![The Minnesota House Chamber Tuesday morning. A special session still looms to finish much of the work that was not completed before the session came to a close at midnight Monday night. ] GLEN STUBBE • glen.stubbe@startribune.com Tuesday, May 21, 2019 The Minnesota House Chamber Tuesday morning. A special session still looms to finish much of the work that was not completed before the session came to a close at midnight Monday night.](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/IGQ7DB5VH5PU2DE23JEZIOLPAI.jpg?&w=1080)
It's starting again — those requests for contributions from political candidates. And it's 16 months before the election.
So, what does it cost to get our politicians elected and sent to St. Paul? The answers are contained in an overview of expenditures and sources of funding for the 2018 election recently released by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. The board is responsible for collecting the data relating to money in politics in Minnesota. Its latest release, including graphs, makes the raw numbers understandable.
The total expenditures listed in the over 6,900 reports filed in our state for 2018 was a whopping $61,124,657. And this was for a year when the state Senate was not on the ballot. That total includes both campaign expenditures made by individual candidate committees and independent expenditures.
The surprise revealed in the report is that 55% of the expenditures made to influence your vote in 2018 were independent expenditures, including negative advertisements that are (theoretically at least) outside the control of any candidate.
Independent expenditures are made by political party units, political committees, political funds and the super PACS that were created in response to the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Examples include the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses and the Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund Minnesota.
The board report is careful to point out that its data does not include expenditures made in campaigns for communications such as mailings, flyers, billboards or radio or TV ads that do not use specific words that expressly advocate for or against a candidate, such as "vote for." This is due to a loophole in Minnesota law that has been fixed by 19 other states. Because of this we do not know exactly how much money is being spent or the identity of all of the contributors.
The dominance of independent expenditures is a very significant change. Independent expenditures increased from $436,000 in 1994 to more than $33 million in 2018. Independent expenditures doubled in Minnesota from 2014 to 2018. So, the model of individuals or groups giving contributions directly to candidates under limits imposed in state law ($1,000 for the House or Senate in 2019-20) is much less relevant and effective today.
PACs do not make independent expenditures in every legislative contest in Minnesota, but only in districts where close contests are expected. In 2018 this was primarily suburban districts in the metropolitan area. For example, in House District 44A, the district with the highest total expenditures in 2018, campaign expenditures by the candidate committees totaled $142,990 while independent expenditures totaled $562,521.
