(7/6) Verizon is one of the big winners in this year's presidential election: the various candidates have spent more than $4 million to put phones in the hands of employees. Through the end of May, candidates had spent more than $900 million to be the next president and, according to the Federal Election Commission, nearly half of the current spending has been paid to just a few dozen companies. The Obama campaign, for example, paid $85 million to GMMB, a media consulting firm. But $69 million of that was used to buy advertising time, which means that much of the money paid to GMMB ended up at local television and radio stations. Some experts say they think that as campaign spending rises, the candidates benefit much less than the companies. “The total amount of money doesn’t matter, especially since you start to see diminishing returns,” said Ray C. Fair, an economist at Yale who studies economic influences on presidential elections. “What matters is the difference in spending between the two parties.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/business/06metrics.html
