From Politics Daily at NYMag.com:

….The lasting political lesson from Tuesday night may have nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with Congress, Obama’s political future or Democrats vs. Republicans. The little-noticed message buried in the returns was the dramatic collapse of mega-rich self-funded candidates, which may signal a populist protest against the era of political excess.

New York City’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg – the eighth-richest man in America who has “invested” a quarter of a billion dollars on his political career since 2001 – was almost universally expected to coast to a third term over his flailing Democratic rival, city comptroller Bill Thompson. Instead, Bloomberg (despite boasting a 70-percent approval rating, according exit polls) eked out a 50,000-vote, 51-to-46 percent victory. Bloomberg lavished more than $100 million on this campaign (about $200 a vote), which would have been enough to pay for a steak dinner for two (along with a modest bottle of red wine) at the Palm. Most New Yorkers probably would have preferred the dinner – 42 percent of voters said in the exit polls that Bloomberg’s spending was an “important” factor in their mayoral choice.

The downfall of Corzine, a former investment banker who is the second-biggest (to Bloomberg) self-funder in American history, offers a cautionary tale about the limits of money and aggressive campaign tactics in politics. Dominating the expensive TV markets of New York and Philadelphia, Corzine (whose disapproval ratings as governor were consistently more than 50 percent) tried to make Christie the issue, even accusing the stout and staunch Republican in a commercial of “throwing his weight around.” Exit polls found that 73 percent of New Jersey voters thought that the tenor of Corzine’s ad blitz was “unfair.”



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