Lingle jobs program starts with her campaign team

Spending for political campaigns is expected to go up.

Observers and good- government types usually decry this. At the same time, raising money for a political campaign has become a way to measure the success of a campaign.

So raising and spending money for a campaign turns out to be like cholesterol: There’s good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

In the case of former Gov. Linda Lingle, there appear to be simply huge amounts of campaign money. In her race for the U.S. Senate, Lingle predicts she will raise between $8 million and $10 million.

If you start counting today there are 384 days until the Nov. 6, 2012, general election.

That $10 million figure translates into $26,041 a day. Or if you are on a 24 hours-a-day clock, it puts Lingle’s spending at the clip of $1,085 per hour.

Or as Gov. Neil Abercrombie said while questioning the multibillionaire NFL owners’ need for more money: "What do they do with all that? How many sandwiches can you eat?"

Perhaps if you are feeding the campaign staff only truffle and foie gras sandwiches, your costs will rise — but really, $1,085 per hour?

In her 2006 statewide re-election campaign, Lingle raised more than $6 million, so she is accustomed to carrying a heavy campaign checkbook.

"Setting a high goal and then collecting it is one way to intimidate your opponents," says Neal Milner, the University of Hawaii’s emeritus professor of political science.

Politicians will say that the cost of their campaigns is driven by the cost of the media, producing ads, testing the ads and then printing and broadcasting the ads.

"So if you have $10 million, you can run more ads than if you have $8 million," Milner says.

Because politics is an uncertain endeavor and you are never really sure what drives people to vote for you, it is best to continue to do everything you can, Milner adds.

A Lingle campaign is not reluctant to spend money. While Lingle doesn’t operate out of a fancy headquarters, she is all the way into job creation with her campaigns. For instance, at the end of her gubernatorial re-election campaign, she listed 24 people on staff.

Already this year Lingle appears to have picked up much of her old campaign and state communications team, including Lenny Klompus, Russell Pang and Corrie Heck. It is not known if they all will be paid staffers, but if Lingle promises a jobs program during her campaign, you can bet it will start with the campaign team.

Also, Lingle went live with a state-of-the-art campaign Web page on the day of her Senate campaign announcement. Accompanying the Web page is a social media rollout featuring Twitter updates, a Facebook page and YouTube videos.

Milner notes that all of those expenses are part of the tactics used by President Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign.

"The use of an increasingly sophisticated grassroots effort is expensive because it is labor intensive, but it is valuable," Milner says.

Lingle has yet to report her campaign financial information because of her late entry into the race. Democratic opponent U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono has collected $722,000 for her campaign for the open Senate seat. Former U.S. Rep. Ed Case, the other major Democrat in the race, has $272,000.

The difference, of course, is that Lingle faces only token primary opposition, so she is primed for a general election fight, while Hirono and Case first have to gather money for a primary race before even thinking of the general.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.