The Democrats were delighted with the outcome of the campaign to fill a seat at the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. Despite the pumping of Elon Musk 25 million dollars To support the loyalist judge of Trump Brad Schimel, Liberal Susan Crawford emerged victorious.
But the blow for musk – and the American president Donald Trump – should not obscure the broader problem of the amount of money spent for this race. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, it was the Most expensive judicial race In American history, with expenses totaling $ 100 million.
The Democrats were not innocent passers -by either. National liberal donors, including the governor of Illinois (and the heir to the Hyatt hotel) JB PritzkerAlso spent millions to support the successful campaign of Crawford.
Unfortunately, the wave of expenses in the Wisconsin is only the tip of the iceberg. Big expenditure and big money dominate American policy.
Musk, who already has one of the most relevant platforms and largest companies in social media in the world, jumped at the top of the Trump universe towards the end of the 2024 campaign by contributory More than $ 291 million in the campaigns of the former president and other republican candidates. His generosity has earned him a key place in the administration, in the direction of the Ministry of Government (DOGE), a demolition bullet intended for the federal workforce. In order not to be informed, Musk was clearly indicate that he intends to use his money in the mid-term countryside. Anyone who is on the way to the administration knows that he could easily end up facing a main challenger, paid by the boss of Tesla.
The most astonishing aspect of these efforts is perhaps the way in which large donors work rather than around the legal process. The Congress does not have the power to restrict independent expenses, in particular Musk buying its own announcements or paying organizations that support the president. Large contributors have been everywhere in American policy for decades. This is a problem where both parties were on the same wavelength.
How did it happen?
Although private money has always been the “mother milk” of American politics, as the legendary president of the State of California said, Jesse a Uruh, there was a time when the reform of the substantial campaigns was at the center of the national agenda. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which brought President Richard Nixon in 1974, the Congress tried to restore confidence in the government by adopting campaign financing legislation.
On October 15, 1974, the successor to Nixon, President Gerald Ford, reluctantly sign Federal changes to the 1974 law election campaign (FECA) in law. The legislation has created a voluntary public funding system for presidential campaigns. Applicants who present themselves to the appointment of the party could receive public funds for primaries and general elections if they accepted limitations of voluntary spending. He imposed limits on campaign contributions and campaign expenses while strengthening the laws on disclosure. Applicants who arise for the presidency were limited to spending a maximum of $ 50,000 on their own funds. Finally, the Watergate reforms have established the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) to supervise the entire system.
Crucial for legislation was an understanding that the protection sometimes of the protection of the democratic process should be a priority on the problems of first amendment. Ford noted in his declaration on the signing of the law according to which “there are certain periods in the history of our nation when it becomes necessary to face certain unpleasant truths. We have gone through one of these periods. ” The reformers thought that the legislation constituted a historic victory in the struggle to limit the corrupt influence of money over the elections. Although the legislation has not included very desired provisions, such as public funding for the congress elections, victory was nevertheless important. As a founder of the organization of good governance Common Cause, John Gardner, he was a “big midfield”.
But it did not take long for the reforms to start to collapse. Almost as soon as the law entered into force, Senator James Buckley, member of the New York State Conservative Party, joined forces with a eclectic coalition Allies who included the former Liberal senator from Minnesota and the primary Democratic candidate of 1968, Eugene McCarthy, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Mississippi Republican Party and the Conservative Party of New York. Buckley’s coalition has filed a complaint against the secretary of the Senate, a ex officio Member of the FEC, Francis Valeo. They argued that several components of the Watergate reforms were unconstitutional and that the case was judged before the highest jurisdiction.
Under the chief judge Warren Burger, the Supreme Court made public its decision on January 30, 1976. In a by Curiam Opinion, the court overturned several key pillars of FECA. The court accepted a nuanced understanding of the need to balance concerns about corruption and the first amendment. While the court has legitimized government law to limit contributions to the campaign, judges have judged restrictions on campaign spending as a clear violation of freedom of expression: “The first amendment refuses the government to determine that spending to promote its political opinions are useless, excessive or reckless.” On the one hand, the court rejected the idea that the significant independent expenses of the candidates and individuals were the equivalent of corruption if there was an “absence of pre-supreme or coordination … with the candidate or his agent”. The federal ceilings on contributions, he said, did not prevent individuals from supporting the candidates. On the other hand, the court concluded that the expenditure limits have created a much more formidable barrier for the first amendment, because money was essential for speech: “(v) irtally all the means of communication of ideas in the mass society of today requires money expenditure.” The dangers that high expenditure levels could corrupt or seem corrupt, the policy was not serious enough to justify the limits of the speech, said the court. In addition, the court has reduced restrictions on independent expenses while simultaneously allowing individual candidates to spend as much their own money as they wanted. In his dissent, judge Thurgood Marshall joked: “It would seem that the candidate with a substantial personal fortune at his disposal left for an important” stem “.
Although Buckley c. Valeo did not destroy the rest of the Watergate reforms, the Supreme Court under Burger had opened a large door for private money to enter the political blood circulation. Over the next decades, campaign costs have continued to increase. There has been a massive expansion in the number of political action committees (PACS), and donors have found new ways of obtaining funds from candidates, including by “sweet currency” which was devoted to “party activities”. Unlike individual candidates, these contributions were free from any federal restriction. Without a complete public funding system, the incentives have remained solid for candidates to rush for private donations that were there for taking as an attractive alternative to the dollars of the limited government. The system of voluntary public financing of the presidential elections worked for many decades. But here too, the attraction of private money has proven so strong that George W. Bush and then Barack Obama decided to give up public funds.
The Biparisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 imposed The regulations on flexible money, but private money continued to find a means. “Dark money” was a way to channel funds through non -profit organizations that were not required to report who were their donors. The “Bundlers” were royals who collected money from several donors, combining the dollars in greater amount. Opponents of the Congress to finance the campaign have flattened the nuances of Buckley’s decision and transformed a simple decision that “money is speech”. The mantra has become the basis to follow all kinds of federal campaign rules. “The court judged that there was” nothing invited, inappropriate or unhealthy “in the campaigns of the campaign to communicate – nothing”, “,” supported The Kentucky Mitch McConnell senator.
Echoing the court of Burger, a majority of 5-4 to the Supreme Court brought another major hit by the settlement of the campaign with the campaign with Citizens United c. Fec (2010). The decision eliminated the limitations of business and unions’ expenditure according to the assertion that they also violated the first amendment. Four years later, in McCutcheon c. FecA majority of 5-4 under chief John Roberts rejected The global limits of the quantity of an individual could contribute to federal candidates and national parties over a period of two years.
In recent years, he has had the impression that the hopes of the Watergate era to contain the influence of private money in the elections have almost disappeared. Everything remains is a disclosure system which is used to remind voters of the quantity of rich donors and who are the beneficiaries. Frustrated politicians are trapped in a permanent fund collection wheelbarrow (which legislators call the “call time“They pass every day) as they try to maintain sufficient chests to challenge the challengers. The electoral season is so long and so dear that the presidential candidates must begin to collect funds almost at the end of the last elections, or they will late. The Americans continue to pay the price, literally, for the decision of the Burger Court in each election.
Concerns about musks The influence should not bring Americans to ignore its underlying structural roots. Wisconsin’s events are not only a story on a few individuals – and more, history concerns a total failure of the system.
Supporters of the reform remind us that there is a legal room to challenge the court’s decision in 1976. Like Gilad Edelman supported In The American perspective More than a decade ago, the advent of the Internet undermined the logic of the court’s decision, namely that the speech in the countryside requires money. “What the Court in 1976 called” Today’s Mass Society “and” The Modern Setting “,” said Edelman, “was a pre-numerical era in which television, radio and the written press were the essential guards of mass communication. These trends have only accelerated in the following years with the solidification of social media and the weakening of traditional media.
Until the congress finds a means of treating the broken system, whether by public funding or a constitutional amendment to regulate expenses, the nation will be forever locked in an expenditure weapons race where the big donors throw their weight with the power of their handbag.
While politics railings continue to collapse in the second phase of the Trump era, the aggressiveness with which the oligarchic forces will exercise their muscle on democracy will only get worse. If history is a guide, what is, in the near future, Musk’s current role in politics will be tamed.