Senate Run Could Be Costly Affair For Rep. Frank
By Scott Brooks
WASHINGTON – There are few surer bets in politics than an uncontested election.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, knows all about this. In the last five general elections, he has run unopposed three times.
The Newtonville Democrat, a 22-year institution in the U.S. House of Representatives, says he has not run an active campaign since 1992, having coasted to easy victories throughout the last decade. That would change, however, if he follows through on recent comments that he might seek Sen. John Kerry’s Senate seat if the Democratic senator succeeds in his bid for the presidency next year.
That seat, securely held by Sen. Kerry for nearly 20 years now, would be expected to attract some serious political heavyweights and could be one of the most hotly contested races to hit Massachusetts in years.
If Sen. Kerry leaves the Senate, the field to succeed him would be crowded, speculated Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst for the Cook Political Report. Ms. Duffy named some of the state’s recent Republican governors as possible contenders, including William Weld, Paul Cellucci and possibly even Mitt Romney, whose term ends in 2006, when the seat would be up for grabs.
Such names, she said, could pose a formidable challenge to Rep. Frank, who recently became the first politician to express an interest in the seat.
“Open Senate seats don’t come around that often,” Ms. Duffy said. “He would get challenged. I just can’t see him getting a free ride to a nomination.”
Experts say an open seat in 2006 could be costly, and it has been years since Rep. Frank has been sufficiently threatened to require a heavy fundraising effort. In the last 10 years, he has raised a total of $1.7 million, a figure only slightly higher than the $1.5 million he put together in 1981-82 alone to win a second term in the House.
Among Massachusetts incumbents in the House last year, six of whom were uncontested, Rep. Frank raised the least, collecting less than $450,000.
With or without competition, Rep. Frank said, he has not organized a full-bore campaign since 1992, when his district was reshaped. That year, the last in which he ran TV and radio advertisements, he defeated his closest opponent by more than 40 percentage points
“I don’t run a campaign,” he said. “I just go to my district and meet with people.”
In most of the congressman’s recent elections, in fact, he has given away nearly as much as he has spent for himself. More than one-third of Rep. Frank’s expenditures last year went to other candidates in elections all across the country.
Without an opponent, Rep. Frank dedicated just 3 percent of his total expenditures last cycle to campaign fundraisers. He spent no money on campaign signs, stickers and other paraphernalia, and won more than 166,000 votes without hiring a campaign manager.
For some politicians, such a history of campaign inactivity could be trouble during the long, crazy months of an open Senate race, according to Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report.
“Fundraising ability does atrophy if you don’t do fundraising,” Mr. Rothenberg said. “People move, people die. If he was going run statewide, he’d have to put some energy into expanding his list, updating his databases. He’d have to invest some time and energy into it.”
Senate races are considerably more expensive than House races. The average Senate candidate last year spent $5 million, more than five times the average amount spent by candidates running for the House, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
In his own race last year, which did not feature a Republican opponent, Sen. Kerry raised $8.6 million, according to Political Money Line, a campaign finance research website. That figure is roughly five times what Rep. Frank raised over the last decade.
Ms. Duffy said a race to replace Sen. Kerry could resemble the senator’s intense 1996 race against then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld. That race cost the two candidates a total of about $19 million.
However, Ms. Duffy, said Rep. Frank should not have much of a problem tapping into new revenue sources. In particular, she said, he could draw heavily from the gay community, which gives overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. That could be a deep well for Rep. Frank, given the scarcity of other openly gay candidates for the community to support, she said.
Also, she said, Rep. Frank’s voting record might prove attractive to environmental groups and organized labor, both strong Democratic revenue sources.
“Lots of people might have a problem,” Ms. Duffy said. “I think, however, that Frank has some national constituencies that will help him a great deal.”
Rep. Frank said he would not speculate on a future Senate campaign.
“It is in the future. It’s non-existent right now,” he said. “If and when it happens, it will happen. It plays zero part in my life right now.”
Published in The New Bedford Standard Times, in Massachusetts.
