Though more money equaled more votes in this year’s ASUO primary election, that doesn’t necessarily mean the money was the cause of the votes.
Though the statistics on how many votes a campaign got and how many dollars it raised happened to line up last week, even representatives of campaigns who lost out dismissed the idea that money was the reason for success or failure.
Zachary Stark-MacMillan, campaign manager for the Campus Change Coalition slate that finished third both in raising money and getting votes, said there were a few things he would have done differently if he had a chance to run the campaign again, but raising more money wouldn’t be one of them. He said the coalition might buy more balloons, but “anything beyond that, I feel, would be just fluff.”
He and representatives for rival campaigns said the campaigns that won simply did so because they raised more and used better political tactics. Their raising more money may have been either a coincidence or simply an indication of better organization, the representatives said.
The bulk of all three campaigns’ money went to T-shirts, with other money spent on fliers, posters and supplies to keep candidates going throughout the day.
Presidential candidate Alex McCafferty said those aren’t the things students respond to in the elections.
“It’s our platforms and our ability to get the message out,” he said.
And even though the current election’s results suggest a corollary between fundraising and results, previous elections carry examples of candidates who have raised more and still lost. In 2009, for instance, in a five-way contest for the presidency, the campaign with the highest spending still finished fourth after beginning its race midway through the campaigning period for the primary elections. Emma Kallaway, who eventually won the election, raised less money than two competitors.
“It would be better if we didn’t raise a ton of money,” Kallaway’s campaign manager Alison Fox said at the time, reasoning that shirts, balloons and the other trappings of a campaign distract students. “That way, students could focus more on the issues.”
That election was, however, conducted in the wake of the 2008 election, in which Sam Dotters-Katz swept his way to the presidency after reporting he raised about $10,000, as much money as all five presidential candidates this year put together, and about triple the money at his rival’s disposal. The money allowed him, among other things, to sell slices of pizza to students for 25 cents each.
The next year, the ASUO Elections Board moved to restrict the kinds of things campaigns could give out, with then-elections coordinator Aaron Tuttle, a Dotters-Katz appointee, announcing to candidates, “We really want to make it about the issues, not about who gave you something for free.”
Since then, campaign spending has been in a decline, with this year well down from 2009’s election, so far.

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