The Unevenness of the Q1 battle

One of the more under-reported stories of Question 1 – and an area the proponents have egregiously ignored – is the ironic money disparity between the two sides.

It’s not too surprising that the no side – funded predominately by state and national public-employee organization – is absolutely crushing the woefully funded yes side. It’s really brutal, and no one talks about it much.

In the first half of October, the “Coalition for our Communities” raised $2.4 million. $1.5 million came from the Mass Teachers’ Association. Another $750,000 came from the National Education Association. AFT-MA was good for $70,000. A passel of other public employee unions were also in the show.

It also spent an eye-popping $2.9 million. The New Media Firm, Inc. in Washington, D.C., earned nearly $1.6 million in consulting fees, which would appear to pay for the tidal wave of TV ads you’ve been seeing. A company called MSHC Partners, Inc., also in D.C., was paid $1.2 million for design and printing. I’m guessing that’s a mailer coming your way.

None of the above includes the $76,000 in in-kind contributions given to the no effort, mostly from – yup, public employee unions. In all, they’re up around $4.5 million in money raised up to this point.

In the meantime, the Committee for Small Government raised $25,891 in the first half of October. That’s after just over $40,000 in September. There’s a lot of consulting and some printing expenses, but obviously nothing too substantial.

You’d think if you were on the yes side, you’d be screaming non-stop about big-money interests doing its big-money thing in an effort to keep up big-money spending. But, alas, I have heard very little of that. It’s worth whatever embarrassment being outspent whatever-to-1 to note that it’s this kind of reliance on big bucks that is what they’re trying to stop. Seems obvious.

None of this should be a surprise. I worked on the beer and wine in supermarkets question in 2006, and both sides raised and spent millions. The money came from the usual suspects, and both sides were pretty even.

I don’t know what big-pockets person or group would come out in favor of 1 and pour money into it. Who with wads of cash – or relies on wads of cash from state government – would support Question 1? Obviously, no one.

If nothing else, it’s illustrative that in the context of this question, public information and spin is working. In 2002, the no team ignored the question, thinking it would die a quick and easy death. Of course, that didn’t happen, with the question getting 45 percent of the vote.

But this time, the no squad showed up, and in force. I think the yes crew has done a pretty good job of corralling free media, but that’s getting drowned out by the paid media. The no side is taking no chances this time. A poll yesterday had it 59-26 against, not good news for the yes side.

It gets to the point now that you have wonder what number allows them to fight on another day. It lost once, nobly. If it gets killed 60-40 or worse, can they come back and put this out there again in six years and gain any kind of traction? Or will they have to come up with something else?

But there’s more than money at play here. The no side has wisely harped on the potential loss of local services as the main fear factor here. It works, and works well. I’d make the same argument if I was working that campaign. The message on the other side isn’t as sharp. The now-infamous “41 percent of state government is waste” line has been mocked all over the place (it’s not an actual figure, it’s from a survey). If your jumping-off point is false, where do you take your argument from there.

They also have refused to point to areas for cutting. Any. The no side has rallied support around local services. The yes side has no cause, no illustration of waste to rally around. If they could point to some big-ticket areas to get the ball rolling, they’d have something for their potential supporters to identify and rally around. Specifics are easier to get riled up for than the non-specific “waste” they keep talking about.

Part of the problem might be that there’s always one good story to illustrate the need for a particular program or budget item. There might not be enough good stories to mandate all of the spending for a state or local program, but there are enough good stories to make the argument that fundamentally the program or service is good.

But enough. Go to the OCPF website and dig around for a few minutes (learn about Carla Howell’s trip to Vegas!) if you desire to learn more. There’s a lot of money being spent on this race, and it’s not even close to being a fair fight.