Won’t Any Cash I Send to Campaigns Now Arrive Too Late to Be Useful?

There are still a few ways for an enterprising political campaign to spend your money in a hurry, even this late in the game.

Sen. J.D. Vance. (Gage Skidmore)
By Marty Smith

We’re less than two weeks from Election Day, yet I’m still getting fundraising texts from various campaigns. What good could my money do now? Surely all the campaign staff has been hired, the TV ad buys all made, the buses all chartered, etc. Won’t any cash I send in now arrive too late to be useful? —Not Made of Money

This is the point in an election year when you start to suspect that someone has written your phone number in the U.S. Capitol’s most popular bathroom along with the words “FOR A GOOD TIME CALL.” I sympathize with your position, Made: If we could be sure that the time to donate had passed, we might feel less guilty about texting that all-caps “STOP” that (theoretically, at least) gets Jon Tester off our jock.

Unfortunately for our collective conscience, in politics (and everything else), money tends to be pretty great no matter when you get it. There are still a few ways for an enterprising political campaign to spend your money in a hurry, even this late in the game.

You’re right that TV ads tend to be scheduled well in advance. The cheaper ads on that schedule, however, are contractually “preemptible.” For the right price, a campaign can bump these, effectively getting a new ad on the air with just a day or two’s notice. Ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram are even quicker, appearing on users’ screens just as fast as the campaigns’ checks can clear.

That said, it does seem suspicious that the pleas for money are ramping up just as the window for useful spending seems to be closing. What gives? The answer probably won’t surprise you: Mostly, the campaigns are hitting you up for money they’ve already spent.

In fairness, this isn’t quite as sleazy as it sounds. It’s normal for campaigns to have unpaid bills—some won’t even come due till after the election. And the fundraisers know their receipts will peak in the fall, when interest in the campaign is highest. They also know that it’s a lot tougher to get people to donate after the election is over. The upshot of all this is that political campaigns have to spend October raising money that they spent in July on stuff that didn’t actually have to be paid for until January. Who says democracy is dead?

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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