Big donors are giving more to Republicans. More small donors are giving to Democrats. Where will this lead?
ROBERT REICH
in robertreich.substack.com
Notably,
the Inflation Reduction Act didn't attract a single Republican vote in the
Senate. (And at least one Democratic senator—Kyrsten Sinema—made sure its tax
provisions wouldn't raise tax rates on rich individuals.) Why?
Or at least it shouldn't be
We
talk a lot about money in politics, but there's a huge and growing difference
between the big money (campaign donations of $1 million or
more), most of it pouring into Republican coffers and small money
(individual donations of $200 or less), mainly pouring into the Democrats.
(Corporations have been giving to both sides, in roughly equal measure.)
The
significance of this difference is growing.
With
the midterms elections looming, the gap between the two sources is larger than
ever. Democrats are far outpacing Republicans in small-dollar donations.
The most recent
reports (through June 30) show, for example, that:
—In
Georgia, incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock has raised $14 million in small
donations; Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker has raised only about $8
million in small donations.
—In
Florida, Val Demings, the Democratic challenger to Senator Marco Rubio, has
raised more than $24 million in small donations; Rubio himself has reported
$12.7 million in small donations.
—In
Arizona, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly's re-election campaign has raised nearly
$23 million from small-dollar donors. His GOP challenger, Blake Masters, less
than $2 million from small donors.
But
the GOP's big money donors are making up the difference.
—Billionaire
Peter Thiel has so far poured over $25 million into the races of Blake Masters
in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio.
—Kenneth
C. Griffin, the CEO of giant hedge fund Citadel, is bankrolling Republican
super PACs to the tune of nearly $50 million.
—Stephen
A. Schwarzman, chairman of giant hedge fund Blackstone, has so far contributed
a combined $20 million to the main House and Senate Republican super PAC.
—Banking
heir Timothy Mellon (descendant of the robber baron Andrew Mellon) has so far
contributed $10 million to the main House GOP super PAC.
—Ditto
billionaire Patrick R. Ryan.
—Miriam
Adelson (whose husband, Sheldon
Adelson, was one of the GOP's most generous contributors until his
death last year) just made her first $5 million donation. The list goes on.
—And,
of course, Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch, et al.
Small donors are ramping up their giving to Democrats because they're aware of how nuts the Republican Party has become on issues ranging from abortion to democracy. Trump has pulled into the GOP white supremacists, Christian nationalists, QAnon paranoids, xenophobic cultists, antisemites, misogynists, and right-wing militias. Plus a StarWars cantina of grifters, crackpots, and thugs who—as the January 6 attack showed—pose a clear and present danger to American democracy.
Big
donors are ramping up their giving to Republicans because they now have so much
money that any Democratic-led tax increase on them (or Republican-led tax cut
for them) will invariably have large financial consequences. The Inflation
Reduction Act reveals just how much damage Democrats could do to the bottom
lines of the rich.
Many
big donor billionaires (e.g., Peter Thiel) are trying to justify their
donations as "libertarian," but they know damn well the current
Republican Party has nothing to do with personal freedom. It's busy intruding
on reproductive rights, pushing book bans in libraries and classrooms, barring
young transgender people from playing on certain sports teams or using certain
bathrooms, refusing to allow teachers to talk about aspects of American history
they don't want young people to know, and actively suppressing votes. Liberty
my foot.
No,
the billionaires aren't libertarian. They want only one thing: more tax cuts.
The
extraordinary growth of small donors to Democrats is all about justifiable
fears of what Republicans will do with more power. The growth in big dollars to
Republicans is all about greed.
What
do you think?
©
2021 robertreich.substack.com
Robert Reich,
is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California,
Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He
served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time
magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the
twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock"
(2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond
Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving
Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The
American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning
documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good"
(2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving
Capitalism," which is streaming now.