Money in Politics

Financing is always a hot issue during electoral campaigns, but the victories by former Pennsylvania Senator and Republican, Rick Santorum, in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, and the announcement of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign — which he launched this morning, with an appeal to his supporters and financiers to contribute to the Super PAC Priorities USA — invite comment.

Obama, who publicly criticized the Supreme Court decision that opened the door to “super-funding” of the super PAC, and promised not to take recourse to those means, made an (expected) about-face, justifying his decision with the Republican competition and opening a flank to ferocious criticism from the Republicans.

It is not exactly the same argument that Obama used in 2008, when he was the first candidate to go without public financing in order to be able to use the enormous fortune his campaign had amassed. But the political calculation is similar: Without using all available money and collecting even more, his campaign will cease to be competitive.

[However, the president’s campaign has returned a check for $200,000 dollars from the family of a Mexican gaming magnate on the run from American justice.]

Santorum’s situation, and the heaviest defeat of Romney so far, make the discussion more interesting because it runs contrary to the stereotypical and generally uncontested idea that campaign success is linked with financial capacity. The difference between the money spent by Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in their campaigns in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado was 40 to 1. And there’s nothing like a victory (or three) to refill the coffers.