THE HIGH FEVER OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE

APRIL 2, 2025 – If money in politics were mercury in a rectal thermometer tucked between Democrat and Republican cheeks, we’d be calling 9-1-1 to save the patient. The latest example of campaign money running at a high fever level is the nearly $100 million spent on the race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court—a traditionally non-partisan campaign requiring a small fraction of that sum to fund. The eye-popping cost this time around was the most ever spent on a judicial campaign in the U.S. A single individual—King Midas—and groups affiliated with him contributed upwards of $20 million . . . excluding the crass and corrupt “million-dollar-lottery” that Musk funded to bribe (yes bribe, because that was the intended effect of his ploy) voters to support “his” candidate, Brad Schimel.

The good news is that despite having outspent Judge Susan Crawford by over $8 million, Schimel (and Musk) lost. The bad news—again—is that between the two sides, the campaign cost almost $100 million. (As our third-grade granddaughter was savvy enough to observe, “Think what else you could buy with that much money!”)

The slosh of cash in political campaigns isn’t a new phenomenon. What’s different today, however, is the scale—and ubiquity—of the problem. With Citizens United, all bets are off. In its infinitely “support the mega rich,” conservative wisdom, the Supreme Court held that money is the equivalent of speech and therefore, free from all practical restriction. (Only in America, would this logic reign “supreme”; America, where the primacy of profit trumps all else, under the misguided principle that the profit motive unregulated cures all ills.) Ever since Citizens United, the cost of campaigns—the mercury in the thermometer, the national fever—has skyrocketed.

In 2024, Musk alone contributed $250 million to the Trump campaign, his calibrated purchase price for grand influence not only over Trump’s electoral victory but the entire apparatus of the federal government. No one in the history of the United States has aggrandized so much personal power without having appeared on any ballot, without background checks, without approval by Congress, without oversight by anyone. What’s egregiously ironic is that the man who fancies himself as the chainsaw champion against government “waste, fraud and abuse”; who has asserted the right to fire federal workers summarily; to decide arbitrarily which programs survive and which don’t; to rip up funding agreements entered into by the government . . . has reaped $38 billion—and counting—from government contracts.

Single-handedly, President Midas has Mars-launched the fever of money in politics into the danger zone. This unelected overlord will continue to leverage his wildly disproportionate power. Already he has threatened to fund primary challenges against any Republicans who don’t follow the party line. Plus, he’s become a vocal supporter of impeaching judges who rule against the Administration. Expect him to hurl obscene amounts of money at more judicial campaigns, further corrupting the democratic process in which a bedrock principle used to be, “one person, one vote,” not “one billionaire, one entire government bought.”

To put Musk’s money into perspective, consider his staggering contribution to the Trump campaign (again, $250m) as a percentage of Musk’s net worth ($550b): 0.05%. For a lowly (non-multi-) millionaire, this would be the equivalent of a mere $500 contribution—the price of a RT plane ticket (including checked luggage) from Minneapolis to Miami for a weekend break from winter weather.

A doctorate in political science—theoretical or applied—or even a single middle school civics class isn’t required to understand the corruptive effect of big money in politics. Big money (defined as concentrated sources of campaign financing) is the purchase price of influence; influence that favors disproportionately the power of the few over the interests of the many.

The case of Musk is so blindingly obvious, it blinds the body politic to what’s so fundamentally wrong with our system. Here’s a single individual who is already possessed of staggering wealth; so enormous, as I once explained on this blog site, that at a run-rate of $1 million PER DAY, it would take over 1,200 years to burn through his net worth. But consistent with the addiction to lucre that afflicts most people of extraordinary means, King Midas can never have enough—any more than a drug addict can ever have enough dope. Adding continually to his extreme wealth by extreme (multi-billion-dollar) contracts with . . . full stop: THE GOVERNMENT . . . he benefits at taxpayers’ expense. His disproportionate influence, not to mention his glaring conflicts of interest, make a mockery of his chainsaw campaign against “waste, fraud and abuse.”

The influence of money in politics is so broad, most of the electorate is oblivious to it; or rather, we’re inured to it. Once an election is over, we return to our stations and go about our lives and business. We know who won, who lost, but we soon forget at what cost. But business interests remembering full well what they contributed, celebrate over the candidates they’ve secured—and put their lobbyists to work.

Take, for example, the sugar industry. Nearly everyone consumes some level—sometimes a high level—of sugar, but who among us last heard about the “sugar lobby” taking Washington by storm?  But think again. For decades flying under our radars—trained as they are on no more than the issues of the day—American sugar producers have enjoyed liberal price supports. As of today, these supports result in Americans paying roughly double what the rest of the world pays for raw sugar.  At $0.36 vs. $0.19 per pound, the typical American shopper isn’t likely to paint a sign of protest and travel to Washington to demonstrate in front of the White House or the Capitol. But for American cane and sugar beet producers, this delta in pricing is the mark of an impressive return on investment; of their dollars in politics; cash contributed to key political campaigns (and later, lobbying efforts) to ensure that no one in Congress or the Oval Office upsets the apple . . . er, sugar . . . cart. How is the sugar price support program not “waste, fraud and abuse” visited upon millions upon millions of American consumers for the benefit of a few with artificially sweetened financial interests? But I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts (sugar-glazed) that sugar price supports won’t be targeted by DOGE.

Consider all the other industry associations that most of us have never heard of or could never imagine exist—along with the ones we know cast a long dark shadow over our democracy: the oil industry, telecommunications, big tech, big finance[1], big transportation, big ag, big pigs, even bigger hogs. Each has a dog in the hunt and a buck in the race. Big bucks, as a matter of fact.

Then circle back to the biggest buckster of them all, that single individual whose uncontrolled wealth allowed him to buy supreme political power with which he crowned himself and now pursues a scorched-earth campaign against the federal government and the common good.

Our democracy—and its positive traits and critical treasures—are now on life-support in ICU. Money in politics is the fever that put us there. Will we find our way to some miraculous cure—or will such a cure present itself—before time runs out?

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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson

[1] In my “work” series last year, I included a post about money-in-politics corruption I witnessed firsthand. At a weekly direct reports meeting among my manager peers and our collective boss, the department head, we were treated to a high-powered solicitation by a member of the bank’s “Government Relations” department. We (and all who reported to us) were expected to contribute by auto-deductions from our regular paychecks, contributions to the bank’s PAC. The justification was that “Congress passes legislation that affects our industry, and therefore, it’s important that we have access. Money buys us that access. Democrat or Republican—it doesn’t much matter.” (These were nearly his exact words. I didn’t write them down, but they were so shocking as to sear their way into my memory.)

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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson