ABSTRACT
Campaigns for public office in the United States have always cost dearly. From the early days of party politics to the mid-twentieth century, some of the costs of campaigning were paid in cash, but many were not. Volunteer labor and the apparatus and political expertise of the party organization provided the bulk of the resources most campaigns needed. Beginning in the years after World War II, however, cash began to loom much larger in the financing of campaigns. The new technologists of campaigning—the media specialists, the pollsters, the consultants of all kinds—rented their facilities and their services for cash. Candidates found that they could free themselves from the domination of weakened party organizations, but they needed larger and larger sums of cash to do so. In short, what had been largely a barter economy of campaign finance dominated by the parties became a cash economy managed by the candidates.
