District 62 race for Indiana House shows how competition pushes up spending

In Indiana, there is no limit to what an individual can donate to a political campaign, said Trent Deckard, co-chairman of the Indiana Election Division. The only limits are on corporations and labor unions, he said.

Corporations and trade unions cannot contribute more than $2,000 to all state representative candidate campaigns. They have the same $2,000 limit for state Senate campaigns. However, corporations and labor unions can form political action committees, and there is no limit to how much those groups can contribute to campaigns.

“It opens the floodgates to a lot of spending,” Deckard said.

That’s certainly what happened in the District 62 race, where two candidates, Ubelhor and his opponent Jeff Sparks, raised nearly three quarters of a million dollars, according to 2014 annual campaign finance reports. The $744,588.11 Ubelhor and Sparks raised dwarfed the $207,070.08 raised by four candidates in the District 46 and 60 races.

Deckard couldn’t say how much is normally raised for a state representative campaign, but things like how tight or pivotal a race is can influence how much money comes in. 

“We’ve never recorded an average amount,” he said. “Every race is like a snowflake.”