How Rick Caruso spent $104M and still lost the LA mayor's race [View all]
The strategy of swamping his opponent with advertising, tagging her as a City Hall insider and sending out a paid army to knock on doors failed to sway voters across much of Los Angeles, according to preliminary precinct totals and political analysts, who say the avalanche of ads might also have caused some voter fatigue.
“It sounds facetious to say you can have too much money in politics,” said Garry South, a Los Angeles political consultant who has worked for mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns, including those of former California Gov. Gray Davis. But candidates with unlimited money often “engage in overkill, and I think that’s partly what Rick Caruso did.”
“We couldn’t watch TV for half an hour,” he said, “without seeing three Rick Caruso ads.”
Caruso will now take his place in history among the list of candidates who have funded record-setting campaigns in California, only to come up short. The most recent example is Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO and Republican who spent more than $170 million on her 2010 gubernatorial campaign against former Gov. Jerry Brown. Caruso’s spending per voter dwarfs Whitman’s, as she competed in a statewide race.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/18/rick-caruso-lost-la-mayors-race-00069343
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