Party-centric campaign fund allocation has helped to overcome the collective action dillemas which resulted in inefficient allocation of resources under the old candidate-centered “free-for-all” fundraising system (Jacobson 2010). This approach is not without pitfalls. Parties and the policy demanding PACs and organizations which comprise broader extended party networks are incentivized to direct contributions towards the strategically important toss-up races in which the contribution is most likely to affect the outcome (Jacobson 2010, @desmarais2015fates). Unfortunately, spending money requires raising money. In this essay, I argue that nationalized fundraising drives encourage inefficient use of campaign funds. Ads featuring high profile, longshot challengers may bring in lots of money, but there is little reason to think these candidates are well suited to spend that money.

In the 2020 election, Democrats were salivating at the prospect of unseating longtime Republican boogeymen Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham. According to OpenSecrets.org the Democratic challengers—Amy McGrath in Kentucky and Jaime Harrison in South Carolina—raised $94,120,557 and $130,542,234 respectively, much of that money coming from out-of-state. Each featured prominently in breathless fundraising emails from the Democratic Party and its extended network of PACs and campaign organizations, outraising and outspending their Republican opponents by tens of millions dollars. Ultimately, McGrath lost 58%–38% to McConnell and Harrison lost 54%–44% to Graham.

What makes candidates like McGrath and Harrison so marketable by parties and compelling to donors is precisely what makes their campaigns unwise investments. Each ran against high profile, longtime Republican officeholders; McConnell and Graham are two Senators which the Democratic donor base has plenty of practice hating and could be easily mobilized against. That high profile is borne of decades of holding national elected office, accruing power and winning elections. McConnell and Graham represent textbook depictions of the “high quality” candidate; it should be no surprise that McGrath and Harrison were unable to close the consistent and substantial polling gap between themselves and their opponents.

Despite the proverbial writing having been neatly printed on the walls of McGrath and Harrison’s campaigns for months, money kept pouring in. Campaigns to unseat notorious out-party figures are rhetorically convenient from the perspective of the donation solicitor. What is being pitched to the potential donor is not the normative value of McGrath’s or Harrison’s bold programmatic vision but the prospect of ejecting a known enemy from their seat. By leaning into distaste for the out-party candidate the PAC or Party can skip the step of persuading donors to like the in-party candidate. The upside is that the electoral group may be able to pull in extra funds for their party’s campaign committee or for the PAC to spend on other, more deserving candidates. The downside is, fundraising on longshot challengers of this type constrains actors to throwing fist fulls of cash down the electoral drain.

Further, insofar as party organizations and the individual actors within them are judged on their ability to raise money, rather than their ability to spend it in an electorally efficacious way, there are few incentives in place to discourage fundraising against the strongest members of the opposition party. Legislators’ job security is dependent on their own (re)election, but job security for agents in the party campaign network is attained by convincing (potential) principals that the agent is good at their job. Campaigns are complex, influenced by any number of factors unique to the particular race, making evaluating and comparing electoral performance of campaigners difficult. Fundraising totals are one of few ways to quantify the performance of campaigners and organizations—even if the candidate loses, those supporting the campaign can point to money raised as evidence of their own successes.

In an era of increasingly nationalized electoral politics, fundraising efforts centered around long shot efforts to unseat notorious out-party villains can be expected to increase. For political scientists, sussing out the degree to which these campaigns result from and/or contribute to the nationalization of electoral politics is an interesting question. References to polarizing out-of-state party leaders are nothing new—I have several emails in my spam folder from Floridian congressman urging me to resist “Nancy Pelosi’s socialist agenda”—what is new is the national attention placed on campaigns to directly unseat those members. For their part, parties should seek to minimize the distributional inefficiencies resulting from campaign-centric fundraising, taking a more holistic, case specific approach when evaluating campaigners’ success. In a sense, the current situation vindicates Daniel Lowenstein’s vision of robust public funding for elections. While party leaders may hold power, their actions are bound by the need to seek private funding. Though party leadership has resolved coordination problems, efficiency does not logically follow. It is not enough that parties coordinate around any set of candidates, they must coordinate around the right set of candidates—doing so comes with opportunity costs.