Connections: Counting the Money
Five years ago, the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission threw campaign finance reform out the window.
Unlimited spending on campaigns by super PACs and secrecy about who is contributing the money has become the norm. In fund-raising for the presidential election, super PAC money accounted for 33 percent of all federal election funds by the first half of 2015, up from 4 percent in 2012. And 75 percent of all super PAC money during that period came from 500 donors who gave at least $100,000. The statistics cast a chill over our democracy.
The day after the Iowa caucuses, and after Bernie Sanders said his results constituted a political revolution, I did some searching on the Internet to see where the candidates’ money had come from. (The figures I gleaned and use here offer a general picture rather than a precise one, although they come from legitimate sources.)
As we know, the caucuses ended in a virtual tie between Senator Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Senator Sanders is proud that his money comes from small donors who make their contributions online. The average contribution was reported to be $30 earlier in the campaign. At the beginning of this month, Mr. Sanders had raised $74,344,210 from individuals and only about $25,000 from two super PACs, while the Clinton campaign brought in $112,020,908, with super PACs contributing a whopping amount more. One source described the money from outside the campaign as $20,292,009, but that apparently does not include money from what are known as Carey political action committees, which totaled $46,156,691.
I also compared these Democratic figures to what the Republican frontrunner in the caucuses, Ted Cruz, had in his coffers this week. His SuperPacs came through with $38,793,703, but his campaign donations, $46,853,515, lagged far behind the Democratic campaigns.
As for Jeb Bush, who finished sixth in Iowa, just ahead of Carly Fiorina and just below Rand Paul, his campaign and SuperPac funds and Mrs. Clinton’s were topsy-turvy. His campaign reported $31,817,860; his SuperPacs $103,222,384. Chris Christie’s support from SuperPacs was about twice what his campaign took in, more than $14,000,000 to just over $7,100,000.
The Supreme Court website describes its Citizens United decision in these lofty terms:
“Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, including ads, especially where these ads were not broadcast.”
But Donald Trump is playing a very different game, and Citizens United didn’t matter one way or the other to him in Iowa. While he received $131,623 from SuperPac contributions, the personal money he put into his campaign was $19,308,000. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
At the Republican debate on Aug. 6, Donald Trump spoke about campaign finance. “I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I gave to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”
Like everything Mr. Trump says, this statement reduces something exceedingly complex to bare, simplistic terms. But he put the head on the nail. Could it be the Trump phenomenon is a ray of hope for campaign finance reform?