It’s hard to believe, but the midterm general elections are less than six months away. Right now, in order to determine who is on the ballot come November, states are holding their primary elections. But based on what we’re seeing in these elections, we’re worried about some concerning trends.
Our biggest concern? MONEY. Lots of it. Infiltrating primary races.
Yesterday, GOP Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky’s fourth congressional district lost his primary election to a Trump-backed challenger, Ed Gallrein; it was the most expensive House primary in US history with over $32 million spent on ads for both candidates ($19 million for Gallrein, $13 million for Massie). We also saw billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson advance to a runoff in Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial primary against Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones; Jackson is self-funding his campaign and vastly outspent his opponents in the primary. Last week, we also saw a stunning $5.6 million poured into a key Democratic primary election for Nebraska’s second congressional district, with the majority of ads supporting the winner, Denise Powell.
It’s been a while since we devoted a whole Closer Look to the issue of money in politics and the corresponding need for campaign finance reform. But given the tsunami of spending we’re witnessing these days in just the primary elections leading up to the November midterms, we think now is as good a time as ever. We’ll start by sharing some figures that underscore the massive sums that billionaires and the ultra-rich have dumped into elections in recent years, along with a brief history of the liberalization of campaign finance regulations that made their enormous spending possible. Then we’ll discuss why this is a problem and why we care about diluting moneyed interests in politics. Finally, we’ll close by sharing some developments on campaign finance reform we’re seeing at the state level that give us hope.
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Short on time? Here’s what you need to know
- Over the last few decades, the ultra-rich have poured more and more money into our elections. In the current election cycle, as of March, the 50 highest-spending billionaire families have given a total of $433 million. Their outsized spending was made possible by Supreme Court rulings that loosened campaign finance regulations, including Citizens United v. FEC, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, Buckley v. Valeo, and McCutcheon v. FEC.
- Critics of campaign finance reform like to argue that contributing money in elections should be seen as a First Amendment right to free speech. But in reality, money merely gives wealthy people the power to amplify their speech, drown out the voices of people that disagree with them, and get their preferred candidates elected.
- Due to federal inaction, states like Hawaii, Montana, California, and Maryland have taken proactive steps to reform their state-level campaign finance laws.
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(Parts of this piece are lightly edited from our October 10, 2024 Closer Look on money in politics.)
How much are billionaires spending in elections and what made it possible
In the 2024 election cycle, Elon Musk was the largest individual donor. He spent over $290 million of his fortune to help get Donald Trump and other Republicans elected.
If you want to understand who’s responsible for allowing one billionaire to spend that much money trying to alter the outcome of a single election, you would be wise to start with the Supreme Court.
Whenever we discuss money in politics in political circles, we typically find that Citizens United comes up within the first 10-15 seconds of our conversations. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a landmark ruling on campaign finance that the Supreme Court delivered in 2010. In this decision, SCOTUS extended the right that individuals have long had to spend unlimited amounts of money on “independent expenditures” to corporations, unions, nonprofits, and other associations. Independent expenditures are political advertisements produced independently of candidates and campaigns that expressly advocate for the election or defeat of specific candidates—though there are legitimate questions today as to how “independent” these expenditures really are from candidates.
But Citizens United is only part of the story. Two less well-known cases that came before it—Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) laid the groundwork for the ruling to pass. In Buckley, SCOTUS overturned several of the campaign finance reforms enacted by Congress after the Watergate scandal, most notably spending restrictions on independent expenditures. In McCutcheon, the Justices struck down the two-year aggregate limit that individuals could give to all federal candidates, parties, and political action committees.
You could say that Citizens United walked so SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission could run. Two months after the passage of Citizens United, a lower court in SpeechNow extended Citizens United’s logic further by eliminating contribution limits to PACs that wished to solely engage in independent spending. Thus Super PACs were born; they are independent-expenditure-only PACs that can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, etc. to fund their outside spending activities.
Contrary to popular belief, the most significant outcome from Citizens United arguably has to do with real people, not corporations. Over the last sixteen years, a small handful of ultra-wealthy individuals have taken advantage of their new rights granted by SCOTUS and created the explosion of campaign spending we see today. The data we have on just how much these people are spending on our elections offers insight into just how backwards our campaign finance system is:
- In the 2008 election cycle, political nonprofits and other associations spent $140 million on independent expenditures. Fast forward to 2024, thanks to Super PACs, outside groups spent $4.2 billion in independent expenditures, a 300% increase.
- In the 2024 federal election cycle, 300 billionaire families gave more than $3 billion, which represented 19% of all contributions. Five presidential elections ago, they were responsible for just 0.3% of all spending.
- Since 2000, election contributions from the richest 100 Americans have increased 140 times. Their giving has outpaced the growing costs of conducting campaigns.
- In the current election cycle, as of March 1, 2026, the 50 highest-spending billionaire families have given a total $433 million. Elon Musk is currently the top contributor at $71 million.
$290 million is, of course, a drop in the bucket to someone like Elon Musk, who is a stone’s throw away from becoming the world’s first trillionaire. It represents nearly .04% of his net worth! But it’s nonetheless a problem for anyone who cares about our democracy.
What’s the problem with money in politics?
The five SCOTUS Justices that ruled in the majority in Citizens United claimed that, by loosening campaign finance regulations, they were protecting organizations’ First Amendment right to free speech. That may sound fair on the surface of things, but if you scratch a bit below the surface to understand how elections really run in America, you’ll understand how misguided they are.
Imagine you have 100 people on a stage. 99 of them are chanting the same thing. Now imagine one of them has a high-power megaphone and is chanting something different. Chances are, if you’re in the audience, you’ll probably hear the one person with the megaphone who drowns out the voices of the 99 other people on stage.
Now pretend the megaphone is boatloads of money to a candidate or Super PAC. With the way things stand in American elections, candidates need massive funding to run viable campaigns for office. Successful campaigns require staff, television advertising, targeted digital ads, polling, political consultants, commercial phone banks, texting and email campaigns, direct mailing, and more—all of which cost money, and a lot of it. This is especially the case as the bar climbs higher in terms of how much money you need to spend to win elections: as billionaires spend more in backing their preferred candidates, other candidates must somehow find similar funds to compete on equal footing.
While it’s not always true that the winning candidate is also the biggest spender, there is still a strong, positive correlation between election spending and election success that cannot be ignored, and this is especially true for close races. Don’t believe us? Go look at who won yesterday’s and last week’s primary elections.
Because their contributions are more or less prerequisites for anyone looking to run for office—the exception being those wealthy enough to self-finance like Rick Jackson—wealthy donors serve as powerful gatekeepers regarding who gets to run for office and who doesn’t. And let’s not forget, of course, that donors don’t just give to any old candidate. They give to those that closely share their views, so it only makes sense that, once in office, their candidates advance legislation that aligns with their preferences and interests.
In short, money is not speech in the context of elections. Money merely gives wealthy people like us the power to amplify our speech, drown out the voices of people that disagree with us, and get who we want elected. That doesn’t seem very democratic to us.
State developments giving us hope
In March, we told you about states taking action on taxing the rich in the face of federal inaction. We’re thrilled to report they’re doing the same on campaign finance reform.
This week, Hawaii signed a bill into law that redefines the powers that corporations have, and specifically removes their power to spend in elections. Organizers in Montana are currently working to gather signatures to get an initiative on the November 2026 ballot that asks voters to do the same thing in their state. This is essentially a workaround to Citizens United.
Public campaign finance systems are also picking up steam. They operate in a variety of ways: by providing direct grants to qualifying candidates, giving vouchers to residents to use as campaign contributions, providing matching funds to small-dollar donations, or by using a combination of these methods. 14 states and 26 cities currently have public campaign financing programs. They have proven very successful in reducing candidates’ reliance on large-dollar donors and increasing opportunities for people from underrepresented backgrounds to run for office.
Three states are following their lead by working to either create or expand public campaign financing. In November, California voters will vote on a ballot initiative that would repeal the 1988 ban on public funding of campaigns in the state. Lawmakers in Hawaii have passed a bill that will expand the amount of public funds available to candidates. Lastly, lawmakers in Maryland are considering a bill that will expand eligibility for the state’s public campaign funds to candidates for the state Senate and House of Delegates, in addition to the governorship.
Conclusion
Many of us donate to political candidates we like, and we don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
But we still feel that we shouldn’t have more of a say in the way our country runs than working people do, which is why we are trying to reform our campaign finance system. Because American democracy should not be up for sale to the highest bidders.
We have three priorities at Patriotic Millionaires: tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power. In order for us to have a fighting chance of realizing our first two priorities, we know that we need to do everything in our power to advance the third. Only by ensuring that economic justice champions have a clearer path to getting into office with a fairer, more equitable campaign finance system will we be able to really make a dent in reforming our tax and wage systems.
We won’t overturn rulings like Citizens United or SpeechNow overnight. And moneyed interests will still continue to spend like crazy through the midterms. But at the very least, we can get the word out about why it’s so important—and entirely within our reach—to get big money out of politics once and for all.