THE CONTINUING BIG-MONEY MYTH…

During every election cycle, and even for some time afterwards, we always hear about how evil fat-cat Republican donors are determined in their efforts to buy elections and are accused of being singlehandedly responsible for destroying our political process.  And it’s always these very same critics who are always so noticeably silent when the numbers come out that show which donors shelled out the most cash and where their donations really went.

So it should come as no surprise then that as the newly minted Republican majority assumes control of Congress, they are once again the recipients of the very same factually incorrect rhetoric, something that the tally from the just-completed midterm elections would seem to make very clear.  Because what we find is that the truly big money in this most recent campaign was directed to those candidates on the left and not to those on the right. 

Among groups that are required to disclose what they raise and spend, the top 10 individual donors to outside groups gave nearly $128 million toward the 2014 elections, with Democrat-leaning groups collecting $91 million of it. More than half of the top 100 individual donors to political groups gave primarily to Democrats or their allies, and Democrat-friendly donors held the top 13 spots on the list of groups who donated more than $100,000 to allies.

Simply put, Democrats are very good at raising money, money they and their PACs actually control.  Democrats held a 3-to-1 cash advantage among the 183 groups that gave $100,000 or more to another group. Their biggest donor was the National Education Association at $22 million, and the two biggest super PACs of 2014, Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, both backed Democrats. Not a single Republican group even made the top 10.

Not only does the Democrat myth that Republican donors buy elections fall apart upon deeper scrutiny of the actual numbers, but so does the idea that money correlates to successful outcomes in elections.  Donors who gave $1 million or more sent 60 cents of every dollar to left-leaning organizations, yet Democrats still got their asses handed to them at the polls.  But that simply makes them determined to seek even more money next time.   

Yes, right-leaning groups like the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity raise millions of dollars without having to abide by the same disclosure rules as overtly political groups. But voters did not throw out Democrats during the midterm elections because they saw ads from Americans for Prosperity. No, voters rejected Democrats because they doubted the competence and honesty of an unpopular president.

Since so much ire was, and continues to, consistently directed at the Koch brothers, even directly from the floor of both the House and the Senate, it should be pointed out that the $4.6 million they personally gave to Republicans and conservatives pales in comparison to the $74 million that billionaire hedge fund operator and Keystone XL pipeline opponent Tom Steyer singlehandedly gave to liberals and Democrats. But I digress.

‘The Founders’ took great care to protect political speech from government sanction or limitation. And money equals speech. Maybe if politicians of both parties spent just a little less time worrying about and raising money and more time focusing on governing and making good policy that would benefit all, and doing what we actually elected them to do, they wouldn’t have to raise so much money in the first place.  But what are the odds of that?