Asked if she needed help getting to the polls, the angry woman voter said hotly, “Well we haven’t seen anyone yet have we? We’ll just wait till your man arrives with the necessary, won’t we?!,” hanging up with a bang.

Baffled, I turned to my local campaign manager on byelection day in a riding in Atlantic Canada and asked for a translation. He was embarrassed and enraged and snapped, “Mrs. Murphy knows bloody well that New Democrats don’t trade mickeys for votes!” The penny dropped heavily on the naïve young central Canadian visitor.

Until the ’70s buying elections was a rather simple, reasonably inexpensive and accepted convention in many parts of Canada. Liquor, cash and promises of positions with the county or the province were the currencies. Prodded by the scandals in Quebec in 1970, in Ontario the following year, and then Watergate, Canada decided to clean up the process and change the rules. We still benefit from that moment of epiphany with one of the cleanest election finance systems in the developed world.

The Americans tried the same, post-Watergate, with a short lived public financing provision struck down in 1976 by the Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo. Then the infamous “Citizens United” Court decision a generation later broke down all the barriers to buying an American election. This year is seeing the sad consequence of that decision, with some observers predicting that this will be the first $10 billion presidential cycle.

Applying the usual Canada/U.S comparator of 10 to 1, that would mean $1.25 billion Canadian here. That is more than five times what we spend, including every penny spent by third parties.

Donald Trump’s allies have committed to spending $1 to $1.5 billion independent of his own campaign, which has a $1-billion budget. Mike Bloomberg has spent in three months twice as much as all the players in a Canadian election would be permitted. He has pledged to spend another $1 billion supporting the Democratic party before November. He is now spending a $1 million a day on Facebook alone, and there are 264 days until election day. Democratic party contenders have raised more than $400 million and already spent much of it.

These are eye watering levels by comparison with any democracy anywhere in the world, and indeed in comparison with any previous American electoral cycle. But the drivers for more and more spending are real in a highly competitive race.

California, a media market bigger than Canada, can easily absorb $500 million in TV and social media spending, over a six-month campaign. New York and Texas are not far behind. The injection of Bloomberg’s $350 million since November has moved him from zero to 19 per cent in some polls, so his cash was not wasted. Having been badly bashed in his first debate performance, it will be interesting to see what kind of firewall his cash can deliver.

This is an electoral cash arms race that has no obvious ceiling. Money cannot trump a strong candidate, as it were, or save an incompetent one. Hillary Clinton spent more than three times what Trump did. The outcome does little credit to her campaign team’s choices of message, messengers and message delivery vehicles. If Bloomberg cannot take and deliver better punches, his money won’t save him.

Needless to say, like any arms race, this will end in tears.

Asking someone to give $5,000 to your superpac is equivalent to a political dinner ticket for $500 in Canada. Little is expected in return, and little granted. Ask me to give you $5 million for your superpac means the payback has to be a little more beneficial than rubber chicken and a candidate handshake — an ambassadorship, the end of an IRS audit, or maybe even a pardon down the road.

We can thank the wise political players in 1974 Canada who understood the risks of allowing elections to be seen to be for sale, and putting in place strict prohibitions. Looking at the sad, tawdry nature of American political giving and spending this year underlines the importance of the spending and giving limits they created.

Come January 2021, on Inauguration Day, it will be hard to watch the victor swear their oath to uphold the Constitution, without wondering whether their unspoken higher loyalties may in fact have already been pledged elsewhere.

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RS Robin V. Sears is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and was an NDP strategist for 20 years. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and was an NDP strategist for 20 years. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robinvsears

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