The new trickle-down economy

By Dick Hughes  

JANUARY 12, 2012 12:09 p.m. (0)

“Every four years there is an economic windfall in South Carolina that people are not aware of,” said Hollis “Chip” Felkel, a Greenville-based political consultant who is sitting out this GOP primary.

“Whether it is a Republican or Democratic primary, there’s an influx of cash that is unnoticed that can be significant, particularly in bad economic times.”

Local television stations are the biggest winners, particularly in a hotly contested race such as this year’s GOP primary, but what goes unnoticed is the spending that trickles through the local economy to benefit small businesses and their workers.

Simply put, said Leslie Gaines, “it creates jobs.”

Gaines is a partner in Sherlock & Gaines, Greenville consultants who are representing the Gingrich campaign not only in South Carolina but in other primary states.

“We keep things local because we are local,” she said. For example, the Gingrich signs for New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida are printed by Greenville’s Vision Screenprinting & Graphics.

The company added three employees in the past couple of weeks to a regular staff of 15, said Tommy Kolodziejski, president of Vision, which is printing signs for the Perry campaign as well as for Gingrich.

“Those people would still be unemployed it weren’t for these signage orders that are coming in. It allows people to eat, pay their rent. These are normal manual-style jobs with an average pay rate of $9 to $15 per hour.”

Vision does not work directly with the campaigns but rather through consultants such as Sherlock & Gaines.

“We have eight to 10 consultants that will represent anywhere from 10 to 150 different politicians during the year,” said Kolodziejski. “We work with consultants in other parts of the U.S. We’ve got them in New Hampshire. We’ve got them in Iowa and Texas. We ship signs all over the place.”

About 30 percent of Vision’s annual revenue of $2 million comes from political spending, Kolodziejski said. In the 2010 mid-term elections, Vision did about $600,000 in political signs and expects to do about $850,000 in primary and general election signs this year.

Because all of Vision’s materials, including the plastics, holders, stakes, inks and other materials used in the printing process, are made in America, the economic benefit spins far out from the local community to as many as 300 people, Kolodziejski said.

Other beneficiaries of political spending are restaurants that host events for candidates. In recent days, the Beacon Drive-in in Spartanburg has held events for Texas Gov. Rick Perry and for Newt Gingrich. Rick Santorum was at Greenville’s Stax Original Restaurant and Chiefs.

“Every time we have a political figure here, we have to have more staff, we have to do preparation, we have to do cleaning,” said Ken Church, manager of the Beacon, an iconic gathering place in Spartanburg since 1946 and a must-stop for Republican and Democrat politicians for decades.

“The employees get more hours, we get more sales, we buy more bread, we buy more beef, we buy more onions. There’s a trickle down effect for everybody. But the No. 1 benefit is that we cannot buy the advertising we get from a political figure showing up here.”

No single place in the Upstate has gotten more attention nationally than the Beacon, even when it is not the locale for political events.

When CBS televised the Republican primary debate Nov. 17 at Wofford College, CBS anchor Scott Pelly brought a crew to film a special on J.C. Strobbe, the blind order-caller who has been at the Beacon for 54 years – since he was 14 – and is the person every politician wants to meet, said Church. “We got five minutes of advertising nationwide on CBS Nightly News.”

Even a small-gathering fundraiser at a home can benefit local business, said Gaines. The host is allowed to declare as an in-kind donation up to $5,000 of the expense for catering and other party costs.

Still, the big financial windfall for the election year goes to television not only from the spending of the candidates themselves but from the super PACs that now can spend millions on issue ads to benefit candidates without their direct involvement.

John Soapes, general manager of WYFF, said higher levels of spending on political ads began in the fourth quarter of 2010, picked up after Jan. 1, and are expected to increase substantially as the Jan. 21 primary comes closer and continue through the general election.

While that spending does not necessarily create more jobs, he said, it gives the station an opportunity to allocate resources to political coverage.

He said the additional resources permit WYFF to expand news coverage on the station, on its Web site and through applications for mobile devices.

“It is our responsibility to report extensively on the ins and outs of political coverage, giving balanced coverage not only on the primary election but for the general election.”

Soapes declined to provide dollar figures on what political advertising has been aired thus far and what is expected, but a tracking service of the Washington Post reports that $653,580 was spent on ads by candidates, PACs and interest groups in the Upstate market through Jan. 1.

According to Palmetto Public Record, a political blog, 56 percent of the GOP primary ad money spent thus far in South Carolina has gone to the Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville market, 20 percent in Columbia, 16 percent in Charleston and 9 percent in the Myrtle Beach and Aiken markets.

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