The affluent ante up for the presidency

When the Republican candidates for president expounded on what they would do for ordinary Americans in their debate this month, they neglected to mention that more than half the money underpinning their campaigns has been coming from just 130 big-spending families and the businesses they run. These families are determined to influence the election with six- and seven-figure checks.

The stark, sad truth of modern campaigning is that a small pool of the richest Americans is making the candidates in both parties increasingly dependent on special-interest money. Fewer than 400 of the nation’s most affluent families have supplied almost half of the money raised so far by presidential candidates in both parties, according a survey of federal campaign data by The Times.

This is an alarming new direction in modern campaigning that arose along with the nation’s growing income disparity and is empowered by shadowy new methods of raising unlimited, untraceable money from the richest donors.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s formal campaign celebrates large-scale support from small-dollar donors, but her affiliated super PAC reported that most of its $15 million came from nine donors giving $1 million each. Some of the money, as is the case in rival campaigns, is untraceable because of another cynical innovation — “social welfare” nonprofit groups. Fueled by the Supreme Court’s reckless Citizens United decision in 2010, which ended

limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions, spending by exempt organizations that do not have to disclose donors increased 60-fold to more than $300 million in the 2012 presidential cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. An even bigger infusion is expected in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton has, to her credit, promised to make campaign reform one of her main priorities if she wins the White House and to stop “the endless flow of secret, unaccountable money.” This is a crucial but increasingly tall order, as she and all the other candidates find their dependency on the richest Americans deepening with the election cycle.

And Mrs. Clinton is not, by any means, the biggest offender in the campaign grabfest. The Times’s survey showed that Republicans have been the main beneficiaries of the new platinum circle of givers.

Jeb Bush has made an art of super PAC politicking, raising $103 million from a small group of super givers free to circumvent the formal campaign’s far lower limits; 26 are in for more than $1 million each. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has raised the most cash from the fewest donors: Just three families donated most of his $37 million in super PAC money. Of $16 million reported by the super PAC for Senator Marco Rubio, $12.5 million was from four donors, including a Florida billionaire and longtime political patron.

The irony of the Republican presidential debate was that only the billionaire front-runner Donald Trump dared to hint at the threat to democracy posed by the power of the ultrarich in the campaign marketplace. “Our system is broken,” Mr. Trump said in bragging that he had routinely donated to many politicians, including rivals on the stage, in his eagerness to secure influence as a power businessman.

“When I need something from them,” he said, grateful politicians respond. “They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”