In Final Weeks, Outside Money Pours into Democratic Primary

In Final Weeks, Outside Money Pours into Democratic Primary

Have the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for Rhode Island governor upheld their pledge to keep outside money out of this year’s primary race?    

Outside Money Pours In

With two weeks left until the primary, reports filed with the Rhode Island Boar of Elections indicate that third party groups have entered the democratic primary fray.    A direct mail advertisement “Paid for American LeadHERship PAC, Kate Coyne-McCoy” went out in support of Democratic primary candidate, Gina Raimondo.

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Meanwhile, AFSCME’s national PAC based in Washington, DC filed an independent expenditure report for a media buy of more than $100,000 to defeat Raimondo.

‘I am not surprised that the one big $100,000 buy from AFSCME was designed to defeat somebody because oftentimes that is what the outside money is for and sort of the modus operandi is to go negative,” said Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion.

"These third party groups do not have to declare in the ad who they are trying to support.   If a candidate goes negative in their ad, they need to say who paid for it, or in other words, who the ad is designed to help, these third party groups do not.   Unlike the candidates themselves, independent expenditures can tear somebody down without saying who they are trying to help,” said Marion.

The People’s Pledge

In April, Democratic primary candidates Gina Raimondo, Angel Taveras and Clay Pell signed a People’s Pledge to discourage advertising by third party organizations in the primary election.   The Rhode Island People’s Pledge was modeled after a pledge taken by Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown in the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts. The negotiations were organized by Common Cause Rhode Island.  

"What the Pledge did in Massachusetts was that it moved the money from the outside groups and there was more money for candidates.  And because candidates are required to associate themselves with their ads because of the disclaimers, they do not want to go negative in a way that the proxies might,” said Marion.     

"The Peoples Pledge was designed to keep outside money outside of the Democratic Primary of this year’s Governor’s race. It was designed to change the dynamics of the race so we heard more from the candidates themselves and less from the proxies in the broadcast area,” said Marion.   "The three campaign managers negotiated the Peoples Pledge with us back in February March and April. We spent a considerable amount of time discussing the scope of the Pledge.  When we started to discuss the Pledge, one candidate [Gina Raimondo] wanted an all encompassing Pledge to include the cost of Get Out the Vote, door knocking, direct mail, pretty much anything any group might do to help a candidate from the outside.    The reason that it took us over a month to finish is that we had a really hard time pinning down how you could enforce a Pledge that included direct mail.  Because unlike a tv ad where the local tv station has to publish the ad buy, the direct mail firm cannot be forced to publish how much a group spends," said Marion.   

Independent Expenditures Common iDemocratic Primary Races 

The Pledge wasn’t designed to take the money out of the race.  In fact the money in the Democratic primary race has dwarfed the money in the Republican primary where the candidates discussed but did not ultimately sign a People's Pledge.   

"In Rhode Island there aren’t the sort of institutional actors on the Republican side  who historically get involved on the Republican side, whereas on the Democratic side we have seen a lot of union involvement in the primaries, and we see it in independent expenditures. If we look at how television advertising has propelled Clay Pell’s surge from basically nothing to second or third place in the polls. We can only speculate, but in the absence of a Pledge I think we would have seen broadcast radio ads, internet ads, and tv in particular paid for by third party groups that would have been even more negative, and may have been designed to help Pell even if they wouldn’t have mentioned his name.   If the NEA had been able to dump hundreds of thousands into TV ads, I think that would have even furthered things," said Marion.   

Did the People's Pledge Work?  Jury Still out

So far, none of the candidates have violated the People's Pledge because third party organizations have not yet done the sort of advertising that is covered by the Pledge which is TV, radio, print on any of their behalfs.  

"Thus far I think it has been very successful.  Often times we do not see the sort of outside spending the Pledge was designed to prevent until the final days of the race. But I think that the Pledge can still be successful if the candidates have to pay the penalty they agreed to in the Pledge which is the person who benefited by the ad has to pay the cost of the ad buy to a charity that is chosen by the person that is attacked by the ad," said Marion.