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first on decorahnews.com: The election in Iowa House District 55 cost over half a million dollars

Posted: Sun, Jan 27, 2019 3:59 PM

(by decorahnews.com's Paul Scott):

Politics has changed in the past decade.  If you're running for a seat in the Iowa Legislature, for instance, you no longer send out a letter to your friends and relatives asking them to donate a few dollars to cover your campaign costs.

That's because political campaigns have seen a huge influx of money.  Take, for instance, the race between Republican Michael Bergan and Democrat Kayla Koether for District 55's seat in the Iowa Legislature.

While all the attention has been focused on 29 absentee ballots cast in the election and whether or not they should be opened and counted, there's been no attention paid to the cost of last fall's campaign.

Campaign financing reports from both candidates have now all been filed in Des Moines and the total is a staggering $504,398.

Republicans spent $226,704 in total to support Bergan's campaign, while Democrats spent a total of $277,694 on Koether's campaign.

The most interesting figures, however, are the sources of the donations to the two campaigns.  Of Koether's $277,694 in campaign spending, $159,077 came in "In-Kind Donations."  Almost that entire amount was spent by the Iowa Democratic Party, which paid for mailings and television ads and a few other campaign ads.  Of Bergan's $226,704 in campaign spending, $181,960 of the entire amount was spent by the Iowa Republican Party.

In other words, 80 percent of the money spent to elect Bergan to another term in the Iowa House wasn't controlled by Bergan himself, but by the Iowa Republican Party in Des Moines.  That figure is lower for Koether, but still a majority at 57 percent of all spending being controlled by the Iowa Democratic Party.

It's expensive to run campaign commercials on television and the statewide political parties have resources that individual candidates do not.  But that means the political parties have more influence over candidates--ironically at the same time most voters say political affiliation is less and less important to them.

For the complete reports filed by Bergan and Koether, visit the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board's website at: https://webapp.iecdb.iowa.gov/PublicView/search.aspx?d=statewide