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Today’s number: $36 per vote

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Illinois

Republican Bruce Rauner spent a record $65.3 million — or nearly $36 a vote — to become Illinois’ new governor, newly filed state records showed Thursday.

In the last three months of 2014 alone, Rauner spent nearly $24 million, including nearly $22.8 million from Oct. 1 to Election Day on Nov. 4, according to the State Board of Elections filing. […]

Overall, Rauner’s campaign spent $65.3 million since it began in March 2013, and the Republican received more than 1.8 million votes in his general election victory compared with nearly 1.7 million votes for Quinn, who was seeking a second elected term. That translates to $35.83 per vote for Rauner.

Quinn spent $12.9 million in the fourth quarter.

But if you go back to March of 2013 and compare that to the Tribune’s Rauner number, Quinn’s total rises to just under $30.9 million, or about $18 per vote.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:33 am

Comments

Damn, I wish I was a consultant on his race. I would be on easy street!

Comment by Tom Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:34 am
All that money, and this what he buys?! Talk about a guy who doesn’t know how to have fun.

Comment by Ducky LaMoore Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:36 am
Didn’t Rauner say, to his credit, he would spend whatever it took to win?

Is it a gaudy number? How bad do you want to be called “governor”?

If I would have gotten $36 for my vote, that’s a dozen higher quality golf balls, that might have pushed me to vote for Bruce…maybe.

Comment by Oswego Willy Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:37 am
I have to keep asking myself why? What is his return on his investment? I am too much of a cynic to say he did this for Illinois.

Comment by illilnifan Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:37 am
Now all we have to do is wait and see how he intends to make that investment pay off for himself…or for his “blind trust”

Comment by Johnnie F. Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:42 am
He is worth something north of $500 million, right? If he makes 8%, thats $40 mil, so spending whatever it takes to become gov is no big deal.

Comment by Langhorne Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:44 am
I would like to see a sort of “heat” map of where the money went. Surly not every vote cost $36. Some of those votes were a lot cheaper than that. I know its not a 1:1 trade and if we’re going to break it down this way, it would be interesting to see it even further sliced up.

Comment by Alex P. Keaton Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:45 am
Expensive hobby.

Comment by Wordslinger Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:46 am
The price of ego.

Comment by PublicServant Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:46 am
He bought his spot as Gov for millions and millions of dollars. I think he’s going to run for President one day and then everyone in the US will be doomed, not just Illinois.

Comment by Em Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:51 am
Rich businessmen aren’t used to and don’t like to lose. Just look at Mitt as an example. The money’s not important. Just winning the prize is..

Comment by Mouthy Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:55 am
Talk about sand down a rat hole…

Comment by Anonymous Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:56 am
So where did all this money end up? Which media outlets got the advertising dollars and how much did each get and when? I’m sure there could be no relationship between money spent and endorsements, so let’s just get all that information out in the public, right?

Comment by wjmaggos Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:00 am
$36 per vote. Yep, that’s not business as usual, Bruce.

Comment by Streator Curmudgeon Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:06 am
Willy, I’d hold out for $50.

Comment by Norseman Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:07 am
It has been said that a certain percentage of individuals are going to vote Republican or Democrat no matter what. As a conservative guess, I am put that at 40% for each side.

Rauner received 50% of the vote. Thus, it could be argued he spent $360 per (swing) vote.

Comment by Rufus Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:09 am
…or beyond endorsements, is coverage affected by advertising dollars spent on a media outlet? this is the key problem with campaign finance. beyond the fact that advertising does affect voters, it also creates bias (or the appearance of bias) in the media. and does anyone wonder why campaign finance reform gets little coverage in the media when they make good money on the current system?

Comment by wjmaggos Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:16 am
If Rauner and the ultra wealthy so-called conservatives had their way with right to work laws and other union stripping, what a democracy we would have. No one would be able to compete with their dollars.

If middle class workers wanted to strip union rights, they would have formed their own organizations to attempt this. From what I can tell , the people behind union stripping efforts are super wealthy.

I say so called conservatives because they get government subsidies and tax loopholes, and in the case of Rauner, they make lots of government money, whether it’s through pensions, government safety net programs or the military.

Comment by Grandson of Man Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:16 am
- Norseman - I think you’re right. If they went north of $60, they’d have my attention. If they offered $62.75 plus …a gift card…but I digress

Comment by Oswego Willy Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:16 am
Sure is more evidence that the liberal media and unions control the media and the government…

Comment by D.P.Gumby Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:22 am
Question for the mor campaign oriented folks here:

Is this the best metric? It seems like $ per square foot in real estate. Sure it gives you an idea of what’s going on but there are a lot of variables.

Heat map? Some kind of proprietary political SABRmetric equivalent?

This race was like Steve Ballmer’s purchase of the Clippers. He overpaid, but he wanted it and has the money.

Comment by LizPhairTax Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:25 am
$36?

I suspect that will be peanuts to the taxpayer dollars he’ll offer members of the GA to get his favorite programs passed.

Comment by Katich Walker, Jr. Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:37 am
Silly me, I thought it was called “free speech”.

Thanks for clearing that up, Citizens United!

Comment by Jocko Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:40 am
There has been lots of praise for the late Judy Baar Topinka online. I do not recall anyone railing about how unfair it was when Topinka or Jim Ryan were routed in the their gubernatorial races because Rod Blagojevich had more campaign dollars at his disposal.

There were plenty of other criticisms of Rod, but I cannot recall objections to his airing commercials around the clock.

I am willing to guess that Rauner completely eclipsed Blagojevich’s spending records.

Comment by Under Further Review Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:42 am
Remember the old Abba song…
“Money, money, money, must be funny in a rich man’s world! All the things I could do, if I had a little money, it’s a rich man’s world!”
Good luck to all the rest of us.

Comment by Children First Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:44 am
So Governor Rauner beat the Unions at their own game.

Comment by Thunder Fred Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:50 am
UFR, don’t be a victim.

There were plenty of people who howled that the sitting governor under multiple federal investigations was banking mucho $25K checks from our states leading citizens to bury JBT in negative ads early.

Comment by Wordslinger Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:06 am
It would take some research, but I bet individual legislators paid north of this amount in primaries and generals in their districts with the help of their partners and benefactors. If you knew what the vote was going to be beforehand, he probably could have trimmed this to $32. Whatever.

Comment by A guy Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:14 am
Rauner started with zero name recognition.

He spent millions making himself known. Quinn was already governor, and already known. So comparing what Rauner spent in order to catch up with Quinn among voters, then adding into that amount what he spent during the official campaign - isn’t an accurate comparison at all.

Both candidates spent a similar amount during the final weeks of the official campaign.

Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:15 am
I would have gladly accepted a check for $36 and foregone the polling phone calls and TV ads.

Comment by SkeptiCal Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:21 am
The post-Citizens United world is downright scary. Seriously. When you look at what’s happened here with the huge bucks BR spent from his own coffers, the $20 mill he and his 2 uber-rich buddies just dropped to “influence” legislators, and then look at what’s happening elsewhere across the country with the super rich buying their own or their friends’ elections to high office how can any regular working class person not be completely terrified by where this is heading? Aren’t we at a point where you have NO chance of being elected to high office unless you have tons of your own dough to spend and/or tons of dough from some select super-rich buddies or corporate entities? And do you think those super-rich buddies or corporations expect nothing for their investments? And don’t give me this stuff about how “the unions” can compete with this. They most definitely cannot nor can anyone else. For the first time ever I am really worried and pessimistic about the political landscape and reality which my children will live in. (Sorry for the rant, but I needed to vent.)

Comment by Livin' the Life Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:31 am
“That’s all? What a deal!” - Blair Hull

Comment by Anonymoiis Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:32 am
- Livin’ the Life - Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:31 am:

The post-Citizens United world is downright scary. Seriously. When you look at what’s happened here with the huge bucks -Unions- spent from -THEIR- own coffers, the $20 mill -THEY- and -THEIR- uber-rich buddies just dropped to “influence” legislators, and then look at what’s happening elsewhere across the country with the -UNIONS- buying their own or their friends’ elections to high office how can any regular working class person not be completely terrified by where this is heading? Aren’t we at a point where you have -NO- chance of being elected to high office unless you have tons of -UNION- dough to spend? And do you think those -UNIONS- expect nothing for their investments? And don’t give me this stuff about how “the -AVERAGE PERSON-” can compete with this. They most definitely cannot nor can anyone else. For the first time ever I am really worried and pessimistic about the political landscape and reality which my children will live in. (Sorry for the rant, but I needed to vent.)

- With a couple of minor changes it works both ways.

Comment by Thunder Fred Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:42 am
==The post-Citizens United world is downright scary. Seriously.==

So it’s scarier now than in 2004 when a candidate spent nearly $30 million in just the primary?

Comment by Anonymoiis Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:47 am
==- Em - Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 9:51 am:==

Can he buy his way through a GOP primary like he did here?

==- LizPhairTax - Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 10:25 am:==

This is a fun metric, but like someone said earlier in the thread there are a certain amount of people who are going to turn out for the Republican candidate no matter what. In a statewide campaign like this you want to target a volunteer universe towards those people, after all they are hardcore GOPers. Then you want to focus on persuadables and people who don’t vote in off years. Some of the persuadables might vote all the time, but be Dem primaries for a couple cycles and then GOP for a couple, or some combination thereof. Other people are persuadable in a sense, but not necessarily going to switch sides. These are presidential voters who may vote sometimes in off years, sometimes not. You’ve got to hit these folks with an importance of the election message plus inform them of the ways you can vote (early, mail, etc.).

With all of the microtargeting today, you don’t want to dump too much into TV, but use TV as part of an integrated strategy. For example, to reach a mainly female audience I might do TV on Lifetime + WE + Bravo, but I don’t want to stop there. I want messages from the same stream on Facebook or on similar websites. Ed Gillespie’s Senate strategy used integrated media pretty well, with a heavy focus on digital because of their monetary inability to focus a lot on big TV.

Comment by Precinct Captain Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 12:24 pm
==- VanillaMan - Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 11:15 am:==

==Both candidates spent a similar amount during the final weeks of the official campaign.==

Can you read? Rauner spent “nearly $22.8 million from Oct. 1 to Election Day.” “Quinn spent $12.9 million in the fourth quarter.”

Comment by Precinct Captain Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 12:29 pm
===Sure is more evidence that the liberal media and unions control the media and the government… ===

I find it ironic that the conservative Rauner spend much of his campaign money buying advertising. The liberal media was one of the major financial beneficiaries of the $65.3 million Rauner spent during the campaign.

Comment by Hit or Miss Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 12:52 pm
Overcoming one party rule is very expensive. But what is more expensive is the disaster we faced if things were to continue on the path we were on. At least with new blood, we have a chance of avoiding disaster.

Comment by Logical Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 1:05 pm
…and when I lived in the 19th Ward you were lucky to get a Turkey and a garbage can for your family’s vote from the local precinct captain.

Tell me, Precinct Captain, how much do votes go for in your precinct these days?LOL?

Comment by Arizona Bob Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 1:11 pm
Everyone complains about how much money is spent on campaigns, but almost no one takes the next step to examine what that money is spent on, who gets it and how much, and how it works to influence public opinion. I guess I am asking the media to report on themselves. But maybe if we explored these subjects, we could get somewhere on the issue. Make it embarrassing in how the media is so dependent on this money (if it is) and how both the media and the public are so easily influenced.

Comment by wjmaggos Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 1:25 pm
Strange unreality based talking points here.

What is the “liberal media” and how are broadcast and cable TV stations part of it? For the life of me, I don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.

Comment by Wordslinger Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 1:30 pm
Better to spend $36 per vote to win than $18 per vote to lose.

John

Comment by John Boch Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 3:22 pm
Check out the third quarter of spending between the candidates before you ask if I can read.

Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 3:44 pm
Thank you, Precinct Captain.

Comment by LizPhairTax Friday, Jan 16, 15 @ 3:44 pm