Check, Please? What's it Cost to Run in the Iowa Caucuses?

When Senator Joe Biden (D, Delaware) commented, at the December 14th Scott County (Iowa) Democratic Fund-Raising dinner in Davenport, Iowa, "Absent you, there is no gate whatsoever," he was talking about hard cold cash spent on campaigning in Iowa. Examining just the cost of television and radio in one small section of the state, the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities, makes you realize how expensive a run for the Presidency is these days. As Biden said on December 14th, at least 4 of the candidates running in the Iowa caucuses had spent between $5 and $11 million on television and radio spots. [Biden was National Chairman of Jimmy Carter's Presidential run, but said the days when you could run a national campaign on $10 million are long gone.]

The actual tab for media buys, alone, in the Quad Cities of Iowa/Illinois (Davenport, Iowa) is in the neighborhood of $7 million, at this point, with (approximately) 10 days remaining till the January 3^rd caucuses. (This information is courtesy of the Saturday, December 22, Moline (Illinois) Daily Dispatch.)

The leading TV station in the area is the NBC affiliate, KWQC, in Davenport, Iowa. Channel 5. The station has long been the ratings leader in the area, which is comprised of approximately 350,000 residents of Iowa and Illinois who live on the Mississippi border with Illinois in towns with names like Davenport (IA), Bettendorf (IA), Moline (IL) and Rock Island (IL). The "bend-in-the-river" location (in this area, the river runs east/west, not north south) is the second most-populated Iowa spot, after the state capitol of Des Moines. If the Iowa communities, alone, are totaled, Cedar Rapids (IA) comes out on top, population-wise (after Des Moines), but when the Illinois communities of the Quad Cities are included, the area's slogan ("joined by a river") adds up to more live voters in the state living anywhere outside of Des Moines....although Illinois residents are not eligible caucus voters and have to wait for the Illinois action to commence in February.