tight re-election battle with Democratic challenger
to represent Illinois’ 17th District is attracting national attention and money.
Lots of it.
As of October 15, the race pitting the freshman elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010 against the former East Moline City Council member had seen more than $5.9 million spent by independent sources like the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
and the
Republican National Congressional Committee
.
That’s the second-highest total of the 435 races being contested across the country, according to an Hoy analysis of expenditure data from the
.
Democratic control of the legislative and executive branches in Illinois in 2011’s redistricting lead to a map redistricting that favored Democratic congressional aspirants, according to
emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Schilling concurred.
“They put this map together and allowed no Republicans to have a say in the redraw,” he said.
National Democratic Party leadership said they have targeted the state as pivotal to its efforts to regain control of the House of Representatives.
“The road to the Majority goes through Illinois,” said Democratic Congressional Committee Executive (DCCC) Director
on an October 22 conference call. He explained that the party has identified six candidates to support in their races as part of the larger effort. As a result, although Schilling-Bustos is the Illinois congressional race with the most outside money being spent, it’s far from the state’s only one that seeing a lot of independent expenditures.
In fact, five of the nation’s congressional districts which have had the highest level of independent expenditures are in President Barack Obama’s home state.
That’s the most in the country, Hoy found. California, Iowa and North Carolina each had two races among the 25 contest with the highest independent expenditures.
In order of independent expenditure, the others include 11th District race of
against
, the 12th District race of Republican
against
; the 13th District contest of
against Republican
; and the 8th District, which pits
against Democrat
.
In all, Illinois’ total of more than $24.7 million in independent expenditures placed it second in the country to California’s $31.1 million, while its per person spending of $1,374,097 per person was the third highest of 12 states in which a minimum of $5 million had been spent.
In a microcosm of trends around the country, the vast majority of these expenditures have been dedicated to television ads opposing, rather than supporting, candidates.
Political action committees supporting both major parties have spent more than $145 million nationally since September 1 on expenditures that oppose, rather than support, the candidate.
That’s 85 percent of the $172 million total in independent expenditures during that time.
The DCCC and the
have been the biggest spenders on the Democratic side. the National Republican Congressional Committee and the
, which generally supports Republican candidates, were the top spenders for Republican candidates. As of mid-October, these four committees accounted for 67 percent, or more than two of every three, national dollars spent on opposing candidate.
More than $132 million, or 77 percent, of this money nationally has been spent on political advertisements criticizing the other party’s representative, Hoy’s analysis found.
Mook of the DCCC justified the expenditures as necessary to tell voters “the truth” about the Republican candidates, but the effectiveness of attack ads eventually diminishes at a certain point, according to
, director of the
Paul Simon Public Policy Institute
at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
“It has an effect, up to a point,” Yepsen said. “We’re at a stage that there’s so much sloshing around that people start to tune it out. I call it political muzak.”
He added that independent groups like the National Republican Congressional Committee also spend money on radio ads and workers in the district who do door to door outreach.
On Monday Mook of the DCCC announced the launch of “Illinois Votes,” a state-wide Get Out the Vote strategy in the final push to election day. The DCCC is operating 12 offices across Illinois and deployed more than 30 staff on the ground to help get out the vote for the Democratic ticket, he said.
The National Republican Congressional Committee could not be reached for comment about their operations on the ground in Illinois.
Each of the five congressional contests is close, and is likely to stay so until the election, Yepsen said.
This trend is likely to lead to more money being poured into the races.
For his part, Schilling noted that the millions of dollars spent could go to other causes.
“It’s a lot of money,” he said. “It’s every two years.
“We could put the money into helping the poor and needy,” Schilling said.
