In the On Politics newsletter, why it\u2019s hard to give away the most coveted job in Washington these days; plus, a look at how much money was spent on the midterms.<\/b>
\nHi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I\u2019m Lisa Lerer, your host.
No one ever said being White House chief of staff was easy.
Dick Cheney, who served in the role for President Gerald Ford, blamed the job for his first heart attack. President Barack Obama\u2019s third chief, Bill Daley, came down with shingles from the stress.
But despite the pressure, it was considered one of Washington\u2019s most coveted gigs. It was a job that men (and they\u2019ve all been men) schemed to get, waging behind-the-scenes campaigns to win over the president and his family.
As with many of this city\u2019s long-held principles, though, that is no longer the case in the Trump era.
Nick Ayers stunned President Trump over the weekend when the 36-year-old political operative turned down an offer to replace John F. Kelly as chief of staff, a rejection some called \u201ca humiliation\u201d for the president and his children.
It\u2019s hard to grasp how embarrassing Mr. Ayers\u2019s decision is for the Trump administration without understanding what, exactly, he was passing up.
Chief of staff is no ordinary government job. They are The Gatekeeper in a building full of gatekeepers. This is the person who translates the president\u2019s goals into reality, who manages not only the leader of the free world but how he wields the power of a massive government bureaucracy.
\u201cYou can very well make the argument that the White House chief of staff is the second-most-powerful job in government,\u201d James A. Baker III, who served in that role under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, has said.
So, why is President Trump struggling to find someone to take the job? Yes, there\u2019s the challenge of managing a chaotic man described as \u201cundisciplined\u201d by Rex Tillerson, his former secretary of state, last week. (Mr. Trump shot back a few hours later, calling Mr. Tillerson \u201cdumb as a rock\u201d and \u201clazy as hell.\u201d) And there are plenty of storms on the horizon: a Democratic-led House eager to investigate, a re-election campaign, a possible economic slowdown and an active special counsel investigation.
But we wanted to know what\u2019s going on inside the building that makes finding someone \u2014 anyone \u2014 for this job so hard. For answers, we turned to our ace White House correspondent Katie Rogers.
Part of the problem, she said, comes down to two people: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump\u2019s daughter and son-in-law. Unlike a typical White House, Mr. Trump runs his administration like the family business he left behind in New York.
Here\u2019s what she told us:
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Last week, we asked readers to send us questions. Juliana Jones wrote in with this:
Hi Juliana! You\u2019re in luck \u2014 the Federal Election Commission just released their final batch of midterm spending reports last Thursday, meaning we can finally answer this question.
To crunch the numbers, I reached out Rachel Shorey, our resident data guru here in Washington.
She told me the candidates, outside groups and political parties reported to the F. E. C. that they spent a total of $4.7 billion on the midterm race, with more than half of that coming from candidates.
That whopping number is how much was raised from private donors. But, as for how much the elections cost taxpayers? The short answer is: No one really knows.
Elections are largely run and paid for on the local level, subject to a patchwork of individual state laws. (In fact, the last time the federal government spent any money on election administration was when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which allocated more than $3 billion for election administration \u2014 money that has largely dried up.)
There are plenty of costs: ballot printing, cyber security protections, staff at polling locations and voter file maintenance, to name a few. In many jurisdictions, school board elections, special City Council races and all kinds of other local contests are held throughout the year \u2014 not just in even-numbered Novembers \u2014 making elections a year-round job.
How all those election costs are handled varies between states. ( This report by the National Conference of State Legislatures offers a really good primer on the different laws.)
But there is one cost the federal government shouldered during the midterms: Air Force One. According to an analysis by Quartz, the more than 40 political rallies attended by President Trump during the midterms cost more than $17 million in air travel alone.
When presidents use the plane for campaign purposes, their political party or re-election campaign is supposed to cover a portion of the operating costs. So far, the Trump campaign has reimbursed the Treasury just $112,000 for air travel in March and April, according to the report.
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Now that we have the full picture of midterm spending from the F. E. C., we asked Rachel to delve into the numbers. Here\u2019s some of what we found:
\u2022 Rick Scott, the incoming Republican senator from Florida, had the most money of any candidate in the country, bringing in nearly $84 million. That includes nearly $64 million of his own money \u2014 the most any candidate spent on their own campaign this year.
\u2022 As expected, Beto O\u2019Rourke, the Texas Democrat, raised the most from contributions, bringing in nearly $81 million.
\u2022 On the House side, Representative Devin Nunes, a Trump ally, raised the most, nearly $13 million. His total was followed by his Democratic challenger, Andrew Janz, who raised about $9 million. (This excludes candidates who self-funded.)
\u2022 One interesting tidbit: Voters in North Dakota were a whole lot more expensive than voters in Florida. Heidi Heitkamp and Bill Nelson raised nearly the same amount \u2014 about $32 million. That gave Mr. Nelson nearly four dollars to spend per Florida voter. Ms. Heitkamp, meanwhile, had a little over $98 per voter in North Dakota.
This kind of spending differential is part of why it\u2019s so hard to extrapolate national messages from a midterm campaign. The differences between the states \u2014 and the political strategies necessary to win them \u2014 are vast.
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\u2022 The apps know where you were last night. And the day before that. They\u2019re selling it all to advertisers, hedge funds and retailers, a New York Times investigation finds.
\u2022 A video of police in Brooklyn trying to remove a 1-year-old from a woman\u2019s grasp has prompted fury online and renewed questions about aggressive policing of unarmed civilians.
\u2022 The story behind an awkward and illuminating tradition at the Supreme Court: the group photograph taken when a new justice joins the court .
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There\u2019s always a tweet.
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Is there anything you think we\u2019re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We\u2019d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com .<\/p>\n