if you’re efficient in spending your money you don’t need a large operation
“if you’re efficient in spending your money you don’t need a large operation”
Very true. David Brat beat the powerful Eric Cantor by 10 percentage points. Cantor spent $5.7 million, Brat $200,000. Like Trump today Brat ran on an anti-immigration theme.
In 1994, the unknown GOP challenger George Nethercutt beat Democrat House Speaker Tom Foley. The Foley loss came before the days of social media.
Trump has shown it is possible to build awareness through social and alternative media. Not having to spend significant dollars for traditional broadcast media is a huge savings.
The other big campaign cost is the ground game (robocalls, door knocking, precinct workers). Trump seems to believe he can win primaries and the nomination without investing in organization to get his voters to the polls. He may be correct in believing he has tapped into anti-establishment fervor and his energized voters will come out in huge numbers to vote against the party establishment. Once he wins the nomination, he will plug into the existing RNC organization as well as state GOP organizations and use their ground operatives to get out the vote on election day.
Trump made it clear in his Alabama press conference he expects to be spending RNC money and using RNC operatives during the national campaign once he wins the nomination. He’ll also benefit from support of Super PACs and other organizations. Therefore the Perot comparison is not relevant. Perot was running an independent national campaign and spending his own money. Trump plans to spend his own money only to secure the nomination. Likely that will be less than $100 million.
He sure doesn’t need to spend money on media. They cover him day and night, for free.