Fresno-area politicians spent big in races for Congress. Here’s what it cost to win – and lose
Anyone with a TV or a mailbox knows that candidates for Congress in Fresno and the surrounding central San Joaquin Valley pulled out all the stops to convince people to vote for them – or, in some cases, to vote against their opponent.
Between TV commercials that flooded the airwaves, mailers that clogged mailboxes and other types of campaign spending in the weeks before the election, candidates’ campaign committees in the 16th, 21st and 22nd congressional districts spent more than $35 million, according to post-general election reports to the Federal Elections Commission for the 2020 election cycle.
That’s an average of almost $50 for each of the 702,202 votes that were cast in the three races.
Some campaigns, of course, spent far more than others.
Devin Nunes of Tulare, the Republican incumbent in the 22nd Congressional District, reported that his committee spent more than $18.5 million in the 2019-20 election cycle – by far the most of any campaign for Congress in the Valley for this year’s elections. Nunes outspent his Democratic opponent, Phil Arballo of Fresno, by almost 4 to 1. Nunes’ margin of victory in the district, which encompasses parts of Fresno and Tulare counties, was less than 1.2 to 1.
That indicates that dollar for dollar, Arballo’s committee got more bang for the buck from its reported expenditures of just under $4.8 million for the campaign.
Put another way: the Nunes campaign spent $108.46 for each vote he received, based on his post-election report, while each vote for Arballo cost $33.21.
Nunes, one of the most prolific fundraisers among Republican lawmakers, also boosted other campaign committees over the past year, including transfers of $550,000 to the National Republican Campaign Committee and campaign contributions to 70 other House candidates totaling $140,000.
Cox-Valadao rematch
In the neighboring 21st Congressional District, the election was a rematch of 2018 between TJ Cox, the Fresno Democrat who won the seat in 2018, and Hanford Republican David Valadao, who held the post from 2012 until Cox narrowly defeated him two years ago.
In this year’s contest, Valadao won by just over 1,500 votes out of more than 170,000 votes cast. To accomplish that, his campaign spent almost $3.9 million – or a little over $45 for each of the 85,928 votes he received from voters in Fresno, Kings, Kern and Tulare counties.
Cox, by contrast, spent more than $5.7 million in his losing effort, or almost $68 for each of the 84,406 votes he received in the Nov. 3 election.
A relative bargain in 16th
The third race involving a substantial number of voters in the region was in the 16th Congressional District, which pitted longtime incumbent Jim Costa, D-Fresno, against Republican challenger Kevin Cookingham of Madera.
Costa’s campaign committee spent about $1.85 million in the 2020 election cycle, a margin of more than 7 to 1 over Cookingham’s $250,334 in reported campaign expenditures. Costa easily won the election by more than 40,000 votes, and compared to candidates in the other two Valley races, did so rather economically, at a cost of $14.41 per vote.
Cookingham’s effort, on the other hand, cost less than $3 per vote.
Independent expenditure committees
The closely contested Cox-Valadao race also attracted the attention of their parties’ national campaign spending organizations and other “independent expenditure committees” – more commonly referred to as political action committees or PACs. Such outside spending was lavish, and used mostly for negative attack ads against one candidate or the other. They are independent because their spending is not approved by, or coordinated with, any candidate’s official campaign committee.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for instance, injected more than $3.5 million into a campaign to defeat Valadao. That led a collective $4.1 million spent to oppose Valadao.
On the other side, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent almost $1.7 million to defeat Cox, representing a little more than half of the nearly $3.2 million in outside spending opposing the Democratic incumbent. Also chipping in substantial sums to campaign against Cox were the conservative Citizens for Free Enterprise, which put more than $785,000 into the contest; and the Congressional Leadership Fund, a PAC aimed at electing Republicans to Congress, about $729,000.
The House Majority PAC, a committee aimed at helping Democratic candidates for Congress, spent a little more than $240,000 to support Cox in the election.
Independent PAC expenditures in support of Costa amounted to just under $295,000, with no outside spending reported in opposition to him. Cookingham’s effort was supported with less than $9,000 in outside expenditures.
Independent PAC spending in the Nunes-Arballo race was modest compared to the other two races. Political action committees reported spending less than $750 to support Nunes, and less than $25,000 to oppose him, in this year’s election.
PAC spending in support of Arballo amounted to less than $44,000, and no independent expenditures were reported to oppose the Democrat.
