I recently attended a conversation with Hilary Braseth, Executive Director of OpenSecrets, the premier independent, nonpartisan tracker of money in politics. OpenSecrets receives over 60,000 daily searches from academics, scholars, students, policymakers, advocates, the public, and the media.
According to OpenSecrets, in 2000, $5.6 billion was spent on the presidential and congressional races. In 2024, the total cost of elections ballooned to an estimated $15 Billion. If you want to do a deep dive into the massive spending to influence our elections, whether it’s candidates’ campaigns, Super PACs, or so-called “dark money” groups, atomized down to a particular Congressperson or Senator, OpenSecrets’ online search tool opensecrets.org is the place to go. The site will soon make similar data available on a state-by-state basis as well.
According to Braseth, “transparency equals trust”. She describes it as a necessary ingredient for any healthy democracy, especially as annual political spending climbs each year in an arms race driven by a broken regulatory and legal framework that benefits the rich.
One of the only things people on either side of the political divide in our country agree on is the coercive impact of money on our political process. According to the NY Times, in the 2024 election cycle. “…it was Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, who officially spent about $300 million on a single candidate, Donald Trump – not counting the ‘dark money’ donations that the Supreme Court’s later decisions did not require him to disclose. Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” Mr. Musk boasted. He was by far the largest individual political donor.
Other members of the $100+ million oligarch club included: banker Timothy Mellon, casino owner Miriam Adelson, shipping supplies magnates Richard & Elizabeth Uihlein, hedge fund CEO Kenneth Griffin, and trading firm co-founder Jeffrey Yass & his wife Janine. They all gave $100 million or more to support Republican candidates and causes. Other big GOP donors included hedge fund CEO Paul Singer ($66.8 million). Top Democrat donors included: businessman Michael Bloomberg ($64 million) and entrepreneur Dustin Moskovitz ($51 million).
According to OpenSecrets, all the top donors took advantage of rules that allow unlimited contributions to Super PACs, which are intended to support or attack candidates without directly coordinating with campaigns.
“The massive amount of money being spent by individuals to influence elections underscores the importance of disclosure,” said Braseth. “This information matters no matter which side of the aisle you sit on.’
“To hold elected officials accountable, Americans need to understand who funds elections and the donors’ motivations.” By making data available, OpenSecrets is continuing its critical mission to provide comprehensive data and tools to create a more vibrant, representative, and responsive democracy. How did we get here?
In 1974, post-Watergate, Congress passed campaign finance restrictions that stifled wealthy Americans’ ability to buy elections. Congress passed aggressive amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) to limit how much money was raised and spent in Federal elections.
However, the billionaire class, led by the Koch Brothers (David & Charles), wanted the freedom to spend without limits, and they were unshackled based on two precedent-setting Supreme Court cases in 1976 and 2010. The Supreme Court’s rulings established the ground rules that govern American political campaign finance today.
Buckley v. Valeo (1976). It’s considered the most important landmark Supreme Court case regarding campaign finance. Senator James Buckley sued Francis Valeo (the Secretary of the Senate), claiming that the new post-Watergate rules violated the right to free speech. The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that political spending is speech protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court didn’t strike down the entire law. The ruling upheld limits on how much individuals can give directly to a candidate’s campaign and disclosure requirements. But it struck down as unconstitutional limits on how much a campaign can spend in total; it struck down limits on how much personal spending a candidate can spend on their own campaign; and it struck down limits on how much outside individuals/groups (but not corporations) can spend on ads separately from the campaign, as long as they do not coordinate with the campaign.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010): In 2008, a conservative nonprofit organization, Citizens United, produced a documentary critical of Senator Hillary Clinton, a presidential candidate. The group wanted to broadcast it on video-on-demand services right before the Democratic primary elections. However, a 2002 law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act) made it illegal for corporations or labor unions to use their treasury funds to broadcast “electioneering communications” mentioning a candidate by name within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The FEC blocked the movie. Citizens United sued, arguing that blocking their film was a direct violation of their First Amendment right to free speech. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations, labor unions, and wealthy individuals have a First Amendment right to free speech and argued that spending money is a form of free speech and thus cannot be restricted, giving rise to unlimited donor support for Super PACs, opening the floodgates of political spending.
Dark Money: Citizens United also failed to anticipate how political operatives would exploit IRS tax laws to route unlimited money through “social welfare” nonprofits called 501(c)(4) organizations, generally bypassing disclosure requirements.
Billionaires and conservative Supreme Court justices have hijacked free speech, which is now used as a legal shield to protect legalized political corruption, drowning out regular citizens and allowing the rich to purchase elections. Should Elon Musk, who may become the first trillionaire, have such a disproportionate impact on our politics just because he has more money? Unlimited spending needs to stop and be replaced with common-sense caps to create a more level political playing field. For a democracy to be fair, every citizen must have a relatively equal voice in choosing their leaders, and the government should limit the political buying power of the mega-rich to prevent a few individuals from dominating the system.
Maybe when that happens, there will be no need for OpenSecrets. In the meantime, Braseth recently moved to Easton, and we should extend her a warm welcome and also thank Talbot Indivisible for encouraging her to speak at the Talbot County Free Library.
