2016 campaign starkly shows money’s clout
America is being changed by the young, by women, by people of color: blacks, Hispanics, Asians.
But the bulk of the 2016 presidential campaign so far has been brought to us by a different America: a small group of white, older, male billionaires with mostly conservative political convictions.
As a recent investigation by The New York Times found, a mere 158 families, along with companies they control or own, have contributed $178 million to the first phase of the presidential campaign. That’s almost half of the seed money raised to support Republican and Democratic candidates through June 30, the most recent available Federal Election Commission filings.
“Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago,” the Times reports.
More people on the list live in Florida than anywhere else, including Norman Braman, the billionaire auto dealer who has bankrolled the career of U.S. Sen Marco Rubio; and Micky Arison, chairman of Carnival Corp. and owner of the Miami Heat.
About a dozen live full or part time in Palm Beach, including the Fanjul family of sugar barons; the family of Isaac Perlmutter, chief executive of Marvel Entertainment; Bernard Marcus, cofounder of Home Depot; Thomas H. Lee, leveraged buyout pioneer; Charles B. Johnson, part owner of the San Francisco Giants; Paul Fireman, Reebok founder; the family of Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets; and Kenneth C. Griffin, hedge fund manager. And don’t forget Donald Trump, that upbyhisownbootstraps guy who revealed this week that he got started with a “small loan” of $1 million from his dad.
Ironically, it is Trump who has emerged as one of the biggest critics of bigmoney’s warping influence, mocking his GOP rivals for groveling before the likes of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. “I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money from the Koch Brothers. Puppets?” Trump tweeted in August, referring to megadonors Charles and David Koch.
All but 20 of the families donated to Republicans. What they want are more tax breaks on income, capital gains and inheritances, fewer entitlement programs and less government regulation.
The result would make the ultrawealthy even richer, which in turn would give them even more power to influence government. This is how the environment loses protections and Wall Street becomes riskier for the average investor, jobholder and homeowner. It’s how the middle class shrinks.
We have a lot of culprits to blame, but we can start with Citizens United, which has made it possible for the superwealthy to give basically whatever they want to super PACs (political action committees).
Until recently, rich people — like anyone else — could give a few thousand dollars, and that was it. But then the Supreme Court bought the line that money is the same as speech, deserving of the same constitutional protections, and that it cannot be corrupting unless prosecutors can prove a specific quid pro quo.
The result: We have the most widespread corruption of all. The hijacking of the system by the few.
“Now it’s just an oligarchy,” former President Jimmy Carter said this summer, with “political bribery” creating “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” And he is right.
The donors wouldn’t be spending money on this scale if they didn’t believe that it brings results. Fortunately, a large segment of the public is sick of it. Trump’s popularity stems in part from the belief that he cannot be bought. Same with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who disavows super PACs. His multitude of small donors know they are fighting the bigchunk donations of the billionaires.
So much power concentrated in the hands of so few is the very antithesis of what American democracy is supposed to look like. None of us remembers Abraham Lincoln saying that the nation’s guiding principle was “government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy.”