As November approaches, voters are being bombarded with informative flyers, commercials, public speeches and phone calls by the men and women who hope to hold a place in the state Legislature after the election.
All those campaigning efforts require money, something incumbents in the state Legislature have in spades, according to a recent report by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Covering the first six months of 2004, reports filed by candidates with the state Elections Board revealed incumbents had a total of $2.84 million on hand for campaigning uses, while challengers only had $358,925. That translates into an eight-to-one cash advantage held by the state’s incumbents.
David Steffen, R-Green Bay, was one of two candidates challenging Democratic State Sen. Dave Hansen in the upcoming election. Although he lost in the primary, Steffen said before the partisan election he lacked resources available to incumbents.
“The people see the incumbent officers as a ‘safer invest’ per se, because they have already been elected and have the chance to prove themselves,” Steffen opined. “For me, this means that I have to work three times as hard to make up for the initial lost ground.”
University of Wisconsin political science professor Kenneth Goldstein said the money gap between incumbents and challengers is evident outside of Wisconsin as well.
“This is a common state of affairs in legislative elections across the country,” Goldstein said. “Incumbents are the largest predictor in electoral history for future officers.”
The gap between a candidate in office and a new candidate is very difficult to close, Goldstein said.
“Challengers must attach to free media as best they can,” Goldstein advised. “When they aren’t receiving the monies necessary, they have to find other measures to make for effective competition.”
Steffen said he used free media as much as possible.
“I have gone to over 7,000 doors in the district to meet and greet potential voters. This gives me the opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with the people and helps me to become more recognizable.”
Steffen has also attended many public events.
“Basically every single community event that I have found in the paper I have made the effort to attend,” he said.
The cash advantage does not apply only to those in the state Legislature.
A review of Gov. Doyle’s finance report revealed an increase in contributions from employees of the telephone company SBC. Contributions from the company’s political action committees and individual employees to Doyle equaled $21,975 in the first six months of 2004.
“Again, this is the advantage of incumbency,” Steffen said. “Large companies such as SBC want to make an investment that has previously proven to be secure. I am currently just an unknown entity.”
This historical advantage of incumbency is an interesting political pattern, Goldstein noted.
“The circular logic of this issue resides on the face that a strong candidate is someone who has money, but people must give a candidate money to begin with to become strong,” he said.
