In his book Real Change, Newt Gingrich asserted that the Republican Party lost power in the late 1990’s because its leaders were held captive by a swarm of consultants. According to Gingrich, the consultants (a) led Republican leaders toward safe positions that would play well during the next election cycle, and (b) steered them away from fresh, original ideas that might require some cultivation. Based on recent developments, Gingrich’s advice is not being heeded.
I had first-hand experience with this concept in my five-person Republican primary earlier this year. The two candidates with a lot of money to spend spent a lot of that money on consultants even before the rest of us started campaigning. (Canseco spent over $40,000 and Hurd spent over $30,000.) When the campaign got going on the ground, I was struck by the similarity of the Canseco and Hurd positions. In fact, I couldn’t detect any significant difference of opinion (other than term limits, which Hurd couldn’t support because he was only 32 years old, and district residency, which Canseco couldn’t support because he wasn’t a resident). Even more revealing was their practice of evading tough questions by giving vague, similar responses. By contrast, the other three candidates took positions that sometimes deviated from Republican orthodoxy and felt obligated to directly answer direct questions.
Today, there was article in the New York Times relating to the extreme reliance on consultants. The article suggested that Republican Meg Whitman, a billionaire running for governor in California, had given $1 million to Mike Murphy, a popular Republican consultant, to prevent him from consulting for Steve Poizner, Whitman’s main rival. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/us/politics/12whitman.html?hpw. The NYT article went on to say that this practice of buying up consultants is not a novel political tactic, as NYC’s Republican mayor/billionaire Michael Bloomberg commonly retained consultants whom he didn’t need, but didn’t want consulting against him.
This practice goes beyond politics. As an insurance-company lawyer, I heard about defendant-corporations who would place the leading attorneys in a small town on retainer as soon as it learned that the small town was the site of important litigation, not because they were going to use the lawyers, but because they wanted to prevent the other side from using them. And in college football many years ago, the strong teams like UT-Austin would give scholarships to players they didn’t need, just to keep them from playing for rival teams like the Texas Aggies. College football corrected their problem by limiting how many scholarships a team could give. Unfortunately, campaign finance is not as amenable to such simple reform.
A major part of the problem is that some players (candidates or corporations) have virtually unlimited resources to spend on something that they deem to be critical. An article in the SA Express-News today reported that Sarah Palin’s PAC (SarahPac) had received and spent almost $1 million in the last quarter. http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/FEC_filing_shows_Palin_gave_87500_to_candidates_98231109.html. I reviewed the filing and determined that she paid the following consultants in the first six months of this year:
- Orion Strategies, Washington, DC $40,000
- NorthStar Strategies, Alexandria, VA $75,000
- IzzyLene Consulting, Anchorage, AK $22,500
- True North L’Attitudes, Anchorage, AK $10,833.33
- Aries Petra Consulting, Woodbridge, VA $28,000
- Grey Strategies, Columbus, OH $45,000
- Andrew Davis, Sacramento, CA $30,000
- Pamela Pryor, Arlington, VA $30,000
- Kim Daniels, Bethesda, MD $26,000
- 338 Industries, Austin, TX $1,500
- Callisto Consulting, Millville, NJ $8,000
Why does Sarah Palin need to consult with so many consultants? The SarahPac website says it is dedicated to “supporting fresh ideas… By supporting SarahPac, you will allow Gov. Palin to help find and create solutions for America’s most pressing problems.” I wonder if Sarah’s contributors know that their money is going to a bunch of Beltway bobble-heads. By turning to consultants for fresh, creative, original ideas, Sarah is obviously not heeding Newt’s advice – i.e., consultants are a luxury the Republican Party cannot afford.
