Profits far from certain for early primary states

The presidential contest is assumed to be a cash cow for early voting states. If so, it probably will produce skim milk at best.

The fluid nature of the 2008 campaign, with candidates scattered across a larger field of competition, is making for an unpredictable balance sheet for towns where hotels and pizza shops fill up for a political event while police overtime budgets stretch thin providing security.

The contenders are certainly spending millions - somewhere.

Yet their strategies shift with the winds, taking big dollars with them and leaving nothing certain except that things will be busy near the day of decision.

New Hampshire has been a hive of early activity, bringing an obvious boost to the hospitality industry and more, especially when a debate comes to town.

The leading candidates rented New Hampshire office space in early spring, several months sooner than in the last campaign, and hotels say business from the campaign is strong. So far, candidates have been in New Hampshire as often as in the past, and they have been starting earlier.

On the other hand, the Iowa Republican Party took a hit when two of the three top GOP candidates, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, decided to sit out an August straw poll that is a prime source of money to help the party pay for the caucuses. Giuliani's campaign estimated it would have cost its operations $3 million to compete.

Federal figures show 10 Democratic candidates spent $4.5 million on Iowa businesses and staff in the last primary. That is a fraction of the benefits estimated by boosters who liberally interpret the value of indirect spending. Advertising, a huge expense for the candidates in every competitive state, often is produced far away.

The economic benefits are illusory in South Carolina. The state is taking over operation of the primary voting from the parties, at a cost to taxpayers of $2.2 million, not including security for the candidates.

Columbia, S.C., Mayor Bob Coble estimated the GOP debate last month generated $4 million locally, half the economic effect of a home college football game at the University of South Carolina.

"We had people spending a lot of money on hotels, food, catering," Coble said. "Every candidate has a party."

Restaurant owners like these events.

"It brings people that have big wallets and even bigger egos, and they can fill up a bar quickly," said Mike Evans, general manager at Liberty Tap Room & Grill.

Such windfalls tend to be here today, gone tomorrow.

College of Charleston economist Frank Hefner, looking back at the 2000 GOP debate held on the Charleston, S.C., campus, said little long-term benefit came of it - far less than if the school's basketball team were to make it into the Final Four.

A political gathering is "not even like a sports event or cultural event, because there's not much infrastructure that's built around it that stays there," he said.

Absent a debate that brings candidates, their entourages and the news media together in one spot, the benefits of the stumping appear modest when spread around and are all but impossible to measure.

Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida plan their contests for mid- to late-January 2008. Hard on their heels are contests in 15 to 20 states, all on Feb. 5.

Candidates campaigning for trendsetting victories in the first states also have to devote time and money for that huge second wave.

Dave Roederer, Iowa chairman for McCain, said candidates cannot spend as much time in the state as before.

"We are going to have Super Tuesday," he said, and "the number of votes involved there is going to way outshadow Iowa and New Hampshire put together." (next page »)