By Denise Ross

As the nation’s financial crisis settles in as our collective ongoing saga and Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, returns to his seat on the Banking Committee, take note that the 3-term senator did not suffer any financial crisis in his campaign treasury.

Johnson spent almost as much to beat Joel Dykstra as he did to beat John Thune - $5 million in 2008 vs. $6M in 2002.

And that, said Johnson campaign manager Steve Jarding, is just the way of the modern political world.

Every campaign should have a floor budget. You have to treat it like a business, which it really is, if you’re going to win. What do I have to invest to make this business successful?

That’s from my newspaper column of last week. Read more by clicking “CLICK HERE” below.

Johnson spent $5M in campaign, nearly as much as 2002 race

By Denise Ross

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., spent almost as much to defeat Republican challenger Joel Dykstra in 2008 as he did to fend off a much more serious threat from then-Congressman John Thune in 2002.The final numbers aren’t completely tallied from this year’s race, but Johnson’s campaign manager, Steve Jarding, said he believes the campaign’s spending will top $5 million. In 2002, Johnson and Thune each spent about $6 million.

It might not be a complete picture, however, as in 2002 South Dakota’s Republican and Democratic parties were keeping pace with the Senate candidates’ in spending on the race. This year, that didn’t happen.

In any case, Jarding said $5 million is much closer to the floor he had set for Johnson’s re-election spending than it was to the ceiling. It’s simply the nature of modern political campaigns, he said.

“The floor is the bare minimum you want to spend against any candidate, and the ceiling is, well, to-be-determined,” Jarding said. “You’re foolish not to run a campaign like that. Every campaign should have a floor budget. You have to treat it like a business, which it really is, if you’re going to win. What do I have to invest to make this business successful?”Given Johnson’s 62% to 38% victory over Dykstra, it’s hard to argue with him. Even though Dykstra raised and spent about a fifth of what Johnson did, Jarding said it’s important to stick to the plan and not “just sit on the cash” because you think your opponent isn’t a threat. 

Too often, he said, candidates set their campaign budgets based on how much money they think they can raise. That’s backwards.

A year ago, Jarding said, he had figured Johnson would spend between $7 million and $9 million to get re-elected, “just because that’s where South Dakota has been going.”

While having a money plan is important, Jarding said campaigns also must be ready to change up their strategies when events dictate — sort of like in a game of poker.

“You literally have to play the cards as they’re dealt, and you don’t really know what cards show up until you get into the game,” he said.

But in a campaign that held very few surprises for the incumbent, Johnson did not have to raise that much. That meant he had more time to spend on the campaign trail in late summer and fall, when it mattered most.

“I bet we didn’t do 10 fund-raising events (during that time),” Jarding said. “If it had been a much different race, we might have done 40 fund-raising events.”

So how does a campaign spend millions in a small state like South Dakota? Not surprisingly, much of it goes to advertising. And much of that goes to TV ads.

A look at Johnson’s third quarter spending report, July through September, gives some idea about how Jarding carved up the campaign budget.

During the time when campaign advertising gears up, Johnson spent almost $1 million on ads. If you count signs, the printing of direct-mail pieces and regular media ads, the campaign spent $914,000 in the third quarter.

The lion’s share — about $880,000 — went to traditional media ad buys. And of that, almost all went to TV ads, Jarding said.

Another $240,000 or so went to produce the TV ads during the third quarter.

The campaign spent almost $22,000 to make signs.

It spent more than $10,000 on printing, probably most of that on those slick brochures that populated our mail boxes in October.

Not included in the $914,000 is another $14,000 spent on postage. While the campaign finance reports don’t denote what got mailed, it’s a safe bet that most of that paid to send out those brochures.

Jarding said a campaign’s three biggest expenses typically are advertising, staff and fund-raising. Johnson spent almost $160,000 on staff salaries during the third quarter and just more than $16,000 on fund-raising. Spending on travel fell about in the middle of those two, so that varies from Jarding’s typical campaign spending pattern.

And the campaign spent $51,000 on “research” (read “polling”) during the third quarter. In modern political campaigns, even the mild ones, all that money is just part of doing business.

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