The greedy truth about media consultants - Walter Shapiro (Salon)

[kpete]

The greedy truth about media consultants
Think you know where your campaign dollars go? Think again, sucker. Political image-makers skim off sums that would make Exxon execs envious -- and the public never knows about it.

By Walter Shapiro

May 9, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- Psst! You with your checkbook in one hand and a political fundraising letter in the other. Are you sure you're being shrewd instead of being screwed when you send your money to this particular campaign?

OK, you've studied the issues so intently that you can recite from memory the candidate's nine-part plan for graduated, phased "victory with honor" withdrawal from Iraq. And you've crunched enough polling data to create a black hole and can prove through regression analysis that your candidate can knock off the incumbent merely by picking up 11 percentage points among male voters over the age of 37 who watch the Cooking Channel.

But have you scrutinized the financial arrangements and consultant contracts of this campaign the way you would skeptically analyze the balance sheet of your favorite charity? Would you feel ripped off if you discovered that about 15 percent of everything you donate goes right into the pockets of the media-consulting firm?

What we are talking about is one of the biggest secrets in politics, right up there with debate briefing books and sealed divorce decrees. In this fate-of-the-nation political year when more than $1 billion will be given to Senate and House candidates, there is just one certainty about the outcome -- the true winners in November will be the leading media consultants in both parties.

much more (after short ad)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/09/campaign_consultants/

[acmejack]

1. Another reason that there is so much resistance to public funding?

of political campaigns? A lot of money made by a lot of people for doing very little. Think about it, all those "strategists running around, coming up with losing plans, election after election. Obviously they are not paid by the win...

[DinahMoeHum]

2. This Washington Monthly article names names in the consulting racket.

Link:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.sullivan.html

Another good source is the book Crashing The Gate, as they devote a whole chapter on this subject:
http://www.crashingthegate.com/
and an excerpt from the book on how the DC establishment consultants lock out real talent:
http://www.alternet.org/story/34113/

:kick:

[chaumont58]

3. No one held a gun to Harry Reid's head

and made him name Hansen.

from the article:

"But don't cry for Joe Hansen—he's the consultant for incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid."

What hold do these fools have over even bigger fools? This country suffers because of the chimp in the White House and the Dems who had large hands in getting the chimp there get promoted.

I am tired of losing, but its more than just losing. Bob Shrum has gotten very, very wealthy. The country has gotten very, very much poorer.

[KoKo]

4. Here's another snip about what Bob Shrum (Tweety's Favorite) did to Kerry

in '04. The article also mentions that Shrum used up money that could have put Gore over the top in Ohio in 2000. Shrum is scum and any Dem candidate who hires him deserves to lose. The guy doesn't win anything but sits his big self on Tweety commenting for Dems where he's just hawking for business.

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snip from SALON:

Democrats have the reputation as the party of gold-plated consultants largely because of Bob Shrum, the sharp-elbowed and avaricious image-maker for Al Gore and John Kerry. But in this campaign year, at least, there do not appear to be major differences between the two parties in terms of the vigorish paid to media consultants. Interviews with both Democratic and Republican campaign managers, pollsters and national party officials all produced similar descriptions of the current fee structure for ad makers. Given the reluctance of virtually everyone in politics to talk on-the-record about this taboo topic, I sometimes felt as if I would have to resort to meeting my sources in underground parking garages at 2 in morning.

These days, in a typical hotly contested House race, the media consulting firm will get between 10 percent and 15 percent of the total television ad buy, full reimbursement of production costs, maybe a post-election "victory bonus" and sometimes a $3,000-a-month consulting fee. To convey a sense of how perplexing this all is (especially to the campaign managers who negotiate the contracts), the consultant's percentage fee is calculated based on the TV stations' posted ad rates (the inflated gross) rather than the actual charges (the net). If the prior sentence confuses you, just think Hollywood sleight-of-hand bookkeeping.

What does all this mean to you as a campaign donor? If a congressional candidate budgets, say, $1.5 million for television, less than $1.3 million will be spent on airtime and production costs. The rest (imagine your money with little wings on it flying out the window) goes directly into what might be called the image-maker's beach-house fund.