Buying Elections

It should come as no surprise; elections cost money and few people have the funds to run an election. So there is a need of sponsors. Whether they expect a return for their sponsorship may not be known.

If there ever was a Mr. Smith who had the popularity to win an election it has not happened in the last fifty years for sure. As described in a review . . . “The message of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is a depiction of idealistic integrity. One fighting against corrupt political systems, emphasizing a person with courage and a belief in what is right can stand up to powerful and cynical forces, even within established institutions.”

It is not quite as easy as it sounds. People do lose if innocent or not.

The movie itself has some semblance to U.S. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, who fought corruption as a freshman senator in the 1920s and was falsely indicted. He was latter confirm innocent by the court and the Senate.

The following is just information on funding elections and those that may be doing so. At the very end of the article is a list of political sponsors who may find elections.

“Billionaires Buying Elections: They’ve Come to Collect.” Americans For Tax Fairness

A privileged handful of America’s billionaire families are increasingly dominating our political system with their unlimited campaign contributions. The billions of dollars of donations these oligarchic clans give candidates, parties and particularly outside spending groups drown out the voices and concerns of ordinary voters, endangering democracy and distorting public policy. This undue influence by the billionaire donor class over our government—always a concern and already present in mostly indirect ways—has found its full, frightening expression in the second Trump administration with the ascendancy of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the biggest billionaire donor in the 2024 elections.

But Musk is just the most blatant example of a corruption that’s been growing ever since the Supreme Court in its misguided Citizens United decision removed effective limits on the role of money in politics. The five families who spent the most after Musk in the 2024 campaigns–each giving over $100 million and all of it supporting Republicans–are headed by billionaires who don’t show up in the news wielding chainsaws, but who are nonetheless key figures in the nation’s ever-more-assertive oligarchy.

Though Democrats do have billionaire patrons, the rise of the billionaire donor class is mostly concentrated in the Republican Party. In the last decade, some of the wealthiest elites in the country have embraced the GOP. In return for receiving the great bulk of billionaire-family campaign contributions, Republicans have dedicated themselves with ever greater intensity to removing barriers to the continued growth of billionaire fortunes.

Tax policy–which has the most direct impact on billionaire wealth–is perhaps the most obviously affected by the money-for-power billionaire bargain. Polling consistently shows large majorities of Americans, including most Republicans and Trump voters, want rich households and the big corporations they largely own to pay more taxes. Yet the general trend of tax legislation over the past 40 years has been to lower taxes on the richest people and most profitable firms. That trend is continuing with the current effort to permanently extend the parts of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that are set to expire at year’s end and mostly benefit the wealthy.

Presidential campaigns tend to overshadow down-ballot contests, but billionaire donors were active in key congressional races last year as well. In the seven most competitive U.S. Senate races, billionaires provided an astounding $1.14 billion of outside spending. Of those funds, 80% supported the Republican nominees while just 20% backed Democrats.

The self-reinforcing combination of booming billionaire fortunes and weakening campaign finance laws continues to threaten our democratic form of government. As the outcome of the last presidential campaign amply demonstrates, until billionaires pay their fair share of taxes and we put effective curbs on their political spending, this threat will only grow

Super PACs: How Billionaires Funnel All the Money into Campaigns

Federal law limits direct donations to political candidates, political action committees (PACs) and political parties. For the 2023-24 election cycle, those limits were, respectively, $3,300, $10,000 ($5,000 for each year), and $10,000 combined to state and local parties in each state. There are larger allowances for contributions to national political parties. A billionaire making contributions under these limits–even if he donated to scores of candidates, dozens of local parties, and gave the maximum to his national party of choice–would be hard-pressed to spend “even” a million dollars.

What makes hundred-million-dollar political donations possible is the “super PAC”. These special entities were created by a 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, which said that campaign committees unconnected to the candidates or causes they support could not be restricted in how much money they collected from any one donor. The trouble is these supposedly “independent expenditures” are anything but, with candidate and party campaigns routinely coordinating their strategies with their supportive Super PACs with little fear of penalty.

And This Isn’t the Whole Story: The Growing Influence of ‘Dark Money’

While super PACs are allowed to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, they at least have to disclose their donors. That disclosure requirement does not apply to another form of outside spending entity, the so-called “dark money” group. And these groups–presumably with substantial billionaire funding–are increasing their influence over American politics. In the 2024 elections, just two dozen dark money groups contributed over $1 billion to super PACs. Of that amount, two-thirds went to liberal-leaning committees, the rest to committees that backed conservatives.

Despite the ominous name, many dark money groups are familiar nonprofits like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the League of Conservation Voters and the National Association of Realtors. These groups are more frequently described as 501(c)(4) organizations, named after the section of the tax code that governs their tax-exempt status. (Another, less active and prominent form of dark money group is the 527, which funds a lot of party infrastructure.)

Unlike its close cousin, the 501(c)(3) charity, a 501(c)(4) is allowed to participate in substantial lobbying and campaigning. Many such groups take advantage of this allowance to make big independent expenditures–in the form of mailers, TV ads, and more–for friendly candidates and favored causes and against perceived enemies and policies they oppose. Importantly, such groups can also donate money to candidates, parties and PACs.

Unlike famous national organizations that seek attention to forward their goals, many newer dark money groups are also dark in that they have no public face and are organized solely to funnel anonymous cash into campaigns. For example, all four super PACs organized to support Republican and Democratic candidates for the House and Senate now have associated dark money groups that can take in anonymous donations.

Contributions by a billionaire to such groups can be inferred by his absence from the list of top super PAC donors after regular appearances there. An example is Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook who was recently worth about $17 billion. Thiel pumped almost $33 million into the 2022 midterm elections, but gave only token amounts in 2023-24. The reason might be that almost all of his money in the previous campaign went to two super PACs whose sole mission was the election of two former employees—JD Vance and Blake Masters—to the U.S. Senate. (Masters lost but Vance won and of course is now Vice President.) But it might be that Thiel just turned his political spending dark.

Top Billionaire-Family Election Spenders by Ideology

Our analysis finds that just 100 billionaire families collectively spent $2.6 billion during the federal 2024 election cycle. Contribution data comes from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and was collected on Mar. 5, 2025 (see the Methodology section at the end of this report for more information). It’s important to note that while this figure is too large for most Americans even to imagine, it is just a tiny fraction of these billionaires’ sprawling fortunes: a total of over $2.67 trillion as of January 2025. These ultra-rich election influencers were able to flood our TV screens, laptops, and smartphones with political propaganda while only dipping into 0.1% of their wealth. By contrast, if 100 median American families spent 0.1% of their wealth on political contributions it would total less than $20,000.

I am not going to add the list of Billionaire Spenders on Angry Bear. It gets too lengthy. It is better off if I tell you where to find the list.

An Excel Spread sheet can be found here: “Top Billionaires Donors (2024 Election Cycle),” Google Sheets.

Biggest Billionaire Doners can be Found here. BBE-March-2025-3.pdf starting on Page 9. The first doner (which comes as no surprise) is Elon Musk. “Musk’s list-topping $278 million of election spending, the overwhelming majority (84%, or $235 million) went to Donald Trump’s reelection.

Source: BBE-March-2025-3.pdf