Campaign Pros And Cons

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Since all candidates need assistance in raising vast amount of money in order to conduct an efficient and long term campaign, they need to illicit financial campaign donations from outside individuals and corporations to enhance their chances. The first instance of this occurring was in 1944 when one candidate (Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt) who was running for reelection was able to fund his campaign through the creation of a PAC of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. From that point on PACs became a pivotal part of the United States political campaign process up until 1971. At that point, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 came into effect which put strict limitations on the amount of money donated to a candidate by an individual, …show more content…

Donald Trump, who is the 2016 presumptive Republican Party Presidential nominee, would have the availability to single handily finance himself, which means he does not need to fund raise as hard as his presumptive contender, Hilary Clinton (the Democratic Party presumptive Presidential nominee). With this, it will come with a few advantages in the upcoming months during the 2016 Presidential race. The first is that a Super PAC typically purchases air time in order to support their candidate or to attack the opposing view of another at a higher cost. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, can use his own money to purchase advertisements at a much lower cost. Granted Mr. Trump has helped himself out immensely with all the free publicity that media outlets have given him over the other candidates during the primaries. According to www.opensecrets.org as of May 31, 2016, Donald Trump has spent 45,703,185 dollars of his own personal funds toward his campaign. That accounts for seventy-two percent of the campaign’s total funds. In contrast, Hilary Clinton has spent none of her personal funds toward her campaign. The second advantage is that typical candidates are not authorized to receive more than 2,700 dollars from PACs and they do not have the funds in their own bank accounts to fund themselves, but Mr. Trump has the unique advantage of being able to utilize his own properties, aircraft, and businesses to host his events and campaign headquarters in order to cut costs and essentially put the money they are spending at his corporation back into funding his campaign. This just shows that you do not always need to have large PACs and Super PACs backing a candidate for election, but does this give an unfair advantage? I would say no because now this candidate does not have the perception of being bought out by big donors and corporations to who donated money

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