US midterms: The best democracy money can buy?

Larry Donnelly Law lecturer, University of Galway

“TROY JACKSON IS weird. He has two kids with his cousin. If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours, too!” Set to a catchy backing soundtrack, this is the opening stanza of a radio ad in Maine ripping to shreds the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate, Troy Jackson, who is seeking to vanquish the long-serving liberal Republican, Susan Collins.

Jackson does have two children with his partner, Lana Pelletier, who also is his second cousin. This is not illegal. Collins has called for the very nasty, yet undeniably catchy and humorous, tune to be removed from the airwaves. Her team is not behind it. A cynic can be pardoned for opining that it’s easy to be high-minded when the ad has been heard countless times, drawing plenty of attention to what is a rather unusual family situation. The damage has been done.

But if the Collins campaign itself did not create or pay for the hard-hitting jingle, who did? As those listening keenly at its close would hear, it was sponsored by the Republican-affiliated Senate Leadership Fund (SLF). The SLF is an independent political action committee (PAC) which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to elect politicians who are on their side.

Staggeringly, the SLF is spraying over a third of a billion dollars into 2026 Senate races across the US. Some $160 million (€142.79 million) to try and prop up the ethically challenged Ken Paxton of the GOP in Texas; approximately $70 million against populist Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio; $37 million (€33.02 million) in Michigan to beat the left-wing Abdul El-Sayed, who Donald Trump alleges without basis is a “jihadist,” “hates our country” and “is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.” The figures keep climbing.

And who is one of the primary sources of cash for the SLF? The malevolent trillionaire Elon Musk. Musk’s topsy-turvy, unholy alliance with President Trump continues to have a detrimental effect on the American polity. And in recent days, Musk’s pernicious influence was felt directly by the people of Ukraine, who suffered untold losses when their army’s access to his satellite technology was restricted. Thus far, he has ponied up $158 million (€141.01 million) to the SLF.

The SLF money is literally the tip of the iceberg. For instance, Time magazine reports that, altogether, $460 million (€410.53 million) has gone into the Ohio Senate contest: $180 million+ to Brown and $270 million (€240.96 million)+ has been expended to bolster the incumbent, Jon Husted, whose ass and shoulders President Trump has been paying homage to at his signature rallies.

According to AdImpact, an advertising intelligence company, $11.6 billion (€10.35 billion) will be spent by 3 November. That is a record. And that is solely the money going toward advertising; it does not account for myriad other expenses that are incurred by candidates and their aides.

Waste of money?

This is, to put it bluntly, absolutely bonkers. How did we get here? It arguably originated in earnest with the US Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley v Valeo, where the majority ruled basically that cash, in the form of political donations, was de facto speech and hence entitled to the very broad protections conferred by the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. Divided courts have since expanded Buckley’s central holding and eliminated virtually all obstacles to boundless spending in subsequent cases.

While Republicans have a distinct advantage when it comes to garnering funds from independent PACs, Democrats, who often raise more from interested individuals than their opponents, have their own well-heeled super PACs. No one’s hands are clean. Three realities emerge from this disheartening state of play.

First is that most PACs are not motivated by a search for truth or by a desire for the parties to meet in the middle. Their stances, objectives and advocacy on a range of economic and social matters can invariably be described as hard right and hard left. Because politicians must eternally chase campaign cash, elected Democrats and Republicans have drifted to the ideological poles. Moderates are a vanishing breed on Capitol Hill and in state capitals throughout the US.

Second, the infamous Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission precedent from 2010, one of the progeny of Buckley v Valeo, allowed corporations and labour unions to make unlimited independent contributions. The former have a lot more money than the latter.

Unsurprisingly then, both before and especially after Citizens United, leading Democrats have embraced the agenda of big business, including so-called “free trade” deals. What many progressives perceived as a tragic betrayal of the party’s traditional, working class base provoked widespread indignation and helped inspire the foundation of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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Third, and this is the one that bites the hardest, is the further disillusionment, anger and apathy of a substantial swathe of the citizenry in a nation which already had one of the lower rates of voter participation in the western world. Most of these Americans have views that don’t align neatly with either party, but they typically have to choose between extremes.

They generally don’t trust politics or politicians, and why would they when incumbents and aspirants have done and/or will do the bidding of their donors? Moreover, winning office is an increasingly inexplicable golden ticket. Witness the astonishing amount of multimillionaires sitting in the US Congress. They earn a relatively paltry $174,000 (€155,000) annually. How does that happen, Joe and Josephine Public wonder?

Things will never change, they justifiably conclude. Turkeys aren’t known for voting for Christmas. So, many of these Americans don’t bother to do their civic duty. And those who still do, who see it as their responsibility? They are rarely ticking the box next to the name of someone they admire and respect; they are choosing the least bad option of two. In the final stretch of these midterms, this may represent the best hope reeling Republicans have.

The foregoing is admittedly bleak. Yet it is the sad, unassailable truth. I will always believe in politics – that it is a noble profession and that the politics done well can benefit society and improve the human condition. But given how corrupted the system in the land of my birth has been by the almighty buck, it’s tough to remain idealistic.

Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a Law Lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with The Journal.