February 12, 2020
There are a lot of people running for president this year. But have you heard of Matt Matern? Or Don Blankenship? What about Bill Kreml or Lincoln Chafee? Believe it or not, there are candidates running to be president who are so small they haven’t even made the New York Times’ official Presidential Candidate Tracker. We wanted to see what these candidates are spending, and the only identifying criteria are: a candidate must be in our system and must not in the aforementioned candidate tracker. Over the next few weeks, we'll take a look at these candidates and how/where they're spending their money.
Bill Kreml Campaign Spending
This is Mr. Kreml’s second try at the presidency. He was a Green Party candidate in 2016, though we did not see any spending from him that year. Kreml secured five of South Carolina’s eight delegates in 2016, the only candidate besides Jill Stein to win a majority of delegates in any state. Thanks to this 2016 win in South Carolina, he was the second-place finisher at the Green Party National Convention with 18.5 delegates. This year, South Carolina’s green party delegates have been cut in half so securing all, rather than just a majority of them, could be even more important to Kreml - and the reason he has spent $672 on cable this year. Interestingly, the ads he’s airing are focused on structural reforms rather than the environment. The South Carolina green party has not publicly announced when their presidential nominating convention will be, so it’s possible we will see more spending from him before the nomination process is over.
