Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton spent a third of her money late last year on staff costs, running an expensive campaign that’s faltered even as her more nimble opponent, Sen. Bernard Sanders, has poured his money into ads.
On the Republican side, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush followed the Clinton model, spending 22 percent of his disbursements from October through December on staffing, while the two front-runners, Sen. Ted Cruz and businessman Donald Trump ran much less conventional campaigns, investing in research into voters and trying to land spots on ballots.
As the voting began in Iowa, the different strategies the campaigns took to get there were laid out in their final 2015 financial reports, filed with the Federal Election Commission late Sunday.
Mrs. Clinton raised the most of any candidate, collecting $38.1 million in the final three months of the year. But Mr. Sanders was close behind with $33.6 million raised.
He spent half that on ads, including more than $10 million on traditional media buys and $5.6 million on digital ads, targeting the younger voters he’s counting on.
He spent just 12 percent of his money on salary and payroll taxes.
Mrs. Clinton spent 32 percent of her money on salary and payroll taxes — sending $3.7 million to the IRS for those three months alone — as she built a campaign machine she’s hoping will be able to survive Mr. Sanders’ surge.
“We’re heading into the first caucuses and primaries with an organization second to none thanks to the support of hundreds of thousands of people across the country and have the resources necessary to wage a successful campaign in the early states and beyond,” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said in a statement Sunday night announcing the numbers. “We’ve focused on investing in people to organize and turn out voters and in preparing for the map to expand beyond the early states.”
Mr. Bush was also hoping organization would help him outlast some of the rest of the GOP field, hoping he might survive poor showings in early states and be one of the last candidates standing later this year.
But his operation has been hurt by spending decisions similar to Mrs. Clinton’s, and by less-than-stellar fundraising of $7.1 million.
He spent 15.6 percent of his final quarter disbursements on wages for his campaign, and another 6.8 percent on payroll taxes. Indeed, his single biggest expense from October through December was the more than $660,000 he paid the IRS.
Mr. Trump, Republicans’ national front-runner, who is funding his own campaign, spent just 7 percent of his money on payroll and taxes, instead pouring his cash into travel, consulting costs, earning places on primary ballots and paying for his totemic “Make America Great Again” hats.
Mr. Cruz posted perhaps the best fundraising numbers of the Republican field, raising $20.5 million. Sen. Marco Rubio raised $14.2 million. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson raised more than Mr. Cruz, with $22.6 million, but it came from direct marketing, which requires a massive investment up front, meaning he had less cash to build an organization.
Mr. Cruz also spent heavily on fundraising, pumping nearly 20 percent of his money into research and modeling to spot donors. By contrast just 5 percent of his money went to staffing costs.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.