Political Dollars

Dear Vermont political candidates,

I have a request. 

We are now at the height of the campaign season. It’s crazy I know. We all agree. You are out there trying to get noticed, trying to get a message across, trying to distinguish yourself. Your are exhausted, frustrated that voters don’t pay more attention. The media both fascinates and ruins your mind. They focus on the wrong things. They are unfair. They get it wrong. Through it all, you have to do something that very few voters understand but without doing it you can’t win.

And that is raising money. Even in a COVID world where the campaign has slowed and you are relegated to ZOOM and backyard “meet and greets,’’ you still have to constantly raise money. It is a terrible thing. You hate it. The donors hate it. The media measures you by it. 

And yet Vermont candidates will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars this year to fund their races. The money pays your campaign manager, for mailings to voters, for yard signs. But most of all it pays for advertising. A little known secret in political campaigns is that most of the money raised goes to pay for TV advertising. Add to that the Facebook and Google advertising that undercuts local media outlets and you have a behemoth that sucks up billions in campaign dollars given by voters.

That $25 your grandfather sent to Joe Biden? It is mostly going to local TV stations and Mark Zuckerberg a Facebook. That is a shame. 

You know who else gets that huge amount of campaign money?  DC campaign consultants. Here is how it works. The campaign decides to spend $50,000 on TV ads. The ad has to be made, it needs a script, it has to be shot with a camera crew etc etc. Traditionally, the media firm in DC takes between 10-15 percent of the advertising spending.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders raised $220 million. The firms that did the ad buying and ad production took in more than $80 million. Thats a lot of money. DC media consultants own a lot of beach houses thanks to money made from political campaigns for president, Senate, House and local races for governor.

So - two requests for Vermont candidates.

Request Number 1 - Please use Vermont media firms to buy and produce your ads. For years, everyone from Pat Leahy and Peter Shumlin to Jim Douglas and Phil Scott have used DC firms to make their ads. That is a massive outflow of dollars, much of it donated by Vermonters, to outside firms that don’t really care about Vermont and its voters. It’s a scam.

The response from politicians when I raise this has always been that Vermont doesn’t have the pool of talented media buying and production firms to do this work. No longer true. 

If candidates want to be true to their promises to grow the Vermont economy, why not pledge to spend all campaign donations on services IN Vermont, including the creative firms making the ads. How bout the yard signs, T-shirts and direct mail campaigns? Democratic candidates wouldn’t dream of having their campaign T-shirts and buttons made outside of a union shop. But they routinely spend thousands outside Vermont on media firms in DC.

Bring this spending home and it’s a million dollar payday for Vermont media firms, graphic designers, and web developers. Talk about good for the economy!

Request number 2 - Please pledge to stop buying Facebook and Google ads. Shift those dollars to local media outlets, as painful as that can be when you don’t like what they write about you. Seven Days and VtDigger are read by everyone. (Conflict of Interest disclosure - I’m on the Digger board) Spend your dollars there, along with the great weeklies: Chronicle of Barton, Addison Independent and White River Valley Herald. 

At the very least, we should be asking the candidates why they talk so much about improving the Vermont economy but choose to spend so much money outside of Vermont. When you donate money, demand that they spend it locally. 

Such practices would ensure that millions donated to campaigns from inside and outside of Vermont would be spent here instead of going to the DC political-industrial complex. 

Here is an unscientific list of firms and people who do this work right here in VT. That’s just off the top of my head.

1. Dreamlike Pictures

2. Hen House Media

3. The Imagination Co. 

4. Vermont Social

5. Stride Creative

6. KSV

7. Marketing Partners

8. HMC Advertising

9. Place Creative 

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