Courtesy Jerrad Christian for Congress
Jerrad Christian is running in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, but is still working full-time as a software engineer while campaigning.
It is incredibly expensive to run for office, and campaign costs have only continued to increase over time, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. Candidates, PACs, and political parties spend billions of dollars on campaigns, which help pay for staff salaries, travel expenses, yard signs, campaign buttons, polling data, and the biggest expense, advertising. Though an election isn’t necessarily decided by how much a candidate raises, raising more tends to put them at an advantage over their opponent.
The high costs associated with campaigning often lead to wealthier candidates running for office, according to reporting from Carolina Public Press. These individuals have more resources to self-fund their campaigns, and often attend prestigious schools and work in high-paying jobs like law, giving them additional opportunities to network with wealthy potential donors.
Candidates who aren’t wealthy often lack access to large donor networks and support from their parties, and are more likely to have to rely on small individual donations. Former Air Force physicist Mike Kripchak, who ran for Ohio’s Sixth District this past May, only raised about $22,000 during his campaign. His Republican opponent state Sen. Michael Rulli raised over $670,000.
“My opponent, something like 72 percent of his funds come from big money PACs,” Kripchak said. “Most of mine don’t. My average donation is $36. I have one PAC donation or contribution from the United Mine Workers for $2,500.”
It’s also personally expensive for candidates to run for office. Poorer candidates may still need to work their regular jobs simultaneously. They can take a salary from the campaign, a provision that was expanded last year after a working-class candidate named Nabilah Islam took her case to the Federal Election Commission. Now, federal candidates can pay themselves up to 50 percent of a congressional salary (which is currently $174,000), or pay equivalent to their own average annual income over the previous five years, whichever is smaller.
But that still may not be enough to manage the increased personal costs of running a campaign. As the Prospect has reported, Dan Osborn, a union steamfitter apprentice and independent candidate running for U.S. Senate in Nebraska, didn’t own a suit before a trip to Washington to meet with advocates and donors. His campaign didn’t want to pay for one out of its coffers because the law prohibits using campaign expenditures on expensive clothing.
Moreover, working-class candidates may not feel like they can risk quitting their job, running for office, and losing, because there may not be a job waiting for them afterward. For those with a financial cushion, that risk is acceptable, but for ordinary people it’s not. Former Navy meteorologist and oceanographer Jerrad Christian is running against incumbent Rep. Troy Balderson in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District. He is still working full-time as a software engineer while he’s campaigning.
“I don’t take any money from the campaign myself at all,” Christian said, adding that a salary would cut into the resources needed to win. “It’s normal for people to quit their jobs and get paid by the campaign a salary, but I’d rather use my time to work a job and make sure that we give this campaign every chance that it gets instead of taking money from it and lose an opportunity.”
Courtesy Cooke for Congress
Democrat Rebecca Cooke, a small-business owner, is running in the primary for Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District.
These disadvantages may be amplified by other factors, like a candidate’s race, gender, age, and the competitiveness of the seat for which they’re running. Young, female, and nonwhite candidates are less likely to possess the resources or connections to self-fund a run for office, and party insiders may see this as a sign that they are less “electable” than their older, white, or male counterparts.
Indeed, party leaders tend to favor candidates based on their fundraising capabilities, said Rebecca Cooke, a small-business owner who is running in the primary for Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District. If a working-class candidate cannot raise the necessary funds because they don’t know the right people who can max out donations, they are seen as a higher risk than a self-funder.
Kripchak received little to no funding from his party or even media attention. There was one reason for that; he was running as a Democrat in a special election in a district Joe Biden lost by 29 points back in 2020. Parties and PACs typically invest more money into competitive races, but his district was considered uncompetitive. Kripchak was only able to get support from some Democratic county chairs, but received none at the federal or state level.
“We used to be super blue 20-plus years ago, but it was hard to get buy-in from people,” Kripchak said. “A lot of the people that used to be really active went to other states and other areas where they thought there were better opportunities for Democratic candidates.”
But despite being vastly outspent by representative-elect Rulli, Kripchak lost by less than ten points. He is trying again in the general election this November.
We have seen several successful examples recently of working-class candidates making the sacrifice to run a campaign. The most famous of these is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who was working shifts in a bar in Manhattan while challenging for a House seat in the Bronx. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), the youngest member of Congress, has talked about running up massive debts while campaigning, and having trouble even finding an affordable place to live in Washington during the congressional session.
This year, several others are making the leap, despite the long odds and the hurdles that campaign finance laws and even political parties place on the process.
Christian is running for Congress in a poor rural district in the Appalachian region of Ohio. Rural candidates like him often struggle to get attention and resources from federal and state parties, often due to assumptions about rural politics and rural voters.
“The people out here feel like they’re forgotten. Most of them don’t even know who [Rep. Troy Balderson] is, let alone feel represented by him,” Christian said.
Additionally, the disproportionate presence of news and broadband deserts in rural areas limits the ways that candidates can reach voters and weakens civic engagement.
In the absence of a vast donor network or millions of dollars to freely spend on advertising, working-class candidates rely on on-the-ground organizing and building relationships within their local communities. Wadesboro Town Councilman Garrett Snuggs has lived in rural Anson County, North Carolina, since 2000, where he has run a barbershop and later a barber school for the past two decades. Additionally, Snuggs was able to receive some campaign assistance from local Democrats, as well as Cynthia Wallace, who previously ran for office and later co-founded New Rural Project (NRP). NRP is a nonprofit working in seven North Carolina counties (including Anson) to improve political engagement among young and marginalized residents.
“She’s always been an advocate for me and has given me great advice,” Snuggs said. “Miss Wallace gave me a lot of good talking points, and, you know, told me the way I needed to go in order to get up good energy for the election at that time.”
As a result, Snuggs won a landslide victory in 2023. It was especially significant as he is currently one of three African American town council members. This marks the first time in Wadesboro’s history that its town council is majority African American.
Even when working-class candidates lose, it builds a foundation for future attempts. Before her primary run this year, Cooke ran in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s Third District back in 2022, where she lost to Wisconsin state Sen. Brad Pfaff. Though she lost that race, she said that it helped her build a robust grassroots infrastructure through both voter outreach and engagement with local news. She hopes this infrastructure will help her win against her current primary opponents Katrina Shankland and Eric Wilson. The Wisconsin primary is August 13.
