In this case, I believe that money and copies are, in fact, resources and allies. Resources are things of value, of which money is one; and allies are people who support you (perhaps because they think similarly to you). Politicians try to recuit people to their way of thought, which is sort of a partial copy (installing their own ideology, or a version of it, inside someone else's head), and acquire resources such as television airtime and whatever they need (which requires money).

It isn't an exact one-to-one correspondence, but I believe that the adverb "roughly" should indicate some degree of tolerance for inaccuracy.