3 million from July 2003 through February 2004 for "media" or "consulting/media." The portion the Axelrod firm retained as commissions is not disclosed.

Political consultants, who can be valuable sources to reporters covering political campaigns and often double as on-air political commentators, become reticent, even testy, when the subject turns to their commissions.

Joseph Napolitan, a Democratic political consultant since 1956 and founder of the American Association of Political Consultants, chafed at questions about his own compensation.

"It's a private business," Napolitan says. "Why is the public entitled to know?"

Professor James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, firmly believes that the commission structure creates a conflict of interest and deserves public attention.

"These are public events. These are elections for public office," he says. "In a democracy, it's important to have sunlight on things so the public can make a judgment as to whether it's appropriate or not."

Republican consultant Brabender would not reveal what he is charging Santorum, but says in general he generally charges clients a commission ranging anywhere from 7 percent to 13 percent of the ad buy, sometimes adding a retainer to boost his income for work in smaller races. He notes that since he might have to do the same amount of work on a $5 million account as he would on a $1 million account, having a strict commission structure would be "kind of silly" and is "probably obsolete."

"But I will tell you, the reason it's hung on is, without it, I don't think most political campaigns understand the true cost that a media firm has, and understands how a good firm really should be compensated."

Former GOP consultant Bailey, whose work was highly regarded by both Republicans and Democrats in his field, puts it another way.

"Candidates and managers for the most part don't know what the consultants do," Bailey says. "And therefore, if they don't know what they do, they don't know what a fair charge is," he says.

There's a method to his media buy

One consultant who felt compelled to disclose his compensation was Joe Trippi, the manager of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign who was replaced late in January following the Democrat's losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. Right after Trippi left, media accounts revealed that while receiving no salary as campaign manager, he had made lucrative media commissions.

Bloggers vented online that they'd been betrayed. His reputation among them and the public as an Internet revolutionary no longer lined up with the reality that he was being compensated as an old-media consultant — that is, when Dean's message was televised.

In his book, The Revolution will not be Televised: Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything, Trippi calculates his take — one-third of his three-man media firm's commission — as $165,000, and defends the sum as reasonable for 13 months' work. The Center has learned that he also received a third of the $328,000 consulting fee that the Dean campaign reported was charged by his firm.

During an interview this spring, Trippi told the Center that while working on Dean's campaign he was unaware exactly how much in commissions his firm was charging for each media buy because the rate had been negotiated by his partner, Steve McMahon.

"I found out after the fact, once everyone started to say 'Joe Trippi is a scum ball! He's managing the campaign and making decisions so the firm would get the money!' I only learned after the fact" that it was a 7 percent deal Trippi said.

He still resents being made out as what he calls the "poster child" of the conflicted commission-paid consultant. "It's just bull. It's not true. I'll take a polygraph or whatever. … If I was going to be a very good consultant thief," he says, "I would have spent more on television" than the $7 million in ads that he estimates were placed through the end of 2003. According to Trippi, that amount is "actually very low."

"Our view was whoever won Iowa and New Hampshire was going to go on to be the nominee. So we piled our $7 million into those two states," he said.

While in high gear, the Dean campaign was breaking records for fundraising — largely because Trippi was adept at using the Internet to attract crowds to Dean events, build excitement and bring in unprecedented sums in donations through the campaign's Web site. By the end of January 2004, the Dean campaign had raised $47 million, twice as much as had John Kerry. The other Democratic candidates trailed even further behind.

By that date, Dean's campaign also had outspent his rivals and was having trouble paying staff. Now, the decision to advertise early in the campaign and in states whose primaries were many months away looked suspect.

Trippi is particularly sensitive about criticism of one early ad buy — in summer 2003 on television stations in Austin, Texas, long before the state's March 2004 primary.

"That was my idea," he says, adding that it was a smart move because viewers in Texas were driven to the Web site and contributed $1 million.

"That's called 'waste,' or that's called 'Trippi lining his pockets'" by those who don't know the full story, he says.

Media spending decisions were hashed out during meetings with Dean, Trippi and his two media firm partners, the campaign pollster, finance director, and a handful of other close advisors, according to Trippi. Collectively, they advanced a strategy to boost Dean's name recognition, drive donors to their Internet site, and run opponents "into the ground" financially by provoking them to respond with their own expensive media campaigns.

"What we did, we put up $100,000 in ads in Austin, saying the president is wrong — on his own turf, taking on the president," he says. "The commentators are brain dead idiots."

It was never about the commissions, he insists.

"I'm telling you, I've always been 'Do what you love and do what you care about and it will be fine.' That's always been my attitude," says Trippi.

Advertising without borders

"Don't worry about waste."

That's the advice from Thomas "Doc" Sweitzer, a Democratic consultant and partner in The Campaign Group. At a consultant training seminar sponsored by Campaigns & Elections magazine in June 2006, Sweitzer explained that he places ads for New Jersey candidates on stations broadcasting from nearby Philadelphia. That may sound wasteful to some, he said, but it's "dollar for dollar less expensive than other forms of communication because it is so persuasive."

Then repeat the ad "over and over and over and over again. And when people say, 'Shut up! Get it off!' that's when you are starting to get through," he advised.

"You always want to dominate the dominant medium. … If you run it on television, run it to death. If you run it on radio, run it to death."

After the panel discussion, Sweitzer said he was just dispensing textbook wisdom. "I was doing Advertising 101, which is run your ad over and over and over again. … That's what works." Inquiring into the consultants' profit motive, he says, is "a faulty line of questioning."

Sweitzer's approach gets support from campaign finance expert Herbert E. Alexander, who says that because media markets do not match the boundaries of states or districts, it's common to see television time purchased and squandered on viewers who can't vote for the candidate in the ad.

"Well, what's the alternative?" says Alexander. "I mean the candidate wants to win."

However, Dennis W. Johnson, a professor of political management at George Washington University, looks at it differently.

"Sometimes I just flip on the television and turn to my wife and say, 'Somebody just got suckered,'" says Johnson. "How stupid can a candidate be and how crass can his consultant be to sucker him into this when there are so many more effective ways of spending his money?"

Johnson, who lives in Washington, D.C., cites as an example the West Virginia candidates he sees advertising on expensive Washington stations, whose signals reach a small eastern tip of the state, about 50 miles away.

Though he did not mention a specific race, Jim Humphreys was such a candidate. In 2002, the Democrat ran for Congress from West Virginia's 2nd Congressional District and aired hundreds of commercials on Washington, D.C., television stations.

Humphreys outspent Republican incumbent Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito by a wide margin — $8.2 million to $2.5 million, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Humphreys, a trial lawyer, reportedly used his own funds to pay 95 percent of his campaign expenses.

Evan Tracey of TNS Media Intelligence, a political advertising tracking service, says that Humphreys aired 610 ads on Washington, D.C., television stations during the 2002 campaign. He spent $766,000 on those spots, according to GMMB, the Washington-based political advertising firm he used.

GMMB partner Jason Ralston says Humphreys decided to buy Washington-area airtime because polls showed he was in trouble, and he was "willing to spend whatever it takes" to win. Ralston advised his client it was a "cost-inefficient," strategy, he says, but that it might give him a shot and "that's what we're here to do, to win elections."

The suggestion that the firm was motivated by profits is "false and ridiculous," Ralston says. In 2000, Humphreys had come within 5,700 votes of beating Moore Capito and thought he had a real chance in 2002. But he lost again.

First-time jitters

Johnson, the professor, notes that first-time candidates are particularly vulnerable when it comes to taking bad advice.

"It certainly is possible for a really frightened and naïve candidate to pay too much attention to what a consultant is saying. I think a slick consultant can pull the wool over the eyes of a candidate," says Johnson.

Martin Frost was just such a naïve candidate in 1974 when he first ran for Congress in Texas and lost. A practicing lawyer and former journalist, he had hired a local consultant — one no longer in the business — to help him challenge the Democratic incumbent in the primary.

"The campaign consultant I hired convinced me to spend a lot of money on television," Frost recalls. "That was a mistake."

Later he learned that only 15 percent of registered voters there cast ballots in primaries, so the vast majority of people viewing his ads were not potential voters. "So spending money on television doesn't make any sense at all," he says.

Four years later when he ran for office again, Frost hired a campaign manager, but no consultant.

"I didn't spend any money on television," he says. "I spent money on direct mail and door-to-door campaigning."

That time he won.

For his 2004 race, media firm Strother-Duffy-Strother and its buyer charged Frost 15 percent of his $1.1 million media buy. Production and consultant fees added another $92,000 to the bill.

Frost says it was his decision to wage an expensive campaign, because he had been pushed into a heavily Republican district by Tom DeLay's district remapping. After 26 years in Congress, Frost lost his seat.

Big spending on safe seats

Even in lopsided races, leading candidates sometimes spend extraordinary sums on media.

"Many people have large campaign funds and they don't have serious competition. They're still running television ads. And they are still spending money on these campaigns when in many cases it's unnecessary," says Thurber, the American University professor who has extensively studied political consultants.

The 2003-2004 information compiled in the Center for Public Integrity's database for this confirms just that.

Thurber believes consultants advise media when it's unwarranted because "they are sitting there thinking, 'God, I can make another $90,000' or whatever it is, and you've got a shop of people that you have got to pay; you're going to lean towards running them."

In a panel discussion on ethics earlier this year, Illinois Sen. Obama, a prolific fundraiser, called the chase for campaign money "the original sin of everyone who has had to run for office, myself included." And yet during the final stretch of the his 2004 campaign, when Chicago Tribune polls reported that he had an overwhelming 51 percent lead over his opponent, Republican Alan Keyes, Obama and his media adviser launched an expensive television campaign.

The chances of Keyes winning were slim because he was an out-of-state candidate — replacing the GOP primary winner, who had dropped out amid a sex scandal, leaving the party scrambling to find a rival to the popular rising Democratic star.

Obama was so assured of winning that he was able to leave the state and jet around the country to help raise funds for other Democrats, according to Illinois media reports. And yet, on Sept. 30, he gave his media advisor $2.5 million to book airtime for an ad campaign that started in late October.

His media adviser, Axelrod, says they didn't know whether Keyes would raise funds to advertise heavily in the final days, so they felt it was "the prudent thing to do, to communicate in a modest way."

A few veteran, incumbent senators with safe seats also spent millions of dollars on consultants in 2004 races, even when challengers were severely underfunded.

In Iowa, according to the National Journal Almanac of American Politics, Sen. Charles Grassley wins re-election races handily. In the past three elections, the Republican has won every single one of the 99 counties in his state. In 1998, he was unopposed in the primary and spent $2.8 million against an opponent who spent $165,000.

In 2003 and 2004, his campaign overshadowed his opponent's by a much wider margin. Once again unopposed in the primary, the Grassley campaign spent $6.4 million compared to the Democrat, Arthur Small, who spent only $135,000.

Grassley used a Des Moines marketing firm, Strategic America Inc. to place $2.3 million in television, radio, and newspaper ads. Company chief executive officer Mike Schreurs, who has worked on Grassley's campaigns since his successful 1974 run for Congress, says the senator runs a media campaign to "re-energize the dialog" with constituents and to help Republicans further down the ballot.

"Given the fact that he wins [with] 70 percent of the electorate, he draws other voters who also would support Republicans downstream," says Schreurs. "Senator Grassley is as frugal as his reputation is known for, and he would not spend a dollar unless he feels he needs it."

For video production, Grassley turned to a Hollywood outfit, Strategic Perception Inc., and spent $384,000 for commercials that played up his image as a common man.

The most talked-about ad featured the senator atop a lawn mower with two push mowers attached — a contraption he had devised to cut a broader swath of grass.

"Chuck Grassley is a frugal man and he's well known for that. He figured out a Rube Goldberg way of mowing a lawn in less time. I think it was pretty clever. It said a lot about the man," says Strategic Perception chairman Fred Davis.

The film crews cost $15,000 to $30,000 per day. Fees for the writing, editing, and post-production cost extra. Davis says his ads look and sound better than the standard political ad because his company has movie industry production and creative capabilities.

"We use humor a lot and we shoot them a little fancier than [some of the] others. We're in Hollywood, not Washington. … Our creed is that political ads run right next to Budweiser ads. So for our client, the political client, to have the credibility they need, it has to be produced just as well," he says.

"With his campaign, there wasn't an enormous potential of losing. He just wanted to do something fresh and different," says Davis.

In an e-mail response, Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny said neither Davis nor Strategic America had a role in deciding the size of the media buy. It was decided by the campaign, she says, eliminating any profit motive for the consultants.

"Grassley campaigns have never believed in the arrangement where media advisors get a share of the buy and therefore have an incentive to have a bigger media campaign. It's a bad idea and hasn't been allowed in the Grassley campaigns," Kozeny wrote.

She says the decision to mount a robust campaign was based many other factors, including the uncertainty, until election day, of how serious a campaign an opponent will mount, the history of elections in which outcomes defied polling predictions, the need in Iowa to defend against "soft money" ground operations run by groups such as America Coming Together, the attacks on Sen. Grassley's tax and prescription drug initiatives from John Kerry's presidential campaign — and the risk of projecting an air of complacency, even arrogance, by running a low-key campaign.

The underfunded Democrat, Small, entered the race hoping to draw Grassley out on issues such as tax policy, Iraq, and the trade deficit. But his campaign was never taken seriously by local media and so there was no real debate, Small says. His position papers "fell with a silent thud," as he puts it.

Small says he tried to solicit contributions, spending hours a day on the phone. "It was a god-awful experience. I did it for a few days." His biggest donor sent $50.

He ran no ads. "I didn't have that kind of money to show me mowing my lawn," says Small.

In New York, incumbent Sen. Charles Schumer had no primary opponent and a token challenger in Republican Howard Mills, who spent $629,000 on the 2004 race. Schumer however spent $15 million, including almost $9 million on TV commercials placed by Morris & Carrick. It can cost more than $1 million a week to advertise in the very expensive New York television market.

At the time, news media reports presented the ad campaign as a way of broadening Schumer's appeal for a potential race for governor in 2006, since the media exposure wasn't needed to win re-election to the Senate. Schumer however decided not to enter the governor's race; Elliott Spitzer is now the Democratic candidate.

Experts say incumbents often raise and spend large amounts to scare off challengers, to be able to come to Washington with the cachet of having their constituents' overwhelming support and to prepare for the next race.

Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America, says "a lot of money is wasted by incumbents who sense risk where none really exists." Asked specifically about the re-elections of Schumer and Grassley, he says, "But remember, Republicans have won in New York, Democrats have won in Iowa, and so you don't want to show any sign of weakness. You want to blow them away."

But, inherent in any super-sized race, Mann reminds us, are enormous fundraising demands on candidates, "who therefore call on lobbyists, who feel obliged to give and to raise [money] for them."

That, Mann says, can lead to other problems.

"And then, there's oftentimes, [though] not always, a search not just for preferential access, but sometimes for contracts and earmarks," he cautions. "And so the potential for conflicts of interest are serious ones."