The governor of Illinois is putting some of his vast wealth, tens of millions of dollars, into campaigns to swing some state House and Senate seats to the Republicans. Democrats are tapping their big donors, unions and attorneys, to match Governor Bruce Rauner.
A lot of the money is going into small races that you normally wouldn’t hear a lot about. All the money is flowing to just a few races that are actually competitive, like Illinois’ 23rd State Senate district in DuPage County. The district is just south of O’Hare Airport. And was a Republican seat for a long time, until Democrat Tom Cullerton won the seat four years ago.
"I was probably the number one target the moment I won this seat."
Cullerton’s being challenged by Republican Seth Lewis. And both are going pound for pound when it comes to bringing in the money. Lewis has brought in 1.7 million dollars in the past 3 months. He says he’s spending a lot of it to get his name out there.
"There are more people to hear our message so that when we go to the door, people know who Seth Lewis is."
For Cullerton, in the last 3 months, he’s brought in 1.5 million dollars. That’s almost 10 times as much as what he raised in the final months of his campaign four years ago when he won.
"Obviously we’re able to get our message out a little bit better this time. Mail is something we’ve been able to invest in."
In the internet age, a lot of the campaign money is devoted to your mailbox.
STEVE MCKEE: "It goes from my mailbox to the garbage. Doesn’t even make it in the house."
ARNOLD: "You don’t even look at it?"
MCKEE: "No. I don’t know, it’s a waste of time."
ARNOLD: "Do they second? A second of looking at it? Is that it?"
MCKEE: "Yeah. That’s about it."
Steve McKee was driving an Uber and waiting to see if anyone needed a ride at the Roselle Metra station recently. Mail...TV ads...he says he tunes those out. But actually talking to someone face-to-face... that’s something he remembers.
MCKEE: "I got somebody’s sign in my front yard only because they came to the door."
ARNOLD: "Do you mind if I ask who that is."
MCKEE: "I’m trying to think. Laughs I see the sign every day so it’s...I’m thinking Mellman."
ARNOLD: "Mussman?"
MCKEE: "Mussman, yeah. She’s a state representative. She goes to Springfield."
Tom Bowen is a Democratic strategist.
"The winner of campaigns for state rep and state senate are the candidates that not only knock the most doors, but are the best in those interactions with voters."
He says door-knocking, actually walking the district and talking to voters, is widely seen as the most effective use of a candidate’s time. But a candidate can’t physically knock on 80-thousand doors. Which is why mail, TV, and the money, become so important. To break it down, Bowen says mail isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
"When you go tear up those credit card applications, these are the biggest corporations in America with the largest budgets to spend and they still do it, right? That’s cause it works."
Bowen says even if a voter like Steve McKee the Uber driver only sees the mailer for a second before pitching it, it’s still a second that’s spent thinking about the message the campaign wants to send.
"At the end of the day, mail is extremely well-targeted to the exact number of voters who will show up in the election and with modern advances in our voter files, we have a pretty good idea of who the swing voters are so we can target it even better."
And the TV ads are similarly targeted. Although you may have seen ads for candidates you can’t even vote for. Maybe you don’t live in their district, and yet they’re advertising throughout the entire Chicagoland region.
That may seem like a waste of money, but Bowen says more people in the district will see those ads than almost anything else. And this is where the campaign spending will remain at least for the near-term.
"Until that sort of changes, where you know, on Netflix or something like that, you can run an ad on it, TV is still gonna be the medium that we choose to communicate."
TV is still what voters see and absorb. Even more than ads on Facebook or your favorite website. Meaning if you’re tired of seeing political commercials on TV, the campaigns are only doing it because they know you’re still watching.