I just read that Blair Hull is likely to spend $40 million of his own money on his campaign for the Illinois Senate nomination. All federal Democratic primary candidates combined (especially the prez hopefuls) will probably spend more than $200 million between now and summer 2004.
How much of that money will help elect Democrats -- progressive or otherwise -- in November of 2004?
Not much of it. TV ads and mailers and phone messages are all worthless for electing Dems in November.
The investment that will help is registering new voters. Any work on reaching out, organizing and registering to new voters by Dem candidates in the primary election will carry over to the general. So primary campaigns should show their devotion to the larger cause of electing good Democrats by investing a certain percentage of their primary election campaign budgets to registering new voters.
If anyone knows of a campaign that is doing this, please let me know.
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