Over at the Dallas Morning News, Rudy Bush does some math for us and figures out how much each winning candidate spent per vote. The most frugal? Ann Margolin, who retained her Preston Hollow and Northwest Dallas seat by spending only 18 cents per vote. The most spendy (mayoral races included) was her neighbor, Monica Alonzo, who spent a whopping $60.05 per vote to take Steve Salazar’s seat (Salazar was out because of term limits).
One could argue that if you won, you got bang for your buck. But I am not certain $60.05 is a wise expenditure when the net is only 634 votes.
8 comments
A $40,000 influx of cash could make a huge difference to many worthwhile causes organizations. These are lean times, and non-profits are suffering. Far be it for me to criticize how a political aspirant spends her cash. But I do think it’s important to keep perspective.
But think about the many ways a sitting City Council member can leverage his or her public position for private gain, if one is so disposed. Sounds like a sound investment, to me.
@B.L. Powell,
All this election money really is a waste.
Instead, these guys
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2011/05/because_apparently_you_dont_ne.php
just found some city property, took it over, and did what they wanted to with it for a measly $300. If we all did the same thing for what we each wanted for ourselves, there’s not much anyone could do about it, and we all could have a lot more of whatever we happened to want for ourselves in a city, a lot cheaper, without paying extra for politicians just to tell us “no”.
@Lynn: That’s awesome. A perfect example of why a little ambition and effort can truly make Dallas a better place — no significant cash outlay required. Though I wonder whether the “no dumping” ordinance applies to dogs’ “business.”
I think any candidate who spent money with Murphy Turner Associates, an Austin-based political consulting firm, have to wonder if their money was spent well. MTA client Natinsky lost, ending up way back in the pack. And, the Tom Smith fellow up in Frisco lost big spending almost $100K while garnering only 35% of the vote.
@PR: What about Carol Reed? Has she lost her touch? Or was Natinsky snakebitten from the beginning?
I’d go with the latter, except I’ve seen Tom Leppert’s Twitter stream
, a campaign she’s also advising. In short: textbook pandering — and not very good pandering at that.
Maybe Carol was busy pushing Senator Tom and couldn’t be bothered with Mayor Ron?
@PR
An emerging trend from this and other recent campaigns is that old school political consultants (e.g. Carol Reed and others in Dallas) are running the same style of campaign as they did 20 years ago.
They are woefully inadequate with social media and grass roots efforts, and their pandering wedge issues are losing their bite. In fact, they are downright silly, but they are great performance art.
Bully for Carol for taking Ron’s money.
Would I be crazy if I thought, based on a D Magazine profile, that Carol Reed might be the devil?