Right now, the 2008 presidential race looks to be the largest ever. This is the first race without a presidential or vice-presidential incumbent in 40 years, and the resultant scramble for support on both sides has led to predictions of the most expensive presidential campaigns ever.
It's hard to make predictions 10 months from any primary, but the Intrade online trading prediction market has been running since last year, and its betters have ample financial incentive to get it right.
On the Republican side, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has the most preliminary support with 41 percent. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., comes in second place at 24 percent, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is third with 17 percent.
On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., rests at 44 percent, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is in second place with 30 percent. Former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards is roughly tied with former vice president Al Gore (who isn't even in the race) at about 10 percent each.
Clinton already has built a national campaign infrastructure through her "exploratory committee" and is working with her husband to lock down donors and supporters. Though Obama doesn't have the same money reserves as Clinton, he also is rapidly amassing donations and volunteers.
The New York Times recently reported that Edwards was putting all his hopes into winning the Iowa Caucus, the first of the nomination primaries in early 2008. He also counts on the two leading candidates tarring each other with negative campaigning, although that circumstance might tempt Gore to enter the race.
The Republicans also are in a fierce fight for support, with all three leading candidates courting the religious right. McCain has the most conservative record of the three, but he lashed out at this rather large voting block in the 2000 primaries.
Giuliani and Romney both were elected on a social moderate platform in otherwise liberal states. This makes them unpalatable to the religious right, although Romney has since made an abrupt right-turn on most social issues, even repeatedly repudiating the state he formerly governed at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference.
With the competition fierce, serious candidates not in the top few places will drop out early as the fundraising figures come out. Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack already dropped out in February, citing insufficient fundraising to compete with the other candidates.
Though official figures won't come out until the end of March, The National Journal released estimates up to the first of March indicating Obama already has raised $12 million, with predictions of more than $18 million total by the end of the month. Clinton is set to accomplish about the same, although she'll have the benefit of millions left over from her recent campaign for re-election.
With that kind of money already flying around 20 months before the election, prepare for a flood of political ads. The Kansas primaries are relatively late in the season, so we'll escape the opening fray.
But after that, there's always the general election, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent to buy advertising and raise support. There might be light at the end of the tunnel, however.
Thanks to a recent Federal Election Commission draft opinion, Obama announced that he will go with purely federal funding for the general election if the opposing candidate agrees to do so as well.
McCain already has matched this promise on the Republican side, which would limit both sides to about $150 million dollars each.
Though that still might sound like a lot of money, The New York Times reports that private donations probably will net both nominees $500 million each if they refuse public funding. If things work out right, we might see the Pandora's Box of modern politics closed once again.
That is, until we get our first presidential candidates for 2012.
Greg Brown is a junior in philosophy. Please send your comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.
