While record outside spending affected the election in
innumerable ways, the prizes most sought by the emerging class of
megadonors remained outside their grasp.
At the private air terminal at Logan Airport in Boston early
Wednesday, men in unwrinkled suits sank into plush leather chairs as
they waited to board Gulfstream jets, trading consolations over Mitt
Romney's loss the day before.
"All I can say is the American people have spoken," said Kenneth
G. Langone, the founder of Home Depot and one of Mr. Romney's top
fund-raisers, plucking off his hat and settling into a couch.
The biggest single donor in political history, the casino
billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson, mingled with other Romney backers at
a post-election breakfast, fresh off a large gamble gone bad. Of the
eight candidates he had supported with tens of millions of dollars
in contributions to "super PACs," none were victorious on Tuesday.
And as calls came in Wednesday from some of the donors who had
poured more than $300 million into the pair of big-spending outside
groups founded in part by Karl Rove -- perhaps the leading political
entrepreneur of the super PAC era -- he offered them a grim upside:
Without us, the race would not have been as close as it was.
The most expensive election in U.S. history drew to a close this
week with a price tag estimated at more than $6 billion, propelled
by legal and regulatory decisions that allowed wealthy donors to
pour record amounts of cash into races around the country.
But while outside spending affected the election in innumerable
ways -- reshaping the Republican presidential nominating contest,
clogging the airwaves with unprecedented amounts of negative
advertising and shoring up embattled Republican incumbents in the
House -- the prizes most sought by the emerging class of megadonors
remained outside their grasp. President Barack Obama will return to
the White House in January, and the Democrats have strengthened
their lock on the Senate.
The election's most lavishly self-financed candidate fared no
better. Linda E. McMahon, a Connecticut Republican who is a former
professional wrestling executive, spent close to $100 million --
nearly all of it her own money -- on two races for the Senate,
conceding defeat on Tuesday for the second time in three years.
"Money is a necessary condition for electoral success," said Bob
Biersack, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics,
which tracks campaign spending. "But it's not sufficient, and it's
never been."
Even by the flush standards of a campaign in which the two
presidential candidates raised $1 billion each, the scale of outside
spending was staggering: more than $1 billion all told, about triple
the amount in 2010.
Mr. Obama faced at least $386 million in negative advertising
from super PACs and other outside spenders, more than double what
the groups supporting him spent on the airwaves. Outside groups
spent more than $37 million in Virginia's Senate race and $30
million in Ohio's, a majority to aid the Republican candidates.
The bulk of that outside money came from a relatively small group
of wealthy donors, unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United
decision, which allowed unlimited contributions to super PACs.
Harold Simmons, a Texas industrialist, gave $26.9 million to super
