The Best New Directors Money Can Buy

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Hearty congratulations to Lisa Renstorm, Jan O'Connell, Nick Aumen, Sanjay Ranchod and Dave Karpf. They won the election for the Sierra Club Board of Directors. I like to call them the Chosen 5. They won in an unprecedented, landslide victory. Why, it was so remarkable, that it was virtually divinely ordained.

Never before has a candidate for the Board of Directors won with a stunning total of nearly 142,000 votes. And never before has so much money been spent on candidates for the Sierra Club Board. The Club can now boast the very best, new directors that money can buy.

We know that an expensive mailing was sent to about 550,000 members. Many Chapter newsletters nationwide carried a message supporting the Chosen 5 -- in violation of the Club's bylaws and the California law. The problem is that we don't know exactly how much money was spent. We do know that printing and postage to such large lists costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Despite many questions to those directly involved, no one was willing to provide answers during the election. Some information is beginning to trickle out, but the figures we've heard so far may not tell the whole story. So, I estimate that reform candidates were outspent by as much as $1000: 1. After the first official report, all 9 reform candidates had spent a combined total of less than $500 on their own campaigns.

Did I mention that all candidates in the race agreed to a spending limit of $2,000 per candidate? But the Chosen 5 rose above that trivial commitment by getting others to spend undisclosed amounts on their elections, without having to do a thing. Someone orchestrated a bizarre independent expenditure-type campaign on which there are no limits and no reports. But my guess is that they spent close to half a million dollars.

So, let's calculate the cost per vote for the Chosen 5. The highest vote getter, Lisa Renstrom, got approximately 142,000 votes. Now, let's say that there was $500,000 spent for 142,000 votes -- that calculates out to $3.52 per vote or less than 1/3 of a vote per dollar spent. Even if Renstrom spent only half of the original amount estimated -- $250,000 -- that's $1.76 per vote, less than 2/3 of a vote per dollar spent.

As the vote totals go down, which they do for all of the remaining Chosen 5, the cost per vote goes up. Let's consider the cost for the lowest vote getter among the Chosen 5, Dave Karpf. He received about 111,000 votes. If $500,000 dollars were spent, that's $4.50 per vote and about 1/5 of a vote per dollar spent.

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