Big money, big contributions rule in elections these days

The election is thankfully over, but I still can't get over how much money pours into these campaigns.

Back in the day, if a state legislative candidate spent more than $100,000 on a campaign to get elected to a $12,000-a-year post at the State Capitol, it was a big deal.

Now that kind of spending is par for the course.

Nearly every race for the 25 seats being contested in the Nebraska legislature had a candidate who spent more than six figures.

As of Oct. 21, candidates for the so-called "Hall of Hot Winds" had raised $9.2 million and spent $7.4 million, according to reporting by the Nebraska Examiner. All but three of the 25 races had someone spending more than $100,000.

And those statistics were with more than two weeks of spending, and campaigning, to go before the Nov. 5 voting.

That spending, sadly, pales in comparison to what was expended on the competing ballot measures on abortion – one to enshrine the state's current 12-week ban into the State Constitution, and the other to provide a right to abortion to the point of fetal viability, somewhere after 24 weeks gestation.

The state's two competing abortion ballot issues had raised $25 million for campaign ads as of Oct. 21, a record for ballot issues, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star. 

But if you want to see some really big spending, consider what wealthy families like the Ricketts invest in political candidates and issues. The family of U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, which includes his parents Joe and Marlene, had shelled out $25 million to conservative causes and candidates by October, the Omaha World-Herald reported last month, with most of that cash going to out-of-state campaigns. (Interestingly, Pete Ricketts' wife, Susanne Shore, who was a registered Democrat last time I checked, gave money to some candidates opposed by her husband. Bet that makes for an interesting conversation around the dinner table).

And then there was the surprisingly competitive race pitting incumbent U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, a reliable Republican, versus Omaha Navy veteran and union leader Dan Osborn, a registered independent. Those two candidates had gotten $29 million from outside political groups, as well as raising about $8 million each from traditional sources, by mid-October.

The radio and TV ads in that mud-slinging contest ran back-to-back-to-back.  

If you're into math (and there's a reason I'm a reporter and not an accountant), my figuring indicates that about $63 had been spent as of October for every registered voter in Nebraska in just those three areas of campaigns, for state legislature, the abortion issues and the Fischer-Osborn race. 

Gotta say: $63 would buy more than a couple of T-bone dinners.

But that, sadly, is where we're at. With more and more candidates refusing to debate and more and more candidates limiting comment to emails and text messages, political contests come down to who had the best campaign ads and who spent the most.

You used to be able to tell who would win a race by how many yard signs were along the street, or how many doors a candidate had personally knocked. That kind of shoe-leather campaigning gave voters a chance to get to know a candidate.

Now, so much of it is about "branding," with candidates touting that they're a "conservative fighter" or someone who will make Washington "work" again – whatever, specifically, that means.

Voters are left trying to figure out if the claims on the campaign ads are really true or not?

To be fair, the Ricketts family's contributions don't rank among the top billionaire givers. The top three givers, which include Elon Musk and heirs to the Mellon and Adelson forturnes,

gave a combined $440 million, according to U.S. News & World Report. All told, billionaires had given nearly $2 billion to campaigns for president and U.S. Congress just prior to election day. 

Give me the old days, when candidates had to stand up and debate at the Nebraska State Fair, had to walk neighborhoods and in local parades, and speak at local Rotary Club meetings. 

Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He retired in April as senior contributor with the Nebraska Examiner. He was previously with the Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star and Omaha Sun.  A native of Ralston, he loves traveling and writing about the state.