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Article: Campaign Financing and Resources
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CAMPAIGN FINANCING AND RESOURCES
CAMPAIGN FINANCING AND RESOURCES.
Candidates were spending money in elections as early as the seventeenth century, long before anything resembling the modern campaign first made its appearance. There always has been money in elections, but it has not played the same role in every era.
The Colonial Period: Deferential Politics
Government and politics in colonial America were dominated by merchant and landed elites, so candidates for elective office usually were wealthy men who paid their own campaign expenses. The purpose of those expenses was less to attract the attention of voters than a form of noblesse oblige that reinforced the deferential ...