Money outshouts the voice of the people

The Senate race in Georgia saw Sen. Warnock spend $180 million to win, while in Pennsylvania John Fetterman outspent Mehmet Oz $74 million to $49 million dollars. And so it goes, in every state. According to the Cook Political report, House races saw an average of $3 to $5 million spent by each candidate while Senate candidates on average spent between $13 and $17 million to get elected.

ese enormous sums of money come from three places. First, there is the old-fashioned way with candidates receiving what is called hard money. ese are funds by individual contributions which are limited to $4,000 per person. Soft money comes from the political parties and is another source of campaign funds based on party loyalty. Candidates who dare to challenge the party may nd they are left out of the will. e third source of campaign nancial support comes from “527 groups” also referred to as dark money groups who are a legal source of campaign support. In theory, these groups are independent organizations that are not permitted to coordinate with candidates, but their contributions do get spent on issues that support a candidate.

Some familiar groups are Ameri-

JIM ROHRER

held, 5-4, that the FEC’s restrictions violated the rst-amendment rights of corporations and unions. e ruling e ectively took away any ability to limit political donations.

So, we have few limits and little transparency on political contributions. We wonder why politicians are not responsive to the wishes of voters.

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cans for Prosperity, Crossroads GPS, e NRA and Priorities USA. ere are many other dark money groups, all of whom contribute to political causes. e amount of money spent by these groups is nearly impossible to track because they are generally not required to disclose their donors.

e McCain-Feingold Act was signed into law by President Bush in 2002. It was hailed as a bipartisan law that would regulate the nancing of political campaigns, ensuring that they would not be subject to corruption. e bill was a great effort, but its ability to regulate campaign spending was greatly diminished by the emergence of the 527 groups.

A blow to attempts to reign in campaign spending came in 2010 when the Supreme Court decided to hear a case between Citizens United, a conservative non-pro t organization, and the Federal Elections Commission. e question centered around the restrictions the FEC placed on corporations and unions political contributions. e court eir study took data from nearly 2,000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what Congress actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: e opinions of Americans have essentially little impact on the laws we enact.

A survey done by Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does Congress represent the people?

It’s hard to know for sure if it’s the money or the pressure to support party positions by party leaders, but it is clearly not the will of voters that in uences what gets passed and what does not.

Contributions by PACs to congressional candidates seeking o ce in the 2021-2022 election cycle totaled e other side of the argument comes down to the issue of individual freedom. You can certainly argue that freedom should reign supreme. Every law that is adopted takes some freedom from someone or some group. We treasure our freedom, but we must balance that loss of freedom with the wisdom to protect all our citizens. We impose speed limits to reduce tra c accidents and deaths. We have a myriad of laws to protect those who need to be protected and to provide some level of fairness.

$289.3 million as of June 30, 2022. Do we think candidates are in uenced by these contributions? Who would not be?

Our campaign nancing laws are clearly not working. A friend recently suggested that if we are only counting on laws to ensure honesty, we have already lost. Instead, we must rely on leaders of high character who choose right over wrongdoing.

Jim Rohrer of Evergreen is a business consultant and author of the books “Improve Your Bottom Line … Develop MVPs Today” and “Never Lose Your Job … Become a More Valuable Player.” Jim’s belief is that common sense is becoming less common. Contact Jim at jim.rohrer2@ gmail.com.