Campaigns need money. Professionals work on them and should get paid. Media outlets charge for exponential reach. There is travel, accommodations, and events that all cost money. We need signage, handouts, and swag.
That is why the end of every message from every candidate is some kind of donation ask.
Campaigns are financed three ways: 1) candidate’s personal investment – often categorized on FEC reports as a loan; 2) donors – there are caps for individual donors ($3500 for our race); and 3) interest groups and corporate donors – these are harder to track thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling which basically un-did the McCain-Feingold Act that attempted to get “soft money” out of politics. Some campaigns also have revenue sources like t-shirt sales.
Some of the biggest, most expensive campaigns have been run lately. The 2024 Presidential race reportedly cost $15.9 billion. Senate races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Montana have all cost over $285 million. Thomas Massie lost his primary with $37 million having been spent on 100,071 voters, so $370 per vote.
The 2020 race between Lindsey Graham and Jaime Harrison spent somewhere between $220 and $277 million with the Harrison campaign spending $106 million or $95 per vote.
On what?
About 45-60% of that money goes to media outlets buying air-time for ads, interviews, and other coverage; some money spent on producing those ads. Major outlets like FOX News and CNN boast higher audience numbers and charge accordingly. Even digital advertising with geographic-specific targeting like Facebook, Instagram, HULU, Netflix, and TikTok comes at a price.
Campaigns need media outlets to create exponential reach. Instead of the one-on-one sharing of ideas, it’s one-to-ten thousand or more. A lot of that advertising is name recognition and top-level messaging, simple, basic stuff that sticks with people.
To craft that messaging and design those ads, campaigns spend about 20% of their budget on paid operatives. These people have experience and expertise in running campaign playbooks. They know how to fundraise, how to market, how to organize and how to mobilize. In addition to full-time staff, there are consultants of every specialty who pitch themselves to campaigns for short-term work.
After I registered with the Federal Elections Commission in 2025, I fielded dozens of marketing pitches from consultants who wanted as much as $3500 a month to work on my campaign. One told me, “that’s just one max donor per month. You can get that.” So it would be my job, as the candidate, to raise $3500 per month just to pay this person. Let alone the signs, stickers, and media we would have to buy. Sure. I’ll get right on that.
The remaining 20% of the campaign’s money can be spent on voter targeting, data analytics, field operations and voter turnout, and other sundry things. But the two big things are media and personnel.
It’s not like we don’t know we need the money.
We have raised just about $17,000 and spent pretty much all of it. We have some more coming in, monthly donors make up about $1000 a month, but it’s still nowhere near the $30M I heard my opponent plans to raise.
Our goal has been $100,000 from the beginning. We figured we could spend about $30,000 to $50,000 on media and the rest on signage, swag, and printed materials. No one on our team is being paid except the graphic designer (per unit, not salary) and the video production company (a start-up out of Greenville that’s letting us be their beta test). We paid for some professional website work, but we insisted it be on a framework that both my campaign manager and I could update as needed.
Our strategy has been a Blue Ocean Strategy which is a proven business model for insurgents building new markets. Our new market is independent voters. They are largely ignored by establishment parties and often don’t vote at all because they are uninspired.
We aim to inspire the independent voter to participate in the midterm election by choosing an alternative candidate.
The Blue Ocean Strategy is not a secret, though we may be the first campaign to engage it. You can get the full lesson on it here. But basically we’re trying to move into uncontested market space (independent voters) and create a new demand by offering something our competitors don’t (the national debt conversation) and combining cost leadership (low-cost campaign) with differentiation (people not party). Like I said, it’s not particularly innovative except, maybe, in our execution of it.
Our financial disadvantage is looming large as election day draws nearer and the race has earned national attention after Senator Graham’s passing. The seething expenditures of the establishment smell blood in the water. Consultants, media, and interest groups are all circling the race looking for opportunity. I’m now receiving emails from data analysts, text-banking operations, and media sales people.
The craziest part is how none of them has read our website, or done any real research on what we’re doing at all. How do I know? Many of them congratulate me on winning my primary.
If you were going to sell something to someone, wouldn’t you get to know that someone first? Make sure your product is the right fit? Determine if you can meet that person’s needs? Maybe they know we can’t afford them anyway, so why bother pitching to us?
You should know your customers before you pitch.
That’s what I’ve been doing. Traveling to all 46 counties isn’t about loving to drive my Mazda MX-5 or spend time with my college-bound daughter before she leaves the nest (although those are great unintended perks).
I’ve been meeting people where they are: the Peach Festival, the Watermelon Festival, the Striped Bass Festival, the rodeo, the gun show, the Red Rose Festival, wherever they have civic pride, something they’re excited to share about their town. Stories, traditions, and local businesses. I’ve been meeting them – YOU – where you are. Showing you, hopefully that I’m interested in you.
Our campaign bought 500 fans with the logo and contact info printed on them and passed them out in Gaffney. We also put the website and logo on 300 mini bubble wands and handed those out. We distributed post cards and took pictures and posted on all the social channels. That’s where our money has gone: physical goods we handed out to as many people as were willing to take them.
The team that walked the parade had t-shirts that look like concert souvenirs: they list all the places we’ve been since January. That’s where our money has been going: parades and festivals and the t-shirts for our team to represent. Also signs, we have a ton of signs. We’re using South Carolina vendors. We’re supporting South Carolina businesses.
If we had more money, we’d buy more fans to hand out. We’d print more postcards and signs. We’d give more bubbles to kids. And hope that everyone who sees the web address visits our site and considers voting for me.
If we had more money, we’d pay to boost our social media content, specifically the live streams where voters can see me interacting with other South Carolinians on important topics. We’d reach out to more influencers, appear on more podcasts, and attend more events as sponsors.
How much money should it take to convince one million voters to come out on November 3rd and choose me on their ballot?
$1 a vote? Can we raise $1 million?
$0.10 a vote? Can we raise $100,000?
I understand people are reluctant to give to a campaign they don’t think can win. I also know we can’t win without the money. Without traditional media (the bulk of a campaign’s budget), we just can’t get the exponential reach we’ll need to establish the four critical pillars.
Four pillars for Victory
- Name recognition: people have to know who I am. Recognize my name when they see it on the ballot. Trust that I’m the right choice for this job.
- Message acceptance: voters need to know what I stand for and agree with me. Not on everything, but on enough issues that they want to give me a chance to represent them in Washington, D.C.
- Proxy mobilization: voters, once they’ve decided on me, need to share my message with their friends and families. Tell others you’ve chosen me and why. Spread the message to try to gain more support for items 1 and 2.
- Poll action: voters have to show up on November 3rd. It’s a midterm election and turnout is usually low, but with the vacant seat for US Senate, we expect the turnout to be higher than in the past midterms. Even so, we believe 1 million votes can win.
We need a million votes. And we’ll spend whatever we get. But we’re not going to spend $30 million.
We don’t think we should have to. We want to earn your trust, earn your vote. Not buy it.
And if you’re one of the independent voters we have talked to that doesn’t want to see money buy elections, like Kentucky’s 4th district, then you should vote for me. Because if we win this thing, it won’t be because we bought it.
We will have earned it.
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