Money in politics
Most people have a fuzzy view of money in politics. Nobody likes the idea of money influencing elections, but practically speaking it’s impossible to get rid of its influence. Running for office with a plan to win requires staff, infrastructure, and advertisements, all of which cost an amount of money that is generally proportional to the size of the electorate and the influence of the office sought. A competent City Council campaign can go from $15,000 to $60,000. School Committees can cost $20,000. State representative races averaged just under $40,000 last year, though this can balloon to $100,000 or even thrice that if you're in leadership. A competent mayoral campaign can go from $50,000 to around a million (if you're Michelle Wu). I’ve seen successful congressional campaigns go for $2 million. Senate campaigns can go from that to tens or even hundreds of millions in swing states. In congressional races (which I’m referring to because it has the most organized data available), the top spender wins over 90 percent of the time. The real barrier to entry is money.
Where does money come from? It can and often does come from people who want to give to charity and do the right thing — small dollar donations — but more often it comes from people who want to get something in return. Across the US economy, $557.16 billion was spent on charities in 2023 ($374.4 billion by individual persons and the rest by foundations, bequests, and corporations). For context, individuals spent $654 billion on gas, $2.6 trillion on food, and $4.8 trillion on healthcare. Charitable spending is just an order of magnitude less than spending on products and services. The average member of congress receives less than 20% of their funding from small individual contributions, a source of money that local politicians — particularly progressives — almost exclusively rely on, along with self-funding.
Ever since the last presidential election, I’ve been mentally wrestling with two very simple, very obvious, and very contradictory ideas: first, moneyed interests don't really benefit by donating to those who don’t stand to benefit them. Second, money is almost always a prerequisite to running and winning a successful campaign.
Progressive causes are at a huge disadvantage politically because moneyed interests don’t have much to gain by donating to them. Furthermore, advocacy organizations that champion progressive values are typically 501(c)(3) non-profits, which are strictly apolitical and cannot donate to candidates. They’re ideologically up against for-profit companies and professionals that do political lobbying as a side hustle. The actual amount of money (at least on the state level) is actually pretty insubstantial compared to what they’re influencing. The Greater Boston Real Estate Board (which I’ve complained about pretty openly in the past) gives between $200 to $500 a year to favored state representatives. It isn’t much, but that’s $200 to $500 more than affordable housing organizations typically give.
Another element is that progressives and their supporters feel like use of political donations to buy influence is dirty. And it kind of is — this is a serious point to consider. Progressives prefer to “buy” influence with organizing. This organizing typically requires a huge amount of unpaid man-hours that is engaged in to make up that gap in influence. When I attended meetings of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, they were trying very hard to get the state house to pass affordable housing legislation. They had the influence to get several hundred people from church congregations around Massachusetts on Zoom calls and, in one event, a huge hall in downtown Boston where supporters pressured Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll to verbally commit to putting around $4 billion into public housing.
Organizing events like that is worth thousands and thousands of dollars in unpaid man-hours, not only for the staff of GBIO working overtime but for all of the congregations who put the time and effort to travel to the auditorium that day. And they pretty much succeeded in getting the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s support. The problem is that they just didn’t have the power to influence many of the unknown representatives who had power over the purse strings of the state (at least not enough to get everything they wanted).
Volunteerism is a huge component of the success of local campaigns. But I’ve seen hours and hours spent in organizational efforts be effectively neutralized by an effortless donation of several hundred dollars to a few dozen politicians by one person who has millions in the bank. This works because, to the average state representative or senator who makes a starting salary of $70,537 a year, raising a $50,000 campaign budget is a nightmare, and a $500 donation can at least help with that.
And this deeply frustrates me. It frustrates me because I don’t see a solution. And it frustrates me because I don’t like to see news reports of Nancy Pelosi, the 84-year-old former speaker who is worth around $273 million, trying to undercut the bid of AOC (worth a whopping $45,000) to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. All that we can do is fight the good fight and never stop.
On a completely unrelated topic, please donate. It’d be much appreciated.
