When Niki Tsongas entered Congress in 2007 after winning a special election to replace Marty Meehan, she had been part of a five-person field in a Democratic primary that spent roughly $4 million combined.
Six years later, another five-way Democratic field spent around the same amount in a special-election primary to succeed Ed Markey in the U.S. House of Representatives. That time, Katherine Clark came out on top.
Now, in the mad rush to fill the void created by Tsongas's retirement this year, more than a dozen Democratic candidates have already declared their intent to run for the 3rd Congressional District seat. That prompts the question: Is there enough money to go around?
Wise political chin-strokers, myself included, often assume a fairly finite pool of funding for primary campaigns, with Democratic candidates elbowing each other for the same potential donors: big state party funders, local activists and business leaders, and the usual endorsing networks of unions and special interests.
As a result, we sagely expect that this crowded field will quickly narrow to a handful of serious candidates at most. The others, lacking funding to compete, will either drop out or troop along irrelevantly on the fringe of the campaign.
It might not turn out that way. We could see many candidates raising enough money to compete — with one or more topping that $4 million figure on their own.
That’s partly because those were short special elections, while this is a year-long marathon. But it’s also because many of the candidates appear to have separate potential donor pools — Rolodexes that don’t overlap, if you’ll excuse the pre-digital image.
And according to some of those candidates, the times are driving enthusiasm for supporting out-of-the-mainstream campaigns.
“There is an alternative path of funding for first-time and disruptive candidates,” says Abhijit “Beej” Das, a constitutional lawyer and hotelier, with Indian-American roots.
We’ll start to get a sense soon. As 2017 comes to a close, so does the 4th quarter fundraising period — an important, though not definitive marker for congressional competitors. Some campaigns will announce their numbers quickly after the New Year; others will wait until the reporting date later in the month. They will make for some interesting reading.
Many sources
Dan Koh, former chief of staff to Boston mayor Marty Walsh, was one of only two Democrats who began raising money earlier, in the year’s third quarter. At the start of August, he announced a stunning fundraising haul, of more than $750,000, through the end of September.
But instead of slinking away, Democrats kept entering the race, launching campaigns in the face of that monster figure.
Koh, an Andover native, raised much of that haul from Boston connections, as well as his networks built from his time at Harvard Business School and as a Huffington Post executive.
Lori Trahan, the only other candidate to start raising funds in the third quarter of the year, collected only a third of Koh’s figure — still a solid start by normal standards — fishing primarily for dollars in her home area in and around Lowell. She just received her first union endorsement, from Teamsters local 25, and as a former high-level staffer for Meehan and state Treasurer Tim Cahill, Trahan has plenty of potential donors to tap.
Rufus Gifford, former ambassador to Denmark, seems confident in his fundraising ability as he staffs up his campaign. He did, after all, raise a cool billion dollars as Barack Obama’s national finance director. His campaign is eager to prove that he can raise money from within the district, but regardless, his Obama-land contacts, Hollywood friends from his time as a movie producer, the LGBT community— oh, and the rich friends of his banking-legend father, Chad Gifford — should fuel a strong war chest.
Gifford’s circles overlap, to some degree, with those of Steve Kerrigan: Both are gay, with high-level national Democratic Party experience. But Kerrigan has deeper connections within the state party machinery, which led to his capturing the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 2014, which in turn deepened and broadened those ties. He has been gathering a group of consultants as well.
Das has also built up a team of staff and advisors, including Boston consultant Liberty Square Group and national media firm Devine Mulvey Longabaugh, that suggests a confidence in his ability to raise money. In addition to his business and law contacts, Das is looking to raise money from Indian-Americans; his campaign chairman is Toby Chaudhuri, a Massachusetts political veteran who led Asian-American initiatives for President Obama.
None of those candidates — Koh, Trahan, Gifford, Kerrigan, or Das — are current holders of elected office. That’s generally a disadvantage in fundraising. On the other hand, many of them are first-time candidates, whose friends and acquaintances haven’t grown weary of being hit up for campaign contributions.
That also applies to Patrick Littlefield, who has networks in health care technology circles, and Bopha Malone, a native Cambodian, who will try to tap into that community’s large population in the district.
Another first-time candidate, Alexandra Chandler, has been endorsed by the Trans United Fund, which supports progressive transgender candidates nationally. It can’t hurt, also, that Caitlyn Jenner posted gushing praise for Chandler last week to her 8.8 million Instagram followers. A former Naval Intelligence Officer who signed up after 9/11, Chandler is also tapping into a desire for candidates with military background that helped Seth Moulton’s political rise in the congressional district next door. She and Moulton are both members of the Truman National Security Project.
“I wouldn’t have entered the race if we didn’t think we would have the resources,” Chandler told me.
Among the few current or former officeholders in the race, state senator Barbara L’Italien has the broadest proven base of financial support. L’Italien raised more than $200,000 for her 2016 re-election to the state senate, which can serve as a foundation for her efforts.
Juana Matias, a first-term state representative, represents just a portion of Lawrence. But her campaign has already begun to tap into Hispanic-American fundraising circles in the state and nationally. She has been endorsed by PODER PAC, which supports Latina candidates nationally, and important Hispanic political figures have talked her up in the Southwest and Midwest. Just this week she was endorsed by California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez.
Nadeem Mazen, a two-term Cambridge city councilor, is one of several in the field who can tap into communities around and even outside the district, at the risk of being labeled an outsider. His entrepreneurial background, Egyptian roots, and Muslim faith may also open fundraising networks. Terry Ryan, school committee chairman in Westford, has in-district networks there and where he grew up in Lowell. And a newly announced 13th Democratic candidate, Keith St. John, hails from Marlboro.
How much is enough?
Not all of those candidates will be able to keep up with Koh. Some might not be able to round up a million dollars for the primary, let alone multiples of that figure.
But, while some baseline fundraising will be necessary to compete, many candidates can envision a path to victory through less expensive, highly targeted campaigning rather than a multi-million television ad campaign.
In the 10-candidate 1998 congressional primary, Michael Capuano famously won with just 23 percent of the vote. And even that race settled quickly into a fairly clear upper tier of five candidates, with the other five taking mere scraps.
This campaign has no clear favorites, nobody starting with district-wide name recognition, and, as noted above, a deep pool of interesting candidates. Who knows — this primary might splinter so much, no single candidate will be able to take even 20 percent.
In addition, turnout for the primary doesn’t figure to be driven by higher-profile campaigns, which can help those candidates with the ability to buy widespread name recognition among relatively low-information voters. Elizabeth Warren’s U.S. Senate primary is a foregone conclusion, and at least to date the gubernatorial primary to select a Democrat to face Charlie Baker has failed to enthuse the masses.
In that scenario, the keys to building a competitive 15 percent might be organization, message, enthusiasm, and targeted advertising on digital sites and niche broadcasting.
Is that all it could take to win? It’s far too early to answer that question or the one that comes next: Can a Democrat who wins the primary with a slim piece of the vote go on to win the general election? Presumptive Republican primary winner Rick Green (whose two competitors have just dropped out of the race) is waiting to test that.
