E-Mail This Article to a Friend Campaign financing How Dean got less bang for the buck BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

Barring a remarkable resurgence, we have witnessed the decline and fall of the Howard Dean empire, complete with former campaign manager Joe Trippi in the role of Nero, playing the fiddle while the city burned.

Trippi was fired after Dean finished third in the Iowa caucuses and a distant second in the New Hampshire primary. He left behind the ashes of more than $40 million burned through by the campaign, including a spectacular $18,744,921 in the last three months of 2003 alone, according to financial reports submitted to the Federal Election Commission last weekend.

The pivotal moment of the campaign may have come on November 8th, when Dean made the controversial decision to opt out of the federal matching-funds program. Doing so meant that he could ignore the spending limit of roughly $44 million for the primary campaign. At the time, the campaign was taking in about $5 million a month in donations -- way more than any other candidate.

Dean’s decision, however, gave John Kerry the political cover he needed to opt out as well, which he did six days later (after first firing his campaign manager, Jim Jordan, and replacing him with Mary Beth Cahill). This allowed Kerry to pour millions of his own money into his faltering campaign. He spent $11,420,725 in the final three months of 2003.

The free-spending slugfest continued through the Iowa caucuses on January 19, and the New Hampshire primary on the 27th. The campaigns will release figures on the January spending in a few weeks.

But comparing the Dean and Kerry campaigns’ spending in the three previous months reveals some interesting differences that may help explain why their fortunes reversed so dramatically. (Figures were derived from FEC reports and from campaign-finance watchdog PoliticalMoneyLine.)

One strategic difference can be seen in the salaries. Both campaigns spent roughly $1.8 million on staff salaries in the three months, but Dean relied heavily on a handful of campaign leaders and a large number of low-paid staff. Kerry hired a couple dozen experienced, high-paid middle-management staff, and spread them out.

Aside from Trippi, only four Dean people were earning more than $5,000 a month; the national finance director, the New Hampshire coordinator, and two deputy campaign managers. Kerry had 13 making at least that. Perhaps the most important comparison: Kerry’s Iowa director, John Norris, was paid $9,170 a month; Dean’s, Jeannie Murray, earned barely half that salary.

One of Dean’s $5,000+ deputy campaign managers, Andrea Pringle, joined the Dean staff just last August. Pringle is a partner at Whistle Stop Communications, which specializes in direct mail. Her influence may help explain why the campaign spent $2.6 million on direct mail from October through December -- including more than $900,000 paid to Whistle Stop. Kerry spent just $500,000 on direct mail over the same period.

The two campaigns spent pretty evenly on travel and lodging, but Dean’s campaign became increasingly event-oriented. The campaign spent roughly $900,000 on event costs -- three times as much as Kerry. (This included a $48,000 holiday party at Davio’s in Boston in December.)

Technology -- the trademark of Trippi’s young, hip, Internet-driven campaign -- swallowed up another $900,000. Kerry spent just $100,000.

Of course, Trippi made sure to spend plenty on advertising as well -- after all, like most campaign managers, he was paid by commission on ad buys. Of the $5.1 million Dean spent on media for the three months (Kerry spent $3.9 million), almost $4.5 million was bought through Trippi’s agency. At Trippi’s fifteen percent commission (revealed after he was fired), that meant he was personally making close to $200,000 a month. That figure certainly increased in January -- giving Trippi a nice windfall of commissions to cushion the blow of losing the actual campaign.