Expensive ballot measures were a boon for advertisers in 2014
December 18, 2014
By Tyler King
Contributions, along with organizational prowess, provide the fuel that ballot measure campaigns run on. Ballot measure campaigns received more than a total of $458,551,690 in 2014. Stockpiling unspent contributions doesn’t serve a purpose for these campaigns, who, unlike politicians, won’t likely be up for re-election in the near future. Contributions are expended, and a number of advertising and political consulting firms see a boom in revenue.
In 2014, 36 companies and one political organization made over $1 million in revenue from statewide ballot measure campaigns. The majority of these companies, about 68 percent of them, were employed to craft advertisements, purchase commercial and ad spots in the media or both. Greenstripe Media, an advertising firm based in California, made $38,950,000 from working for the Proposition 46 opposition campaign alone. That's 67 percent of all the money the anti-Proposition 46 campaign received. GCW Media Services, also headquartered in California, received $30,530,296 from Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs, the campaign organization that successfully fought and defeated Proposition 45. Not surprisingly, Propositions 45 and 46 were the most expensive ballot measures of 2014. While Greenstripe Media and GCW Media Services were the top two earners of 2014, Target Enterprises, LLC, earning $27,444,723, had a much farther reach, organizing media placements for five campaigns in Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon. PCI Consultants, Inc., famous for organizing initiative petition drives, was the largest non-advertising recipient of expenditures. The company received $8,625,466 for helping eight measures in four states get on ballots. The California Republican Party was the one non-business to receive over $1 million from ballot measure campaigns, acquiring $2,897,000 in donations from the campaigns against Propositions 45 and 46 in California. Together the top 37 companies and organizations received $243,273,627, meaning a little over half, or approximately 53 percent, of all contributions to ballot measure campaigns ended up in their hands at the end of the 2014 campaign season.
