Self-financing may hurt candidates in elections

Self-financing a campaign may hurt a candidate’s chances of winning, a National Institute On Money In State Politics report found.

Of the top 10 self-funders in the country, eight candidates lost their respective races – including Wisconsin Republican Mark Neumann’s gubernatorial loss in the primary election.

Neumann spent $5,833,654 on his own campaign, or 91 percent of his total funds.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Florida’s newly-elected governor, Rick Scott, were able to withstand the trend by winning their races while spending millions of their own money. Snyder self-funded 51 percent of his total funds with $5,940,782 and won the gubernatorial race by a wide margin; while Scott spent $60,391,000 of his own money on his close win.

Meg Whitman set a new record for self-financing a campaign in her loss for governor by spending over $141.6 million. According to the report, Whitman raised a total of $172,978,052. Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Whitman by raising a meager $40.5 million.

For a complete list of the top ten self-funders, see our report “Candidate Self-financing: More Barrier Than Stepping Stone.”

Click here to see how candidate giving stacks up in the 50 states.

*As of early November, 2010, the Institute had not received the October 21 report from California for any of the candidates because of the amount of time a data transfer that large requires.  The data from the October 21 report for Whitman and Brown were collected directly from Cal-Access.