

Campaign funds

A PACket of money

Cash in hand is not the only advantage rich candidates have

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Readers' comments





To see the top 5 donors to the presidential candidates:
According to that site, Monies did not come from companies themselves, but from the companies' PACs, employees, and/or owners.

Obama's top 5:
1) Microsoft, 2) Comcast, 3) Harvard, 4) Google, 5) University of CA

Romney's top 5:
1) Goldman Sachs, 2) Credit Suisse, 3) Morgan Stanley, 4) HIG Capital, 5) Barclays

Who's funded by Wallstreet "Fat Cats"?

Ah Beng

I don't pretend to understand even a single aspect of the merits of the law involved, but in terms of consequences, Citizens United will go down as one of the worst decisions in SCOTUS history.

Showers and shaves

@pyritepirate, good question, try this one.


Give Goldman some time, they came through for Obama last time.


It is interesting how this article points out half of Obama's donations came from small individual donations. Pay no attention to the other $43 million. Are we always going to be stuck with this type of media? Remember the union donations?

New Conservative

Ah Beng,

It made it much easier for companies to buy the services of elected officials. Reducing barriers to the purchase of goods and services is the American way. It was an aberration really.

Companies could use their money to hire the best lawyers, engineers, programmers, managers etc.

Now, they can finally purchase politicians.

Some may say, but studies have shown that more money doesn't help you get elected. That's not the point.

The studies we need to see are how the money affects a politician's voting after they make it into office. A company can afford to give 100,000 to five candidates if it means that whoever wins gets the company 2 million in subsidies.


I've got to admit I'm disappointed in this piece for failing to point out the greater issue at hand. The fact that such a large portion of American politicians' coffers are filled by such a small powerful group completely undermines the concept of democracy, and until society begins to pay attention to how our politicians are being bought and paid for through "campaign contributions" (otherwise known as legal bribery), we will have no chance of correcting any of the economic or social problems facing this country. Please, do your part as a news and media organization, examine the big picture, and don't be afraid to tell it how it is. We don't need updates on who has more money, we need smart informed analyses on what it means.


I agree with the previous commentators.
Purchasing politicians ought to be the exclusive purview of the unions.

Understandable that the article observed that Obama received lots of small donations, however it didn't bother to note that Obama also receives more money from his "Fat Cats" on Wallstreet than anyone else as well.

Obama is a complicated man.


What good can possibly come of Citizens United decision by the SCOTUS? The last thing the US needs are more of rich corporations lobbying for presidential/congressional favors. The idea of representative democracy has all but failed in the US: once an elected official is casting votes based on corporations' interests over the constituents', there is a problem!

More relevant to this article, I think a graphic showing who raised and/or spent the most funds during a US presidential campaign vs. number of popular and electoral votes would be most informative. I remember reading four years ago that it appeared okay to not give John Edwards as much attention in the media as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, because he was not going to get as many votes. Of course, the less you hear about a candidate in the press (at the time, JE wasn't in the tabloids), the less votes they'll win over! Now I'm thinking, perhaps JE couldn't raise nearly as many funds as HC or BO. Graphs or it didn't happen.


Ron Paul has a LOT more cash on hand than Bachmann, even before he took in another $2.3 million yesterday in a moneybomb. You might want to correct your chart.


If you look at Perry's figures it's quite clear that some dodgy accounting is being done. His cash on hand is virtually the same as his cash raised? He's apparently spent nothing?

I don't believe that at all.



Funny, reading your response one would think the unions barely contribute anything but common sense indicates that to be wrong. I went to the site you sent me and I find something even more interesting:


The vast majority of the heavy hitters go to the dems, and those folks are mostly unions.

If you want to shrink spending on politics, shrink the size of government so there is a smaller return on investment. This love of telling Americans what they may or may not spend their time and money on, or how they may lobby their government, is absurd. Really, it is an insipid attempt to preserve the establishment because it costs more money for a challenger to take on an established politician then vice-versa.


Re. these "superPACs" -watch out America.
In Australia I have recently watched a FUD-laden mining industry advertising campaign play a insturmental role in unseating a serving prime-minister (Kevin Rudd), and force the government to re-write its policy on mining royalties. Now the gambling industry is doing it's best to destroy the current minortiy government with its own milti-million dollar FUD campaign. A recent poll shows it has already succeded in making most Australians misunderstand the content of proposed gamblibng legislation. I'm not sure how to prevent this kind of thing (without curtailing freedom of speech), but corporate interference in politics sure is making a mockery of "democracy" here, and the same thing could happen to you.


At least unions are supporting (at least tacitly) the concerns of their members who are people. Unless you are Mr Romney, it is really hard to make the argument that corporations are people too. How much power do shareholders really have? Are the corporations actions always in the best interests of shareholders or their employees (who are also actual people)?


According to Keiser Report in RT, Goldman & other Banksters head the list of donor to both Barrack Hussein Obama and Mitt Romney.

A former Banking regulator said that the Banksters had clearly broken the laws in defrauding the tax-payers during the Banking Credit crisis. But the Hussein guy said that the Banksters have just test the limits but did not break any law. Is he lying?

Anyway this episode just shows who is really running the Plutocracy in Washington.

Ah Beng


Unions making opaque PACs to smear Republicans is just as toxic as making one to smear Democrats. That's what Citizens United was about.

On The Economist, reflexively assuming everyone not obviously Republican is a liberal partisan is not generally good policy.

before the mast

SuperPAC's are part of the reason the political system is broken. A few extremist can barter to throw every other concern and vote into the rubble pile.

The Wall

Elections depend way too heavily on the sum of money candidates can bring forth. Obama will easily win the next election just because of the huge lead he has on the other candidates in the financial aspect of the election. He receives support from all over and the PAC's give him large sums of money. There should be a limit placed on the amount of money a candidate can spend towards his election. These should be stricter limits then the current laws that restrict PAC's from giving over a certain amount of money. This law is easily bypassed by candidates. If all of the candidates were given the same money the playing field would be fair and the truly best candidate would win. This upcoming election will show that money wins because Obama will again win the election.


There can be no Social Justice and People democracy until the American democratic processes can be wrestled back from the Plutocratic elites into the hands of the 99% ordinary folks.


The Banksters are equally good at using their derivative game theories in control their trading bets as to controlling politicians to steal from tax-payers.

In the US, the bankster job is more easily accomplished because there is 2 sets of politicians to place the politician bets.


With limited restrictions for PAC's, they become a campaigners best friend in these upcoming elections. You can't really put it any other way, its about the money at the end of the day. Just like the article states, if a campaign is too cheap to gain support nation-wide, it will achieve little success. It'll be interesting to see where Cain goes to try to find the funding that gives him a legitimate chance in the next Presidential election.


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