It seems crazy now, but
I thought I could win the race for Indiana’s hotly-contested 9th
District seat for U.S. Congress in the May 3rd primary—if our grass
roots spread widely; if my advertising choices paid off; if big money and/or
big name-recognition didn't crush; and if God's hand was in it (in terms of
delivering a victory). None of these conditions played out in our favor and we
only got 3% of the vote. In particular, I over-estimated how much money we would
raise; under-estimated what others would spend; and didn't understand that big
money was absolutely crucial to win a seat in the U.S. Congress.
One implication of this
is that governance should be state and local rather than federal, as much as
possible. There are other reasons to prefer state/local: it's constitutional in
most cases; it leaves less room for bureaucratic excess; it is centered closer
to the problem—and thus, in most cases, more able to form better solutions; and
so on. But the connection to money is another concern. If big bucks are
required, then we end up with a decidedly mixed bag of self-funded, independent
candidates—or more often, candidates funded by national interests.
Interesting
characteristics of this election
First, having an
off-year primary was useful, since fewer (marginal) voters turned out. Many
people are attracted to the voting booth by the shiny object of a presidential
election. Usually, they know even less than the average voter. And having so
many candidates could have been advantageous because it diluted the crowd's
impact, spreading it among many candidates.
Second, because we had so
many candidates, we only had one significant forum and no debates—both
of which would have been helpful to me. (When we had an opportunity to
speak, it was usually a 2-3 minute elevator speech—a limited medium for making
comparisons between candidates, since it's a short time completely controlled
by each candidate.) It was more challenging than normal to arrange for debates,
but not prohibitively so. The lack of debates stemmed from poor
organization and/or bias in trying to avoid them (by candidates or the
establishment).
Third, I ran as an
"economics professor", trying to bring expertise on federal public
policy (especially in economics) to Congress. Among a wide array of economic
policy concerns, my top issue was the national debt—driven by both of the major
political parties for the last 20 years. (Hey, wouldn't it be a good idea
to have at least one econ prof in DC these days?!)
A few times, people
expressed concern about a connection between professor, college, and
"liberal". This is a common point of confusion, conflating the
Left-dominance of research-oriented (often "elite") universities with
the moderation/conservatism of regional schools like IU Southeast. Our faculty aren't particularly Leftist, but
even if they were, the market (consumers) wouldn't allow us to exercise it. If
you're worried about Leftist dogma or trying to avoid poor teaching at
research-focused schools, send your kids to schools like IUS instead.
Fourth, Trump wasn't
discussed publicly—in elevator speeches or sadly, even in our few opportunities
to answer questions in a forum setting. The candidates were probably not eager
to broach the topic, especially with such a short time to speak. And I suspect
local party leaders wanted to avoid such a divisive topic.
Trump did come up,
toward the end, in terms of advertising. One big-money candidate declared
"pro-Trump" and the others followed. I suspect this was causation: Once
someone broke the implied cartel and brought him up, the others had to follow
or risk getting left behind. (Our campaign ran into many more people who were
anti-Trump than pro-Trump. But this could be a reflection of anti-Trump
preferences that were stronger.)
All of these are
interesting factors, but none made a significant difference—at least for the
small-money candidates. Exceedingly few voters paid attention to us—or were
ever going to do so. I wasn't rejected; I was ignored. None of the above
(except big money) would have changed this.
Running our race
I'm glad that I thought
victory was possible, because this made it much easier to stay motivated! I was
amazed how God strengthened me—and my body/mind continued to wake me up
early-AM after 5-6 hours of sleep for weeks on end. (I broke my ankle a month
into the race, so I was actually limping for Congress instead of running!)
Beyond attending dozens of events, I made 7,000 calls; we mailed out 5,000
postcards; we sent 35,000 texts; and we had 775,000 targeted banner ads on
phones and computers.
All of those efforts
were spread throughout the district. Our only geographically-focused efforts
were hundreds of radio ads on four stations (Christian and news/talk). You
rarely know what works in a political campaign. (The only measurables are
campaign contributions, volunteers, and yard signs.) In our case, looking at
the results, we can confidently say that nothing worked
(well), at least in a race against big-money opponents.
We focused on 25K or so
of the 32K most-likely (off-year, GOP primary) voters we could reach through
the data we had. So, I thought we were making contact with most of the voters.
Wrong. Voter turnout was much higher than expected at 58K. (The District
continues to trend GOP strongly, since the last off-year primary, so that's probably
responsible for much of this gap.) So, my vote total was on
the lowest end of my expectations. And thus, my vote percentage was
much lower than the worst I anticipated. Another implication of the turn-out:
we advertised to less than half of those who actually voted. Not
good.
With my previous campaign
experience, there were some important things that I understood relatively well,
but other things that I still missed. (One small, odd thing: our JPG banner ads
had much higher click rates than the equivalent GIF files.) I made two
mistakes: 1.) When I had good phone calls early in the campaign, we sent a
hand-written postcard with a note from me. But we should have followed up more
than once; we should have cultivated those relationships. 2.) Until Election
Day, when I experienced the boring Clark County ballot, I never thought about
the potential impact of important local races attracting more voters (e.g.,
sheriff). With more bandwidth and resources, we might have differentiated
efforts based on expected turnout by geography.
I'm happy with how smart
we ran with the resources we had. I could have done things a bit better, but
not much. I'm impressed with how hard we ran. I haven't worked that much since
late in my undergrad years or maybe the first year of grad school. And among
our many volunteers, I had four who were work horses: David on the website;
Buddy, Mom, and Tonia texting like freaks.
Most important, I'm
content with how well we ran, loving the people we came into contact with. We
avoided negative campaigning. In our texts and phone calls, we engaged ornery
people graciously. We ministered to people who are not yet (comfortable) in the
goodness of God’s Kingdom.
For me, a big part of
this was a.) staying balanced in my time with the boys and especially my wife Tonia;
b.) observing a Sabbath from Saturday evening through Sunday evening; and c.)
Bible study. In my previous two campaigns, I did daily Bible reading in the
Gospels. This time, I mostly kept up with my radio/podcast and Bible teaching
schedules.
Two other thoughts on
faith. First, it turns out that my teaching schedule included Wednesday nights.
Fortunately, the political calendar only had one Wednesday night event, bowing
to the common Christian practice of Wednesday night programming.
Providentially, my schedule had been determined many months before, allowing me
to miss very little political activity because of classroom commitments.
Second, in my elevator
speeches, I typically started with biography and then moved to policy
(especially federal spending and the national debt). Within my biography, I
mentioned our ministry efforts and resources. It never seemed to inspire much
interest and I was never asked anything further about it. This is not too
surprising, since the folks at these events are approaching politics as
something between a serious hobby, a job/career, and a god. Few would be
expected to have much if any bandwidth or interest in ministry as a priority,
even assuming that they're Christian. (Again, this can't give a Christ-follower
much reason for faith in the political process.)
We did best in Floyd and
Clark counties—and relatively well in Monroe and Brown. (I'm not sure why on
the latter two.) In four counties, I was beat by Bill Thomas—someone who made
no apparent effort and ran as a Democrat a few years ago. Then again, Bill beat
quite a few of the lower-tier candidates in certain counties. He even finished
4th in Harrison County! (That's apparently where he lives. And maybe a
plain/popular name helps a bit—at least on the lower end?)
We can't take any of
this personally, since we were rarely judged personally! (The big-money
candidates—Erin Houchin, Mike Sodrel, and Stu Israel-Barnes—might lose some
sleep over being judged, since they were all actively rejected by a majority of
the voters!) Only a handful of voters really considered my candidacy. In a
word, we weren't disliked; we were rarely considered at all.
This lines up
beautifully with a key tenet of "Public Choice" economics: the
nearly-universal "rationally-ignorant voter". Since most voters have
so little to offer the process—a vote and maybe a few bucks—there is little
incentive to gain knowledge. Instead, voters typically rely on cheap and
reasonably-effective signals (e.g., party, campaign spending, yard signs) to
choose.
Labor economists call
this "statistical discrimination"—as people stereotype and pre-judge
to make decisions with highly-limited and costly-to-obtain information. (Of
course, all of us do this every day, in a vast array of contexts!) As such,
most voters simply ignored the six small-money candidates—and weighed the three
big-money candidates, based on a policy issue, impressions from ads, etc. (All
of this ties into my most-recent academic paper in Cato Journal on "the limits
of democracy".)
The campaign and the
outcome
The winner (Erin) had big money and had been
a five-term state legislator. Mike had served in Congress in 2004-06; is a
long-time truck company owner; and was largely self-funded. Stu had no
legislative experience but spent a lot of money. J had one term in the state
legislature but only spent $5K. Erin got 37%; Mike got 26%; Stu got 21%; and J
got 3% (like me).
I was not able to raise enough
money to be a factor. A key economic concept explains part of the problem. Many
people may want me to win, but they’d also like to keep their money. This leads
to the “free-rider problem”, where people benefit from the efforts of others
without contributing. Economists call this a “public good”—where consumption is
“non-excludable” even if one does not pay. (Sometimes, markets can get around
this problem, but provision is tricky, requires creative ways to raise money,
and is usually produced at a sub-optimal level.) This problem was exacerbated since
I was trying to raise money from people who aren’t particularly fond of
government in the first place.
Another potential
money-raising angle is PAC’s. All three of the big-money candidates got help
from national groups. The House caucuses were bidding into the process, looking
for winners who would help them fund-raise in the future. This story describes a crypto-CEO supporting Erin. I might have had a shot
at this, given my views—if I’d been above the radar. And I had hoped Americans
for Prosperity would get behind me. But I wasn’t a player and getting involved
wouldn’t make much sense to them with so many candidates in the field.
Unfortunately, big money was
required to have a shot. (Three candidates spent at least a half-million
dollars, including help from PAC’s.) After that, the quality of the campaign
and the perceived quality of candidates were decisive. In local and state
races, diligent effort can substitute. But there's not enough work in the world
to make a difference at the federal level.
Fortunately, the best (big-money) candidate won.
Objectively, Erin ran the best race. She was specific in describing both her
past record and her plans for the future. She has the best resume; she
raised big money; she connected with the establishment; and she had a good
ground game. Her margin of victory in Lawrence Co. (not her home county!) was
enough to beat all of us, even if she didn't win another county.
Even better: The
most-likely-to-be-conservative (big-money) candidate won. Erin seems to have a
solid and broad conservative record as a state legislator. My only concern is
her (rapidly) increasing connections with "the establishment." But
hopefully, she won't compromise. Mike was reliably conservative when he was in
Congress on everything except fiscal matters. (See: his grades from the
National Taxpayers Union. See also: being average in a big-spending Congress
can't be considered fiscally conservative.) Stu might be conservative, but has
no record and his promises were too vague to inspire much confidence.
It's probable that
gender discrimination—for and against Erin—played a small role. I'd guess
that there was anecdotal negative and significant positive, but not enough
either way to change the race. From Republicans (compared to Democrats),
I'd expect a bit more negative discrimination and less positive discrimination
toward women. (Of course, one would hope for no discrimination at all!) It's
interesting to speculate here, but it's all a guess; we can't estimate the
impact of these empirically.
Jim Baker
"won" among the small-money candidates, earning 5%. He spent the most
money among the six of us. And I suspect that he had the strongest ground game:
more contacts across the district from his business connections—and thus, the
ability to use/distribute yard signs. Another interesting factor (h/t to fellow
candidate, Brian Tibbs): being first on the ballot is usually helpful. (There
is some academic research on this!) The effect is (far) larger in down-ballot
races, where voters have even less information than usual. But it probably gave
Jim a little boost.
J Davisson did well in
his state legislative district—a small subset of the congressional district.
(This probably pulled a bit from Houchin.) Jim, Brian, and I all did relatively
well in Clark and Floyd—not surprising, given our connections here (including
Brian's state rep race in 2020). The three of us probably pulled a bit from
Sodrel, but not nearly enough to make a difference. And we all would
have needed to drop out to help him at all, since we were pulling from each
other to a large extent. (Interestingly, Jim and Brian both have significant
connections to DC: Thoroughly Equipped—our
discipleship curriculum. Jim hosted the first DC group in So. IN at his office. Brian's
church used DC a ton and were the inspiration for what started as DC
for Students and later became Getting Equipped.)
Earned media was of
marginal (or no) importance. As expected, local radio and TV barely covered the
race. The newspapers in the district have become far less active since I ran in
2006-08. (I saw the trend in dramatic trends from 2006 to 2008 in Bloomington.
But all of the newspapers have faded in terms of political relevance since
then.) The Indy Star was active but seemed biased—with an
early puff piece for Houchin, 1.5 (legitimate) pokes at Sodrel and
Barnes-Israel, and a juicy topic they never raised. Still, their impact was
probably even less than mine.
Related: It was
interesting to learn that appearances on Fox/MSNBC and national talk radio are
probably bought. (What are those prices? What is the role of third parties in
facilitating these trades?) Stu appeared on FoxNews and one often hears
candidates on talk-radio shows. It also makes one wonder about larger
newspapers. With journalism and journalistic integrity fading over the past few
decades, would/did they take money for stories? (Ironically, we could use some
investigative journalism to figure this out!)
Newspapers didn't print
(or report on) press releases—even those of substance. For example, all of the
big-money candidates (and at least two of the small-money candidates) openly
supported a three-term (six-year) limit on tenure in the U.S. House. In
contrast, I can support a longer term-limit, but understand that term limits are
a mixed-bag approach, a distraction from larger issues, and a terrible idea if
so short. Why? Well, imagine a one-term limit: it creates lame ducks
immediately and it would transfer more power to an unelected bureaucracy. Of
course, a three-term limit is not as bad, but it's not much better
either.
Here's the kicker: a six-year
limit would maximize the number of people who receive the
Congressional pension (which kicks in after...wait for it...five years).
Hilarious! So, instead of term limits, I committed to refusing the
Congressional pension—something only done by Ron DeSantis, Ron Paul, and Thomas
Massie. You'd think that'd be "news"—both the policy analysis of term
limits and the pledges that we'd taken. But no.
The candidates were mostly collegial—and always
so with me. I really enjoyed my time with J, Jim, Brian, and Dan Heiwig (whose
effort faded down the stretch). Of the big-money candidates, Stu and Erin were
friendly to me—although it was easier for me to talk with Erin than Stu (not
sure why). It was most awkward with Mike. We have some history from the 2006/08
races—no big deal to me, but perhaps something from his perspective. Then
again, he seemed to be awkward with most/all of us.
It was all friendly within the
lower-tier, because we didn't take ourselves or the process too seriously.
With one ironic exception, it was friendly enough between the tiers,
because we were no threat and everyone was nice enough. It got a bit chippy in
the ads between those in the upper-tier, so they didn't talk much
in public. But the ads didn't seem especially brutal; this was simply par (or
even birdie) for an often-unfortunate course.
The county political
events were generally well-run. Almost all of the local party leaders are
volunteering a ton of time/energy and doing a commendable job. As a group, they
were passionate, hard-working, competent, engaged, kind, and impressive. The
interest group activity (federal, state, and local) was decidedly more mixed,
ranging from professional and balanced to incompetent and corrupt. Their
power is another tenet of Public Choice economics: the incentives are well in
place for these folks to pursue concentrated benefits through government
activity. But it’s another reason to have even less faith in the political
process.
One anecdote stands out
to me. I had a Zoom call with the Climate Change Lobby—an environmental group
with branches in Bloomington and New Albany. I didn't anticipate much common
ground. But I'll listen to anyone (for a while) and I'm happy for opportunities
to teach as well. To my surprise, we were in nearly-complete agreement, since
they were free-market environmentalists! So that was cool, but here's the sad
part: none of my GOP colleagues met with them. Ideally, we'd have
representatives in Washington who can listen and speak—not just as a reliable
GOP vote, but as a thoughtful, civil, conservative voice in DC.
Sadly, the process was
quite a bit more sterile than my general election runs in 2006 and 2008. First,
the timing was tight and the pace was blistering. We only had 13 weeks to put
everything together. Second, most of the efforts were concentrated among
political types—given the pacing, the paucity of off-year primary voters, and
the need to vet and promote candidates for many different offices. Third,
because you weren't going to talk with many people, it put more weight on short
encounters and impersonal advertising.
It was good times, all
in all. I was called to run, but I wasn't called to win. Good news: I can
return to my wonderful, purpose-filled, normal life! I won't run again—unless God
bangs on my door, something strange happens, or you know folks who can help me
raise at least $250,000! (I might do something at the local level, where money
is not crucial, but I'm not particularly interested in state policy.)
We learned that big
money is essential in national politics. This doesn't bode well for the future
of the country. I wasn't optimistic about turning things around with respect to
federal spending and the national debt—a dangerous, immoral, and undemocratic
bipartisan effort. But with the power of money and “the establishment”, I'm
less excited about the ability of Congress in general, and the GOP in
particular, to take us where we ought to go. It's a good thing we have greater
things in which we should place our trust.
