It's super Tuesday and in the spirit of this big primary day, let's look at corporate spending in the election.
First, let's talk about someone who isn't in the race anymore, Jeb Bush. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, law professor at Stetson University College of Law, and Brennan Center Fellow, wrote piece highlighting the role of corporate money in Jeb Bush's Super Pac. Corporate money was big business for Jeb. Torres-Spelliscy discusses a $10 million donation from CV Starr with former AIG CEO Maruice Raymond "Hank" Greenberg at the helm, several private company donations over $1M and a multi-million dollar donation from publicly traded, NextEra Energy Inc (NYSE ticker: NEE). Torres-Spelliscy writes "If anyone ever tries to sell you the bill of goods that corporations are not taking advantage of their Citizens United rights to spend in American politics, remember this: the top donor to Jeb! Bush’s Super PAC was a corporation." Read her full account here.
The failure of Jeb Bush's well-moneyed campaign has generated debate about the "real impact" of money in politics if it can't produce a certain result. Rick Hasen, election law professor at University of California Irvine and prolific writer behind the Election Law Blog, presented at Georgia State University College of Law on Monday promoting his new book (Plutocrats United). Rick used a very persuasive analogy to depict the role of money in the United States' current election climate. He posited that money cannot buy election results, but if an election can be thought of as a raffle or a lottery, it buys certain donors more tickets than most people. The more raffle tickets one holds, and here the big money donors are getting suitcases full of tickets, the greater the chance, the higher the odds, of winning the election lottery.
If you want to see who the ticket holders are and who they are supporting, here are a few resources that help readers delve into the specific question of how many tickets are corporations holding. For an overview of money-raised by candidate, the New York Times distills recent FEC disclosures into a digestible table available here. Open Secrets, which compiles and discloses election spending has a useful tool to identify outside spending/PACs as well as to identify industry financial support of candidates. The Federal Election Commission website is available here with a variety of searching tools and data summaries available.
Happy Voting!
Anne Tucker