I got curious this morning about how important money was in the primary election.
In a quick check of just a few races, money is important–it’s terribly hard to win without any–but the person with the most money doesn’t always win.
I checked the candidate’s pre-primary campaign reports and compared them to the election results, sticking to campaigns where the value of incumbency wasn’t an issue.
Starting at the top, Neil Abercrombie beat Mufi Hannemann in the Democratic gubernatorial primary despite Hannemann’s significant money advantage through most of the campaign.
In the Lt. Governor’s race on the Democratic side, top vote-getter Brian Schatz raised $615,027 to 2nd place finisher Bobby Bunda’s $393,859.
But both were topped by the $647,073 raised by Norman Sakamoto, who finished a relatively distant third. Gary Hooser, who started his campaign very early, raised a respectable $295,508 but fell short in this field, placing fourth in both money and votes.
In the race for the City Council District IV seat to replace Charles Djou, Richard Turbin ($212,651) beat Stanley Chang ($139,957) by 50% in the race for dollars, but placed second behind Chang in votes.
Similarly, in the race to replace Lyla Berg in House District 18, the top vote getter, Mark Hashem ($13,555), raised less money than his two Democratic rivals but led the field in votes by a comfortable 37.9% to Lane’s 26.6% ($26,000) and Albert Lee’s 16.2% ($15,970).
Over in House District 31, the seat vacated by Glenn Wakai, who is running for Senate, the votes followed the money in order. Top vote getter, Linda Ichiyama, also had the biggest war chest ($59,523), far ahead of second-place finisher Ryan Toyomura ($13,400).
I would conclude that a candidate’s ability to raise money is very important, all other things being equal.
Luckily, all other things aren’t always equal.
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Check out Andy Parx’s recent post about the correlation between campaign funds and election results over on Kauai. A pretty close fit.
http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/2010/09/after-math.html
I have found that followthemoney.org’s (m)c50 function is very useful in determining the monetary competiveness of state legislative races.
Ben Shafer from Kahana – non-politician – garnered 1,700 with no street signs, no postcard mailings, no robocalls, no website.
John White had big money from Sanford Carr and Hawaii Reserves.
Imagine if this Kahana guy had some dollars.
Money is of course the most important element in a political race but you still need to run a smart race to win.
I don’t know how many times T.J. Lane walked Lyla Berg’s district but Mark Hashem claims he’s now in the middle of Round 4 in wearing out shoe leather– he started walking in May (he also notes that like his former boss Rep. Kyle Yamashita from Upcountry Maui, he made a point of outlasting his opponent while signwaving as well). Linda Ichiyama started walking in the Spring and began planning to run for the seat once Glenn Wakai seemed to be looking at Norman Sakamoto’s Senate office. Money certainly helps but knocking on doors also indicates how hard a person is campaigning (and money sometimes recognizes and follows the harder working candidate).