A protest calling for an end to corporate money in politics and to mark the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is held in Lafayette Square near the White House. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Democracy
of the Billionaires
By Nomi Prins, Tom Dispatch
01 February 16
The Most Expensive Election Ever Is A Billionaire’s Playground
(Except for Bernie Sanders)
Speaking
of the need for citizen participation in our national politics in his final State of the Union address,
President Obama said, “Our brand of democracy is hard.” A more accurate
characterization might have been: “Our brand of democracy is cold hard cash.”
Cash,
mountains of it, is increasingly the necessary tool for presidential
candidates. Several Powerball jackpots could already be fueled from the
billions of dollars in contributions in play in election 2016. When considering
the present donation season, however, the devil lies in the details, which is
why the details follow.
With
three 2016 debates down and six more scheduled, the two fundraisers with the
most surprising amount in common are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Neither
has billionaire-infused super PACs, but for vastly different reasons. Bernie
has made it clear billionaires won’t ever hold sway in his court. While
Trump... well, you know, he’s not only a billionaire but has the knack for
getting the sort of attention that even billions can’t buy.
Regarding
the rest of the field, each candidate is counting on the reliability of his or
her own arsenal of billionaire sponsors and corporate nabobs when the
you-know-what hits the fan. And at this point, believe it or not, thanks to the
Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision of 2010 and the super
PACs that arose from it, all the billionaires aren’t even nailed down or
faintly tapped out yet. In fact, some of them are already preparing to
jump ship on their initial candidate of choice or reserving the really big
bucks for closer to game time, when only two nominees will be duking it out for
the White House.
Capturing
this drama of the billionaires in new ways are TV networks eager to profit from
the latest eyeball-gluing version of election politicking and the billions of
dollars in ads that will flood onto screens nationwide between now and November
8th. As super PACs, billionaires, and behemoth companies press their influence
on what used to be called “our democracy,” the modern debate system, now a
16-month food fight, has become the political equivalent of the NFL playoffs.
In turn, soaring ratings numbers, scads of ads, and the party infighting that
helps generate them now translate into billions of new dollars for media
moguls.
For
your amusement and mine, this being an all-fun-all-the-time election campaign,
let’s examine the relationships between our twenty-first-century plutocrats and
the contenders who have raised $5 million or more in individual contributions
or through super PACs and are at 5% or more in composite national polls.
I’ll refrain from using the politically correct phrases that feed into the
illusion of distance between super PACs that allegedly support candidates’
causes and the candidates themselves, because in practice there is no
distinction.
On the
Republican Side:
1. Ted
Cruz: Most “God-Fearing” Billionaires
Yes,
it’s true the Texas senator “goofed” in neglecting to disclose to the Federal
Election Commission (FEC) a tiny six-figure loan from
Goldman Sachs for his successful 2012 Senate campaign. (After all, what’s
half-a-million dollars between friends, especially when the investment bank
that offered it also employed your wife as well as your finance chairman?) As
The Donald recently told a crowd in Iowa, when it comes to Ted Cruz, “Goldman
Sachs owns him. Remember that, folks. They own him.”
That
aside, with a slew of wealthy Christians in his camp, Cruz has raised the
second largest pile of money among the GOP candidates. His total of individual
and PAC contributions so far disclosed is a striking $65.2 million. Of that,
$14.28 million has already been spent. Individual contributors kicked in
about a third of that total,
or $26.57 million, as of the end of November 2015 -- $11 million from small
donors and $15.2 million from larger ones. His five top donor groups are
retirees, lawyers and law firms, health professionals, miscellaneous
businesses, and securities and investment firms (including, of course, Goldman
Sachs to the tune of $43,575).
Cruz’s
Keep the Promise super PAC continues to grow like an action movie franchise. It
includes his original Keep the Promise PAC augmented by Keep the Promise I, II,
and III. Collectively, the Keep the Promise super PACs amassed $37.83 million.
In terms of deploying funds against his adversaries, they have spent more
than 10 times as much
fighting Marco Rubio as battling Hillary Clinton.
His
super PAC money divides along family factions reminiscent of Game of
Thrones. A $15 million chunk comes from the billionaire Texas
evangelical fracking moguls, the Wilks Brothers, and $10 million comes
from Toby Neugebauer, who is
also listed as the principal officer of the public charity, Matthew 6:20 Foundation;
its motto is “Support the purposes of the Christian Community.”
Cruz’s
super PACs also received $11 million from
billionaire Robert Mercer, co-CEO of the New York-based hedge fund
Renaissance Technologies. His contribution is, however, peanuts compared to the
$6.8 billion a Senate subcommittee accused Renaissance of shielding from the
Internal Revenue Service (an allegation Mercer is still fighting). How’s that
for “New York values”? No wonder Cruz wants to abolish the IRS.
Another
of Cruz’s contributors is Bob McNair, the real estate
mogul, billionaire owner of the National Football League’s Houston Texans, and
self-described “Christian steward.”
2.
Marco Rubio: Most Diverse Billionaires
Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida has raised $32.8 million from individual and PAC
contributions and spent about $9 million. Despite the personal economic
struggles he’s experienced and loves to talk about, he’s not exactly resonating
with the nation’s downtrodden, hence his weak polling figures among the little
people. Billionaires of all sorts, however, seem to love him.
The
bulk of his money comes from super PACs and large contributors. Small
individual contributors donated only $3.3 million to his
coffers; larger individual contributions provided $11.3 million. Goldman Sachs leads
his pack of corporate donors with $79,600.
His
main super PAC, Conservative Solutions, has raised $16.6 million, making it the
third largest cash cow behind those of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. It holds $5
million from Braman Motorcars, $3 million from the Oracle Corporation, and $2.5
million from Benjamin Leon, Jr., of Besilu Stables. (Those horses are evidently
betting on Rubio.)
He has
also amassed a healthy roster of billionaires including the hedge-fund “vulture
of Argentina” Paul Singer who was
the third-ranked conservative donor for the 2014 election cycle. Last October,
in a mass email to supporters about a pre-Iowa caucus event, Singer promised, “Anyone who
raises $10,800 in new, primary money will receive 5 VIP tickets to a rally and
5 tickets to a private reception with Marco.”
Another
of Rubio's Billionaire Boys is Norman Braman, the Florida
auto dealer and his mentor. These days he’s been forking over the real money,
but back in 2008, he gave Florida International University $100,000 to fund a
Rubio post-Florida statehouse teaching job. What makes Braman’s relationship
particularly intriguing is his “intense distaste for
Jeb Bush,” Rubio’s former political mentor and now political punching bag.
Hatred, in other words, is paying dividends for Rubio.
Rounding
out his top three billionaires is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who ranks
third on Forbes’s billionaire list. Last summer, he threw a $2,700 per
person fundraiser in his
Woodside, California, compound for the candidate, complete with a special
dinner for couples that raised $27,000. If Rubio somehow pulls it out, you can
bet he will be the Republican poster boy for Silicon Valley.
3. Jeb
Bush: Most Disappointed Billionaires
Although
the one-time Republican front-runner’s star now looks more like a black hole,
the coffers of “Jeb!” are still the ones to beat. He had raised a total of $128
million by late November and spent just $19.9 million of it. Essentially
none of Jeb’s money came from the little people (that is, us). Barely 4% of his
contributions were from donations of $200 or less.
In terms
of corporate donors, eight of his top 10 contributors are banks or from the
financial industry (including all of the Big Six banks). Goldman Sachs (which
is nothing if not generous to just about every candidate in sight -- except of
course, Bernie) tops his corporate donor chart with $192,500. His super PACs
still kick ass compared to those of the other GOP contenders. His Right to Rise
super PAC raised a hefty $103.2 million and,
despite his disappearing act in the polls, it remains by far the largest in the
field.
Corporate
donors to Jeb’s Right to Rise PAC include MBF Healthcare Partners founder and
chairman Mike Fernandez, who has financed a slew of anti-Trump ads, with $3.02
million, and Rooney Holdings with $2.2 million. Its CEO, L. Francis Rooney III,
was the man George W. Bush appointed ambassador to the Vatican. Former AIG CEO
Hank Greenberg’s current company, CV Starr (and not, as he has made pains to
clarify, he himself), gave $10 million to Jeb’s super PAC. In the same Fox Business interview where
he stressed that distinction, he also noted, “I’m sorry he is not living up to
expectations, but that’s the reality of it.” AIG, by the way, received $182 billion in
bailout money under Jeb’s brother, W.
4. Ben
Carson: No Love For Billionaires
Ben
Carson is running a pretty expensive campaign, which doesn’t reflect well on
his possible future handling of the economy (though, as he sinks toward irrelevance
in the polls, it seems as if his moment to handle anything may have passed).
Having raised $38.7 million, he’s spent $26.4 million of it. His campaign
received 63% of its
contributions from small donors, which leaves it third behind Bernie and Trump
on that score, according to FEC filings from October 2015.
His
main super PACs, grouped under the title “the 2016 Committee,” raised just $3.8 million, with rich
retired people providing the bulk of it. Another PAC, Our Children’s Future,
didn’t collect anything, despite its pledge to turn "Carson’s outside
militia into an organized army."
But
billionaires aren’t Carson’s cup of tea. As he said last October, “I have not
gone out licking the boots of billionaires and special-interest groups. I’m not
getting into bed with them.”
Carson
recently dropped into fourth place in the RealClearPolitics composite poll for
election 2016 with his team in chaos. His campaign manager, Barry
Bennett, quit. His finance chairman,
Dean Parke, resigned amid
escalating criticism over his spending practices and his $20,000 a month
salary. As the rising outsider candidate, Carson once had an opportunity to
offer a fresh voice on campaign finance reform. Instead, his campaign learned
the hard way that being in the Republican hot seat without a Rolodex of
billionaires can be hell on Earth.
5.
Chris Christie: Most Sketchy Billionaires
For
someone polling so low, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has amassed
startling amounts of dosh. His campaign contributions stand at $18.6 million, of which he
has spent $5.7 million. Real people don’t care for him. Christie has received
the least number of small contributions in either party, a bargain basement 3%
of his total.
On the
other hand, his super PAC, America Leads, raised $11 million, including $4.3
million from the securities and investment industry. His top corporate donors
at $1 million each include Point 72 Asset Management, the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation,
and Winnecup Gamble Ranch, run by billionaire Paul Fireman, chairman of Fireman Capital
Partners and founder and former chairman of Reebok International Ltd.
Steven
Cohen, worth about $12 billion and on the
Christie campaign's national finance team, founded Point 72 Asset Management
after being forced to shut down SAC Capital, his former hedge-fund company, due
to insider-trading charges. SAC had to pay $1.2 billion to
settle.
Christie’s
other helpful billionaire is Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot. But
Langone, as he told the National
Journal, is not writing a $10 million check. Instead, he says, his
preferred method of subsidizing politicians is getting “a lot of people to
write checks, and get them to get people to write checks, and hopefully result
in a helluva lot more than $10 million.” In other words, Langone offers his
ultra-wealthy network, not himself.
6.
Donald Trump: I Am A Billionaire
Trump’s
campaign has received approximately $5.8 million in
individual contributions and spent about the same amount. Though not much
compared to the other Republican contenders, it’s noteworthy that 70% of Trump’s
contributions come from small individual donors (the highest percentage among
GOP candidates). It’s a figure that suggests it might not pay to underestimate
Trump’s grassroots support, especially since he’s getting significant amounts
of money from people who know he doesn’t need it.
Last
July, a Make America Great Again super PAC emerged, but it shut down in October
to honor Trump’s no super PAC claim. For Trump, dealing with super PAC
agendas would be a hassle unworthy of his time and ego. (He is, after all, the
best billionaire: trust him.) Besides, with endorsements from luminaries like
former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and a command of TV ratings that’s beyond
compare, who needs a super PAC or even his own money, of which he’s so far
spent remarkably little?
On The
Democratic Side:
1.
Hillary Clinton: A Dynasty of Billionaires
Hillary
and Bill Clinton earned a phenomenal $139 million for
themselves between 2007 and 2014, chiefly from writing books and speaking to
various high-paying Wall Street and international corporations. Between
2013 and 2015, Hillary Clinton gave 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private
equity firms, and other financial corporations, pocketing a whopping$2,935,000. And she’s used
that obvious money-raising skill to turn her campaign into a fundraising
machine.
As of
October 16, 2015, she had pocketed $97.87 million from
individual and PAC contributions. And she sure knows how to spend it,
too. Nearly half of that sum, or $49.8 million -- more than triple the amount
of any other candidate -- has already gone to campaign expenses.
Small
individual contributions made up only 17% of Hillary’s
total; 81% came from large individual contributions. Much like her forced
folksiness in the early days of her campaign when she was snapped eating a burrito bowl at
a Chipotle in her first major meet-the-folks venture in Ohio, those figures
reveal a certain lack of savoir faire when it comes to the
struggling classes.
Still,
despite her speaking tour up and down Wall Street and the fact that four of the top six
Wall Street banks feature among her top 10 career contributors, they’ve been
holding back so far in this election cycle (or perhaps donating to the GOP
instead). After all, campaign 2008 was a bust for her and nobody likes to
be on the losing side twice.
Her
largest super PAC, Priorities USA Action, nonetheless raised $15.7 million, including
$4.6 million from the entertainment industry and $3.1 million from securities
and investment. The Saban Capital Group and DreamWorks kicked in $2 million
each.
Hillary
has recently tried to distance herself from a well-deserved reputation for
being close to Wall Street,
despite the mega-speaking fees she’s garnered from Goldman Sachs among others,
not to speak of the fact that five of the Big Six banks gave money to the
Clinton Foundation. She now claims that her “Wall Street plan” is stricter than
Bernie Sanders’s. (It isn’t. He’s advocating to break up the big banks via a
twenty-first-century version of the Glass-Steagall Act that Bill Clinton buried
in his presidency.) To top it off, she scheduled an elite
fundraiser at the $17 billion “alternative investment” firm Franklin Square
Capital Partners four days before the Iowa Caucus. So much for leopards
changing spots.
You
won’t be surprised to learn that Hillary has billionaires galore in her corner,
all of whom backed her hubby through the years. Chief among them is media
magnate Haim Saban who gave her super PAC $2 million. George Soros, the
hedge-fund mogul, contributed $2.02 million. DreamWorks
Animation chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg gave $1 million. And the list
goes on.
2.
Bernie Sanders: No Billionaires Allowed
Bernie
Sanders has stuck to his word, running a campaign sans billionaires.
As of October 2015, he had raised an impressive $41.5 million and
spent about $14.5 million of it.
None
of his top corporate donors are Wall Street banks. What’s more, a record 77% of his
contributions came from small individual donors, a number that seems only
destined to grow as his legions of enthusiasts vote with their personal
checkbooks.
According
to a Sanders campaign press release as the
year began, another $33 million came in during the last three months of 2015:
“The tally for the year-end quarter pushed his total raised last year to $73
million from more than 1 million individuals who made a record 2.5 million
donations.” That number broke the 2011 record set by President Obama’s
reelection committee by 300,000 donations, and evidence suggests Sanders’s
individual contributors aren’t faintly tapped out. After recent attacks on his
single-payer healthcare plan by the Clinton camp, he raised $1.4 million in a
single day.
It
would, of course, be an irony of ironies if what has been a billionaire’s
playground since the Citizens United decision became, in November, a
billionaire’s graveyard with literally billions of plutocratic dollars interred
in a grave marked: here lies campaign 2016.
The
Media and Debates
And
talking about billions, in some sense the true political and financial playground
of this era has clearly become the television set with a record $6 billion in
political ads slated to flood America’s screen lives before next November 8th.
Add to that the staggering rates that media companies have been getting for ad
slots on TV’s latest reality extravaganza -- those “debates” that began in
mid-2015 and look as if they’ll never end. They have sometimes pulled in National Football League-sized audiences
and represent an entertainment and profit spectacle of the highest order.
So
here’s a little rundown on those debates thus far, winners and losers (and I’m
not even thinking of the candidates, though Donald Trump would obviously lead
the list of winners so far -- just ask him). In those ratings
extravaganzas, especially the Republican ones, the lack of media questions on
campaign finance reform and on the influence of billionaires is striking -- and
little wonder, under the money-making circumstances.
The
GOP Show
The
kick-off August 6th GOP debate in Cleveland, Ohio, was a Fox News triumph.
Bringing in 24 million viewers, it was
the highest-rated primary debate in TV history. The follow-up at the Reagan
Library in Simi Valley, California, on September 16th, hosted by CNN and Salem
Radio, grabbed another 23.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched program
in CNN's history. (Trump naturally took credit for that.) CNN
charged up to $200,000 for a
30-second spot. (An average prime-time spot on CNN usually goes for
$5,000.) The third debate, hosted by CNBC, attracted 14 million viewers, a
record for CNBC, which was by then charging advertisers $250,000 or more for
30-second spots.
Fox
Business News and the Wall Street Journal hosted the next
round on November 10th:13.5 million viewers and
(ho-hum) a Fox Business News record. For that one, $175,000bought you a
30-second commercial slot.
The
fifth and final debate of 2015 on December 15th in Las Vegas, again hosted by
CNN and Salem Radio, lassoed 18 million viewers. As 2016 started, debate
fatigue finally seemed to be setting in. The first debate on January 14th in
North Charleston, South Carolina, scored a mere 11 million viewers for Fox
Business News. When it came to the second debate (and the last before the Iowa
caucuses) on January 28th, The Donald decided not to grace it with
his presence because he didn't think Fox News had treated him nicely enough and
because he loathes its host Megyn Kelly.
The
Democratic Debates
Relative
to the GOP debate ad-money mania, CNN charged a bargain half-off, or $100,000, for a 30-second
ad during one of the Democratic debates. Let’s face it, lacking a reality TV
star at center stage, the Democrats and associated advertisers generally fared
less well. Their first debate on October 13th in Las Vegas, hosted by CNN and
Facebook, averaged a respectable 15.3 million viewers, but the next one in Des
Moines, Iowa, overseen by CBS and the Des Moines Register, sank to
just 8.6 million viewers. Debate
number three in Manchester, New Hampshire, hosted by ABC and WMUR, was rumored
to have been buried by the Democratic National Committee (evidently trying to
do Hillary a favor) on the Saturday night before Christmas. Not surprisingly,
it brought in only 7.85 million viewers.
The
fourth Democratic debate on NBC on January 17th (streamed live on YouTube)
featured the intensifying battle between an energized Bernie and a spooked
Hillary. It garnered 10.2 million TV viewers and another 2.3 million
YouTube viewers, even though it, too, had been buried -- on the Sunday night
before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In comparison, 60 Minuteson rival
network CBS nabbed 20.3 million viewers.
The
Upshot
So
what gives? In this election season, it’s clear that these skirmishes involving
the ultra-wealthy and their piles of cash are transforming modern American
politics into a form of theater. And the correlation between big money and big
drama seems destined only to rise. The media needs to fill its coffers
between now and election day and the competition among billionaires has
something of a horse-betting quality to it. Once upon a time, candidates
drummed up interest in their policies; now, their policies, such as they are,
have been condensed into so many buzzwords and phrases, while money and glitz
are the main currencies attracting attention.
That
said, it could all go awry for the money-class and wouldn’t that just be
satisfying to witness -- the irony of an election won not by, but despite, all
those billionaires and corporate patrons.
Will Bernie’s
citizens beat Hillary’s billionaires? Will Trump go billion to billion with
fellow New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg? Will Cruz’s prayers be answered?
Will Rubio score a 12th round knockout of Cruz and Trump? Does Jeb Bush even
exist? And to bring up a question few are likely to ask: What do the American
people and our former democratic republic stand to lose (or gain) from this
spectacle? All this and more (and more and more money) will be revealed later
this year.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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