We all know that in 2010 the United States Supreme Court, in Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission, chose to treat corporations, unions, political action committees (PACs and SuperPACs) and other such institutional organizations as “persons” entitled, under their view of the First Amendment, to a fairly unbridled right to use unlimited cash to influence elections and political issues. The only caveat was that such funding not be under the direct control of candidates running for office. The majority of the court reasoned that such institutions were, after all, associations of individuals and thus entitled to assert such First Amendment rights. Concurring justices focused on “speech” and not the “speakers.”
The court rejected the potential corrupting impact of unleashing the mega-wealthy to wield their cash to buy elections, a position further iterated in the court’s summary reversal of a subsequent Montana decision that still imposed spending restrictions on such institutional spending. The Montana Supreme Court was deeply concerned about the corrupting influence of excessive wealth in a lightly populated state, where buying power and control in media is much cheaper. It lost.
It’s 2015, and we have had a few years to review and evaluate how political spending practices have changed based on these nefarious opinions, to see exactly what the corrupting influences have been and could be. We’ve had anecdotal evidence of lines of candidates wanting SuperPAC money lining up at the donor’s headquarters and paying homage to the big contributors. We’ve seen how such SuperPACs have set agendas backed by huge media blitz campaigns and then used their cash to support only those candidates (not at the candidates’ direction) who strictly adhere to the donors’ agendas.
With members of the House of Representatives running every two years, these open coffers became the easy button to too many legislators. Campaigning became more and more expensive as greater numbers of influence-buyers were bidding for media space and time during critical election times. And as campaign costs escalated, the value and power of SuperPACs increased proportionately.
We are now beginning to generate statistics on post-Citizens campaign spending trends. Specifically, the Brennan Center for Justice from the New York University School of Law examined such expenditures connected to races for the U.S. Senate (the survey report was authored by Ian Vandewalker and Eric Petry and released on January 13th). The numbers suggest that indeed, it is those with the greatest amount of cash who have the greatest influence in such campaigns, and such outside spends often doubled the amount of campaign support generated and spent directly by the candidates themselves.
The Brennan study states:
Because outside groups like super PACs and political nonprofits can take contributions of unlimited size, the increasing dominance of outside money is giving the wealthiest few Americans more and more control over the political process. The highest-spending super PACs depend overwhelmingly on large donations in the five- and six-figure range, amounts out of reach for all but a few Americans…
[S]pending by groups that do not fully disclose their donors — “dark money” — has more than doubled since 2010. Dark money too is focused on competitive races, where it comprises well over a quarter of total expenditures reported to the FEC [Federal Election Commission]. When the source of election spending is hidden, voters cannot evaluate the trustworthiness of the messages they see, and the public cannot police potentially corrupting relationships between elected officials and their secret benefactors…
Key findings include:
Outside spending by a tiny number of mega-rich donors has played an increasingly important role in each federal election since Citizens United.
Outside spending on Senate elections has more than doubled since 2010, increasing to $486 million in 2014. (As with any analysis based on FEC numbers, the totals we report underestimate spending, since they do not include amounts spent on sham issue ads that are not required to be reported.)
Outside groups spent more than candidates in 2014’s closest races.
Across the 10 competitive races that we have candidate spending data for, outside groups accounted for the greatest share of spending, or 47 percent. Candidates lagged behind with 41 percent, and parties accounted for 12 percent.
Candidates were outspent by outside groups and parties together in eight of the 10 races. In four of the contests (Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina), candidates made only a third or less of the total expenditures.
Nonparty groups alone spent more than the candidates in seven of the 10 states.
Super PACs are funded by an exclusive few.
Of the 10 highest-spending super PACs in the most competitive Senate races in 2014, all but two got less than one percent of their individual contributions from small donors of $200 or less. Average contributions from donors of more than $200 were in the five- and six-figure range.
Across all federal elections since Citizens United was decided in 2010, there has been more than $1 billion in super PAC spending. Just 195 individuals and their spouses gave almost 60 percent of that money — more than $600 million.
The wealthy have used single-candidate groups to support candidates far in excess of federal contribution limits.
In the 11 competitive Senate races in 2014, 16 candidate-specific groups each spent more than $1 million in Senate elections, twice as many as in the last election. Five of these groups spent more than $3 million; three of them beat the previous cycle’s record high of $5.9 million.
Single-candidate groups depend heavily on donors who have donated the legal limit to the favored candidate — several get all or almost all of their contributions from these double-dipping donors. Together, the 2014 buddy groups in toss-up races took in $14.2 million from individuals, of which $9.2 million came from people who maxed out to the favored candidate with either $2,600 (the limit for one election) or $5,200 (the limit for giving to both a candidate’s primary and general election campaigns).
The biggest double-dipping donors gave half a million dollars to single-candidate groups — almost 100 times the limit for candidate contributions.
Dark money played a critical role in funding a new Senate.
Dark money in Senate elections has more than doubled since 2010, from $105 million in inflation-adjusted dollars, to $226 million in 2014.
Almost half of the $1 billion in 2014 dollars that outside spenders plowed into Senate elections over the last three cycles, $485 million, was dark money.
In the 11 most competitive races in 2014, dark money comprised 59 percent of nonparty outside spending. In the 10 competitive races that we have candidate spending data for, dark money comprised 28 percent of total spending (candidate, party, and outside group).
The winners in the 11 most competitive races in 2014 together had more than $131 million in dark money supporting them — 71 percent of the nonparty outside spending in their favor.
Whatever the negative impact of Citizens United has been, the damage has been exacerbated by an amendment to the budget extension passed in the waning hours of the last Congress this past December. The GOP rider increased the ability of individual direct donors to contribute to candidates’ campaign coffers by a huge multiple: “While national party committees have a contribution limit of $32,400 per year for each donor, the three new accounts would have their own separate, higher contribution limits — up to $97,200 each per year. A political party's two congressional campaign committees that raise money for House and Senate candidates would also have two of those three accounts at their donors' disposal.
“In effect, that means that an individual could give up to $648,000 to the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee during each two-year election cycle, and the House and Senate committees for each party could each collect $453,600 from one donor… A wealthy political contributor could therefore give a total of more than $1.55 million to a national party through its three committees.” TheHill.com, December 10th. That all this has occurred at the same time that 400 of the richest families in the nation have succeeded to 50% of the country’s total wealth, just as average American buying/earning power is falling and the middle class is contracting, tells you everything you need to know about the true political system in the United States.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States of America is slowly loosening its ties to being a democracy and moving wholly towards the rule and control of the elite, a plutocracy by any standard.
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