President Abraham Lincoln said famously during his Gettysburg Address that our country is “for the people, by the people.” But when you look at the world of campaign finance, is it time for an update?
For the money, by the money, might be more apropos.
In fact, Lincoln is probably rolling around in his tomb watching politicians genuflect and contort themselves in a dance for election dollars as this year’s midterms clock in at well north of a billion in influential cash.
Every year since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision made corporations “people,” deciding that there should be no limit on how much these personified entities spend on political campaigns, we’ve lived with a dystopian electoral process where the grassroots must battle a machine that is endlessly funded by “I don’t know.”
Like, literally.
We do not know.
Corporations, tech billionaires and even foreign countries are funneling money into our elections via proxies with patriotic-sounding names, hoping to sway the races for God knows who.
Untraceable donors shaping 2026
Who are the faces behind the cash?
Maybe it’s Elon Musk, who once boasted on X (formerly Twitter) that he essentially won the election for Donald Trump. He spent $200 million through his super PAC to help elect Trump in 2024.
Maybe it’s DoorDash, a food-delivery app that spent $1.4 million to thwart the election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and now must pay a $131.5 million settlement to its workers that Mamdani shepherded.
Maybe it’s name-a-billionaire, any-billionaire, as the ultra wealthy contributed heavily to a 2024 election cycle that was the second most expensive in history, clocking in at $5.5 billion.
And that’s what’s scary.
It’s not just our elections that are flushed with shady dollars. Those who influence them are on the take as well.
Just this April after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban lost his re-election, we learned the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was being funded in part by Hungarian tax dollars.
And those spam calls? Those bots? Those AI ads? Who’s behind them? It could be anyone.
In the looming midterms, political advisors are already warning Democrats to not go too hard on AI, lest they raise the ire of the tech giants who would happily crush a campaign just to flood our social media with ever more slop, disinfo, and misinfo, while siphoning precious, drinkable water for their massive data centers.
And while Republicans may be playing catch-up across the country in various polls, they’re not behind in the money race where they are out-raising and out-spending Democrats by almost double.
The GOP’s cash advantage
From CNBC:
The GOP’s three national committees entered September with roughly $233.4 million in cash on hand, nearly double the $130.4 million held by their Democratic counterparts, according to a CNBC analysis of newly filed Federal Election Commission reports.
And that does not include the biggest Republican-aligned war chest: President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, which entered September with nearly $416 million in the bank. Two Trump-linked groups, No Going Back PAC Inc. and Safety & Affordability PAC Inc., have also reserved at least $126 million in advertising, according to AdImpact data.
During the Obama years, much was made of grassroots fundraising, where everyday small donors made a difference. But what chance does Grandma mailing in a $20 check have against a shadowy figure floating millions of untraceable dollars to tip the scales?
And while the mainstream press reports on the horse race as if everything is on the up and up, most of the public has no idea where the reportedly $1.2 billion flooding our elections is coming from. But in August, The New York Times did some digging. Look at all the familiar wealthy faces, including a bunch of crypto kings and a Koch brother.
Lincoln said on that hallowed battlefield that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and he’s right.
It won’t die.
It’ll just be purchased by the highest bidder.
Which is why we need more independent media sounding the alarm—media that’s not behind paywalls or beholden to the same billionaires trying to flip our elections.
Alas, most media is floundering, going broke, or being bought by the same people trying to purchase our politicians. Which is why turnout in this year’s midterms is more important than ever.
Because if we don’t show up, we can rest assured that those who seek to influence us with their dollars definitely will.
