The 2024 US election: A marketplace for billionaires and millionaires

It is no secret that America's "democratic" system of governance today is being overwhelmed by money and, particularly, the billionaires and millionaires who provide a bulk of campaign dollars.

The 2024 US election spending is going to break all previous records. Nearly $16 billion will be spent on campaign ads alone. Add the expenses of running a campaign and the overall cost of the election is likely to approach $20 billion. This price tag puts the very wealthy in the driver's seat when it comes to electing the next president and Congress of the United States.

Money has always been a critical element in American electoral campaigns. Back in 1895, US Senator Mark Hanna quipped: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember the second."

However, the money that funded America's campaigns decades ago came from a variety of sources. Certainly, the wealthy provided substantial sums, but so did civic organisations, political parties, public funds – and small donors as well.

Rise of super PACs

Corporations had long been prohibited from making campaign contributions or expenditures. But all this changed following the US Supreme Court's disastrous 2010 Citizens United decision.

The court fundamentally flipped the campaign finance arena on its head when it ruled that, while candidates will continue to be subject to strict contribution limits, corporations and the very wealthy may make unlimited independent expenditures supporting or opposing these candidates through outside groups.

This decision spawned the creation of "super PACs," outside political groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of campaign money from any source (except foreign sources).

Super PACs – the largely unregulated playground for corporations and the wealthy to spend unlimited sums to elect their favoured candidate – have wildly proliferated in the campaign finance arena, both in number and in spending.

Immediately following the Citizens United decision, 83 super PACs raised $89 million during the 2010 midterm elections. This year, some 2,321 super PACs have raised a whopping $2.2 billion so far, with much more forthcoming before the election's end.

Nearly all of this super PAC money comes from a small handful of wealthy donors. Billionaires alone – there are about 700 of them in the United States – provided 15 percent of all funding for the 2022 midterm elections largely through super PACs. This year, just 50 donors collectively pumped $1.5 billion into these outside political groups.

Quid pro quo

And make no mistake about it: all this spending by billionaires and millionaires is targeted to promote specific candidates, and often comes with specific policy objectives clearly expressed.

About half of the major super PACs support only one candidate and are usually set up by former staffers or friends of that candidate. Trump has his own super PAC (actually, a couple of super PACs) and Kamala Harris has hers.

Any money given to these super PACs is spent directly in support of that candidate, and the candidate knows where the money is coming from.

Trump's super PACs have raised a fortune from Wall Street billionaires, like Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, and crypto entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk. Tim Mellon, heir to the Gilded Age industrialist Andrew Mellon, has single-handedly pumped $125 million into Trump's super PACs.

Kamala Harris has her own billionaire financiers, such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Wall Street billionaire Jim Simmons.

Frequently, these big donors give money with specific asks. Billionaires Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave Trump's super PAC $20 million in 2016 to nudge him into moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. When elected, President Trump complied.

Billionaire Reid Hoffman pumped millions into Harris' super PAC and made no qualms that he would like her as president to fire the government's top antitrust regulator Lina Khan. More often, the asks are general in nature, such as Mellon's wish that the next Trump administration provide government deregulation and tax cuts for his business interests.

Trump seems perfectly willing to reciprocate. At a Mar-a-Lago dinner with oil industry CEOs, Trump proposed a brazen "deal" that they give his campaign $1 billion. In return, he vowed that once back in the White House, he would tear up the environmental regulations enacted during President Joe Biden's administration.

Setting the agenda

The problems posed by the wealthy financiers of campaigns are not just limited to buying specific favours. These wealthy donors are able to set the nation's political agenda by determining who will, and who will not, become a party's standard-bearer.

The financial backing of a few wealthy donors early in the election enables a candidate to emerge as viable, and then a viable campaign later can reach out to small donors.

Kamala Harris rose to national prominence in her 2020 presidential bid when more billionaires and their spouses donated to Harris than any other candidate, even more than to Biden.

Now as the Democratic nominee in 2024, she boasts that 40 percent of her contributors are small donors, which is accurate. But she may not have ever been on the national stage without the early support of the very wealthy.

The price tag of getting elected to office has grown enormously over just the last decade. It is a price that average Americans cannot afford to pay, and so the billionaires and millionaires and their corporate interests are filling the void.

These wealthy special interests are few in number but are willing to pay handsomely, often in pursuit of their own interests

With the blessing of the unelected and largely unaccountable US Supreme Court, the American political environment is being fundamentally reshaped by an elite few.

This is a very dangerous trend that legitimately calls into question whether America can still claim to be a democracy representing the interests of more than just the few.