UNEXPECTEDLY, A MAJOR THEME OF ’18 CAMPAIGN IS BIG DONATIONS
a formidable challenge in a district that Republicans have held since 1961. His opponent, Rep. Erik Paulsen, who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has raised $3.6 million, more than half it from PACS.
In Texas, Rep. Beto O’rourke, a Democrat running to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, has raised more than $23 million in this election cycle — considerably more than Cruz — without accepting any PAC money.
“It’s a major theme of the campaign,” said Chris Evans, O’rourke’s communications director. “People want to know that you are going to respond to them and their interests, and not the most recent check you received.”
In Pennsylvania, Conor Lamb, a Democrat who pledged not to take corporate PAC money, eked out a victory in a special election in March in a district that President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2016. In Ohio, another Democrat running in a red district, Daniel O’connor, made the same pledge, and performed so well in a special election this month that the race is still too close to call.
A recent Pew report found that 75 percent of the public said “there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns.
“Poll after poll is showing that money in politics has more traction today than it has had in my lifetime,” said Meredith Mcgehee, executive director of Issue One, a nonpartisan advocacy group concerned with ethics and accountability, who has been working on the campaign finance issue for decades.
Under current federal rules, a candidate’s campaign cannot accept more than $2,700 from any individual donor or $5,000 from any single PAC. Groups known as Super PACS, however, can legally receive and spend unlimited amounts to influence a race, as long as they do not coordinate their activity directly with a candidate’s campaign.
Rep. Ken Buck, R-colo., wrote a book last year called “Drain the Swamp: How Washington Corruption is Worse Than You Think,” detailing the way powerful posts are doled out to those who raise the most campaign money, not necessarily those with the best ideas. The cycle perpetuates itself, he wrote, as members of Congress who serve on powerful committees attract more donations for their re-election campaigns.
But Republican leaders have not taken up the issue. And Trump routinely endorses candidates who accept large amounts of money from corporate PACS. In the recent special election in Ohio, Trump attended a rally for O’connor’s Republican opponent, Troy Balderson, a state senator who heads an energy committee and has received more than one-third of his campaign funds from PACS, including some with ties to oil and gas companies.
Democrats in Congress also routinely give leadership posts to top fundraisers. But an increasing number of rising stars in the party have sworn off corporate PAC money, including Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
In 2016, only three of the 41 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “red-to-blue” list of the most competitive races made the no-corporate-pac pledge, according to Adam Bozzi, communications director at End Citizens United, a group that supports an overhaul of campaign finance laws. By contrast, 32 of the 59 candidates on the list this year are shunning corporate PACS.
Candidates can do this in part because of a sharp rise in giving by small donors.
In the last midterm election year, 2014, some 1.5 million small donors contributed a total of $335 million to Democratic campaigns across the country through Actblue, an online platform that raises money for Democrats. This time around, about 3.8 million small donors have contributed more than $1 billion, and are on a pace to exceed $1.5 billion before Election Day in November, according to Erin Hill, Actblue’s Executive director. The average donation is $33.85.
That’s good news for Phillips in Minnesota, who has staked his candidacy on the proposition that voters care about who he takes money from.
His message is particularly potent because his opponent, Paulsen, has taken in the sixth-largest haul from PACS out of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Paulsen was under fire even before Phillips entered the race, because of his record of voting in lock step with Trump. His district, the 3rd, has sent Republicans to Congress for six decades, but its voters chose Hillary Clinton for president.
Phillips is an unlikely messenger for warnings about the corrupting influence of wealth on politics. He is the heir to a liquor fortune, as the stepson of Edward Phillips, owner of Phillips Distilling Co., which popularized luxury vodka in the United States.
Paulsen’s campaign has tried to make an issue of Phillips’ wealth.
“Dean Phillips is a hypocrite spending his vast inherited wealth on his campaign, which he’s padded with investments in the very things he campaigns against,” said John-paul Yates, Paulsen’s campaign manager.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Phillips has contributed less than $6,000 of his own money to the campaign, and given less than $30,000 worth of in-kind donations, including the use of a pontoon boat for campaigning on Lake Minnetonka.
Phillips says his family fortune is what opened his eyes to the way money influences politics, after he began hearing from candidates who were eager to enlist him as a major donor.
“I watched the Hillary Clinton campaign, and recognized that it was so predicated on spending time with wealthy donors and not spending time in middle-class neighborhoods and rural areas,” he said.