Money is tight for the Onondaga County Democratic Committee leading in to the elections this November.
As of late April 2010, the committee is $3,105 in debt, according to the most recent data from the New York State Board of Elections. And that highlights some of the difficulties of grassroots fundraising for local political parties, say political experts.
Raising funds for a political committee at the county level can be challenging because contributors are more likely to donate to individual candidates, said Ed Szczesniak, a former chairman of the Onondaga County Democratic Committee, a retired Democratic commissioner for the county board of elections and a 2009 challenger for the District 3 seat in the county legislature.
“Candidates are easy to raise money for because people tie their interests and hopes more to an individual candidate than to the generic party,” said Szczesniak.
Here are some quick statistics about the Onondaga County Democratic Committee’s funds dating back to 2006:
- The committee was down to $6,052 in February 2011. This was the lowest its balance has been in the past five years.
- The committee’s checking account peaked at $88,393 leading into the 2007 elections after receiving $82,060 in contributions.
- Between August 2010 and February 2011, it raised roughly $16,000 and spent nearly double that.
The money the committee does raise tends to come from a core group of loyal supporters, said former chairman Szczesniak. But because of the challenges with fundraising, the committee doesn’t often make contributions directly to candidates. “Candidates are mostly expected to raise their own funds,” he said.
The committee’s fundraising pays expenses to keep its office building operating, to promote candidates by mass-mailing campaigns and by helping candidates with their fundraising events, according to Kate Tuttle, the Onondaga Democratic Committee headquarters manager.
The committee does not support any particular candidate until after the party designates it choices for offices, said Tuttle. That will happen on May 15. Until then, the committee offers all of its services equally to each candidate, Tuttle said.
“There’s no divide and conquer,” she said. “Every candidate gets the exact same thing.”
The services provided by the committee are crucial to candidates if they want to get elected, according to Tom Buckel, D-Sedgewick, representing District 7 of the county legislature. For example, to get their names on the ballot, candidates must collect a required number of voters’ signatures on petitions. That’s a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. The party can field volunteers to help candidates collect the signatures.
“The first and most important thing that the committee members helped us with was circulating petitions to get our names on the ballot,” said Buckel, who was elected to the county legislature in 2007. He is not seeking re-election in 2011. “Without that, the entire process fails.”
In campaigning, he said, candidates also need the help of the committee’s volunteers and experts helping make phone calls and go door to door.
“In my case, the party had an exceptional support operation,” Buckel. “There’s a really powerful emotional tie when you have people giving up time to engage in the process of getting you elected. It means a lot in terms of grassroots politics.”
The challenges with county-level fundraising in general often stem from too many other places asking voters for money, said Jeffrey Stonecash, a political science professor at Syracuse University. People are more likely to donate to individual candidates, he said, and they are more likely to donate to campaigns at the state or national levels.
“It’s hard with all those other competing demands for a lot contributors to cough up money for county legislature,” said Stonecash. Contributors are more likely to focus on races for mayor, congressional candidates or state legislators, he said.
At the same time, state and national groups also need more money than local groups, said Kristi Andersen, also an SU political scientist and an elected official as a member of the Cazenovia town board. “I would say the challenges are at the higher levels because you have to raise so much money,” she said. Her campaigns for town board were fairly easy to run, she said. She added, “Local campaigns, unless they are unique and there’s some particular seat that one party or another wants to capture back, are not that expensive to run.”
But at the state and national levels, the campaigns are costly. For example, the New York State Democratic Committee raised roughly $260 million leading into the 2008 presidential election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It’s a political-money watchdog with a website called opensecrets.org.
The state Democratic party spent nearly all of that $260 million, ending up with about $5 million on hand after the election. For the same 2008 election, the Onondaga County Democratic Committee raised about $70,000 and spent only about $59,000.
The most valuable service offered by the local committees is the person power, said SU political scientist Andersen. As an example, she cited recently elected U.S. Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R-Onondaga Hill.
“Somebody like Buerkle is able to mobilize a lot of grassroots support on her own, but presumably she could also turn to the county Republican committee who has people in various areas of the county who could be counted upon to come and make phone calls,” Andersen said.
But, Andersen said, it can be challenging to get donors to give money to a particular candidate or party organization. Donors have options from Barack Obama to local assembly members to town board members, she said. She added, “You’ve got a lot of choices to make.”
“If you are a registered member of a party,” said Andersen, “you get calls and emails and letters from everybody.”
(Shawn Arrajj is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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