"The sole exception is Washington, where gaming receipts are exempt from taxation, thanks to a deal made by Gov. Chris Gregoire's office. The grateful tribes made six-figure contributions to Gregoire's gubernatorial campaign and the state Democratic Party."

It's called quid pro quo.

A depressing thing to read and, I'm sure, accurate. You could have mentioned that the big spenders do not always win. I don't know the ratio but it seems that I fairly often read that "so and so" won in spite of being outspent. There is at least the glimmer of the death of conventional print and TV advertising; an ex advertising executive named (I think) Reis has written a book about diminishing effectiveness of traditional advertising. Who, after all, pays any attention? Google has seriously wounded print and TV advertising not because Google is so effective but because conventional advertising cannot prove any effect at all. Costco doesn't advertise and seems to do just fine without it.

You discussed federal and state races, but the situation is getting out of control locally as well. Legislative and Seattle City Council races now run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you want to be the next King County Executive, you will probably need to come up with at least a million.

Where does all the money go for the local races? Most candidates hire consultants to help them with messaging. These consultants are important for such things as designing mail pieces, developing phone pitches, etc. Candidates often contract with a consulting firm to manage PDC disclosures, which can be very complicated business. There are even consultants to help with fundraising, which raises some very interesting questions.

In addition to all these consultants, most candidates will do the traditional stuff. Run some ads in the print media or radio. Television ads are less expensive than you might think, since the cable market is very targeted now. A good consultant will, for example, figure out what the best ads are for the History Channel, the Home and Garden Channel, etc. They can be as inexpensive as a few hundred dollars per ad, though I remain skeptical of their effectiveness. I think a lot of candidates just like to see themselves on TV. Anyway, mail ads are really the bread and butter of a grassroots, local campaign. A high quality mail piece (or a piece that a candidate and/or volunteer delivers in person, passes out at the summer fair, etc.) is also fairly expensive. I'm not sure just how much they are, but it would cost tens of thousands to give one to every voter in Seattle. And those campaign calls you receive during dinner? A candidate often rents out the space for those calls from the consultant's office, or several candidates set up a common office to save money, but in any event that infrastructure has its price as well.

Money is also a form of status, and status is key in politics. In order to be taken seriously by the local party, endorsing agencies, the almighty press, and the movers and shakers on the local scene, a candidate must raise enough money to prove that s/he is serious and viable. Going to an endorsement interview with the Washington Conservation Voters, while having raised no money, is like going on your first date at the age of 35. The other person will naturally wonder what the problem is.

It is possible to win a campaign on a shoestring; ask Mike McGinn or Jerry Brown about that. But don't be fooled. These cases are the exception. The rule is that winner is at the top of the pack, or at least near the top, in fundraising. A candidate in a local race must spend at least a couple hours every day dialing for dollars. Those are hours not spent at local events, answering questions by ordinary voters, and studying the issues that the candidate will have to address once in office. In other words, the never-ending quest for money is a major distraction from what the candidate would much rather do and what constituents would much rather the candidate do.

Pepper, part of what you are saying, "..those are hours not spent at local events, etc. " is what one would expect, namely that the time spent fund-raising is leveraged via big media into delivering a message to a great many people. OK, the message is manipulated to grab attention and appeal to the most superficial of considerations. I'm not sure there is anything new about that; I think that happens at "local events" also.

I'll respond to some phone feedback I've received regarding this piece.

One question: Are not officeholders and candidates just as much the aggressors in fundraising as those who give the money? Well, in most cases, yes.

Another: What's wrong with spending time with those who finance your campaign? Nothing per se. But when the total time and energy devoted to fundraising becomes overwhelming, then things are out of balance. I could have mentioned in the piece that the same Senator or Member who lunches and has dinner with present or prospective donors also typically ends each workday going through a call list, provided by staff, of 8-10 money people.
Each call may consume 5 minutes or an hour, depending on how demanding the person being called may be. Over time this just plain wears down the officeholder.

What about money solicited for outright bribes or indirect bribes, such as contributions to an officeholder's favorite charity? These take place too but less than you might think, given the intense media coverage given to those who get caught in such practices.

kieth: the main issue I was getting at it my post was access. When candidates come out to, say, the League of Women Voters debate or the neighborhood association's event, or meets with individual voters at the county fair, this creates the two-way relationship that a politician needs in order to do a good job. Mass media is one-way, in that the candidate gets his or her views out (generally in a distorted and superficial way, as you note), but there is no feedback. And, as someone who has talked with a lot of candidates for office, I can say that there is no substitute for forming a personal relationship.

There is also the factor of diminishing returns. Local candidates need to raise many times more money than they did a generation ago. But they do not get many times more information out to the public. It's because the process of hiring consultants and niche messaging has become much more expensive.

It seems to me that we have reached the point where no rational and sane individual would want to run for major public office. So that basically leaves us with egomaniacs and ideologues -- sometimes, when we're real lucky, we get both in the same package. Politicians may hate fundraising, but they love the power and adulation of the limelight even more. Otherwise they wouldn't do what they do. The teabaggers may be off-base in their diagnosis of how to cure the malady, but their intuitive sense that the political game is now rigged is spot-on.

As for "buy a place at the table in order to be heard", I think that hackneyed euphemism needs to be put out to pasture. Big money is buying the table itself and dictating who gets to sit there. Money flows to both D's and R's to assure that everyone is bought. Anyone who believes that business executives spend tens of millions of dollars on politicians simply to have an opportunity to be heard is a hopeless pollyanna. It's an investment, pure and simple. If it didn't pay off, it wouldn't continue to be made. The fact that each year ever more money is flowing from private interests into political coffers tells us that the major players themselves deem the dividends overall to be very attractive.

I don't want to sound like I am defending the sickening tide of political messaging that I see and hear. It's bad. What I am saying is that it's always been bad. Selling a political idea is a rough enterprise. I have shaken a (very) few politicians' hands and I have to say I do not feel that I made any connection to them or communicated any idea to them. They are busy. Ted and Pepper, you would apparently feel better if the pollticians had face contact with their constituents (to the extent possible). I am skeptical. What difference could that make? at most a candidate could maybe have meaningful conversations with a few hundred people in a two month election campaign. That is not going to get anyone elected. Even in a small city. The time the politician spends extracting money from donors is time spent away from the pressing of the flesh. Politicians everywhere make that choice quickly; they go after the money. A rational choice. The electorate has to be sophisticated enough to see through the crap and sometimes we are. In this state we are at least aware of where campaign money comes from. Those who are interested can find out.