In the 1998 Democratic Primary for Louisville mayor, Dave Armstrong narrowly defeated Tom Owen. I had hoped that Owen, as a Louisville historian, seasoned alderman and all-around city enthusiast, would be victorious, but it was not to be.

After Owen lost the primary, I believed no one remained in the general election race between Armstrong and Republican Bill Wilson who I would be happy voting for. In 1998, I also was a dedicated member of the fledgling and then-robust Reform Party (I have never been a Republican or a Democrat), and there was no Reform Party candidate on the ballot. I thought I could fix both of those problems if I entered the race. Bennie Smith, an independent, thought the same, and the field of voter options was widened to four candidates.

I think there should always be more candidates to choose from than just the two major parties. Typically, anyone who is eligible to vote for a particular office is also eligible to be a candidate for it.

Smith and I both ran modest campaigns, spending $1,000 or less. Armstrong’s campaign — which was successful in getting him elected mayor — expended more than $300,000. If that amount of money sounds excessive, it should. It is roughly equivalent to the total salary he earned during his entire four-year tenure as mayor (about $350,000). However, it is also fairly typical of the monstrous sums of money candidates must spend these days to run successful campaigns.

If you take the amount of money Armstrong’s campaign spent and divide it by the number of votes he received, each vote came in at a cost of about $5.50. While I came in third of the four candidates, I found it reassuring that the cost of my votes was only about 86 cents each.

Four years later, in the 2002 mayoral election, Republican Jack Early pulled in way more votes than I had in 1998, and at a cost of only 35 cents each. Jerry Abramson, the victorious Democrat in that race, spent $600,000, more than one and a half times the sum of his 4-year salary as our current mayor (also about $350,000).

While the spending during these races for Louisville mayor may seem extravagant, campaigns for more prominent offices make those per-vote figures look downright cheap.

Campaigns for the U.S. Senate and House are among the most expensive. During the 2002 campaign for U.S. Representative from the Louisville area (3rd District), Republican incumbent Anne Northup significantly outspent Democratic challenger Jack Conway. In spending about twice as much as Conway ($3.1 million vs. $1.5 million), Northup won re-election by less than 7 percent. Northup spent $26.52 per vote, compared with Conway’s $13.97 each.

That same year, in his successful re-election campaign, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky burned through $5.3 million. If you voted for him, it may have been because he spent $39.09 pulling in each person who did the same — about seven times more than all six years of his $133,000 annual Senate salary.

Candidates who spend the most definitely seem to win the most. Naturally, the money spent in a campaign is rarely from the candidate’s personal pockets. Much of McConnell’s millions came from political action committees. PACs, in so many words, make huge contributions to campaigns and then advise Congressional representatives about how to vote on particular bills.

In the 2002 campaign, McConnell accepted contributions from PACs sponsored by Lockheed, Marathon Oil, ChevronTexaco, Citgo, Cinergy, Daimler-Chrysler, Delta Airlines, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Co., BellSouth, Microsoft, McDonald’s, Brown & Williamson, Cincinnati Bell, Goodyear, the National Rifle Association and groups with names like the Florida Congressional Committee, National Right to Life, Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball and the Ice Cream, Milk & Cheese PAC. (The whole list is available at http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_give/S2KY00012, and you can pull up a list of contributors to any other federal candidate on the Federal Election Commission’s Website at www.fec.gov.)

Many corporate PACs contribute equally to multiple competing candidates, so no matter who wins an election, their interests are covered. Members of Congress also accept free trips and junkets from PACs and lobbyists. According to a September report for the public radio program “Marketplace,” lobby-sponsored travel handouts for members of Congress have exceeded $14 million over the past four years. During that same period, Congressional members took 560 complimentary business trips to Florida, courtesy of lobbies.

Some of the biggest campaign contributors are corporations in the energy, automobile, medical and insurance businesses. It’s no accident that controls on fuel efficiency and medical costs are rarely enacted. Nor is it surprising that Americans pay more for health care than people in any other industrialized nation. Members of Congress have a fantastic quality of life, so it’s really not in their best interest to stand up to the abuses of the companies that fund their campaigns.

While it’s virtually impossible for ordinary people to do away with the influence of corporate lobbies, PACs and establishment-protective election laws, it is not entirely impossible for ordinary people to run for office, get elected and serve a higher standard.