Money in politics: How winner-take-all elections make it worse

To understand money's pernicious role, don’t think of candidates being bought by their donors. Think of the "Pyramid of Money."

As we approach the November 24 elections, it is increasingly apparent that much is at stake. The closeness of the polls in the grudge rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has the whole country on edge. But there has been less focus on the fact that the Republicans have one of the slimmest majorities in US House history: currently 217 to 213 seats (with five vacancies).

And in the US Senate, Democrats are defending their razor-slim 51-49 majority, with open seats in swing states Arizona and Michigan, and a near-certain loss in West Virginia where Democrat incumbent Joe Manchin is retiring. Democratic incumbents are defending tough seats in several swing or pro-Trump states, including Montana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada.

So the presidency and both houses of Congress are up for grabs. I can’t predict how those seats will turn out, but I can predict that treasure chests of money are going to get spent in the pursuit of victory. With each new election the candidates set more spending records, reaching nearly $15 billion in the 2020 election cycle, larger than the budget expenditures of 12 states. This year is predicted to break new records.

Such spending has created a widespread perception of cronyism, corruption, and a “pay-to-play” political system marinated in money. Over the next several months we are going to see a lot of sensationalized headlines about how campaign spending is going to drive the elections and determine which side will win majorities.

But is that assumption accurate? Certainly campaign spending has an impact, but these analyses often confuse cause and effect, and cloud our understanding of how our broken democracy really works, as well as how to repair it.

The real impact of winner-take-all elections on campaign finance

The overwhelmingly dominant factor in who wins and loses most elections — all but the closest elections — is not campaign spending inequities but partisan residential patterns in red and blue America, combined with winner-take-all elections. Liberals predominantly live in urban areas, conservatives in the rural areas and exurbs, with suburbs being the toss-up areas. It’s those residential patterns that largely determine who wins, dwarfing other factors such as campaign funding, as well as local issues or candidate strength.

The partisan tilt of any district can be fairly easily determined by tracking the presidential vote in each district. Using this methodology, FairVote projects that 85% of the 435 House seats will be “safe” for one party this November, and another 9% leaning toward one party, leaving only 6% of seats as true toss-ups. The 85% share of safe seats is the highest in the 25-year history of FairVote’s Monopoly Politics predictions. The Cook Political Report estimates that in 2024 only 22 out of 435 House seats – barely 5% -- will be tossups. In the vast majority of seats, the dominant party has as much chance of losing as a snowball melting at the North Pole.

Wait a minute, you think…but the winners usually have a lot more campaign funds than their challengers – isn’t that the reason why they win?

No, just the opposite. In most legislative elections, campaign spending inequities follow electoral success. The money goes to candidates who donors know will win, because the partisan demographic tilt of that specific election guarantees that result. By betting on the sure horse in each race, donors are buying access and influence—but not elections.

This natural partisan tilt based on residential patterns also affects other reforms, such as independent redistricting commissions. There are a few states, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, in which redistricting abuses have added a sinister twist. But most incumbents live in safe, non-competitive districts because geography – where we live – has become destiny.  Americans have settled more and more into definable and balkanized residential patterns between cities, suburbs and rural areas, and there is little that redistricting reforms can do to change this. It’s a byproduct of where people live.

The Pyramid of Money

So if campaign funding inequities are not a crucial factor in deciding the vast majority of legislative elections, why do all these candidates bother raising so much money, breaking records year after year?

To understand the true role that private campaign funding plays in our elections, it’s important to understand what I call the Pyramid of Money. Representative Nancy Pelosi (and former Democratic Speaker of the House) represents the district in which I live in San Francisco. This is a heavily Democratic city, there is no chance that a Republican candidate could ever beat Pelosi or any other Democrat here. Pelosi won her 2022 election with 84% of the vote, she does not have to spend a dime on her own reelection. Neither does current GOP speaker Mike Johnson, who ran unopposed in 2022 in his heavily GOP district in Louisiana. It turns out that most legislative districts are like that—naturally tilted for one party or the other.

Nevertheless, the Big Money queens and kings like Pelosi, Johnson and others raise huge sums of money. Pelosi in 2022 raised over $25 million. Johnson so far in 2024 has raised $9 million. Former GOP speaker Kevin McCarthy raised $28 million in 2022 to run in a district he won with 67% of the vote; current Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has raised $15 million so far in 2024 even though he won his last race in a landslide of 72%.

Why do they all raise so much money when they represent the safest of seats?

Because they funnel the money into euphemistically-labelled “party-building activities,” also known as “soft money,” mostly to finance colleagues in the handful of hotly contested races. In the process, they buy themselves influence among their peers, as well as important party leadership positions. Think of it as a pyramid structure with each party’s kings and queens sitting at the top. These party fat cats target the slush flow of money to the predictably tight races, hoping to win a majority of seats for their team. The rest of the safe-seat incumbents, along with the lobbyists, lawyers, allied political action committees and high roller donors, fill out the lower levels of the pyramid, funneling money into its labyrinth, where it is directed by party leaders skilled in the art of deception. It’s a well-oiled operation.

The Pyramid is so welded into our political system’s framework that it can take bizarre forms. A few years ago, GOP leaders set a new low bar -- they explicitly tied the reward of leadership positions and chairmanships of powerful committees to those incumbents who raised the most money for the party. Since committee chairs have near-dictatorial powers to set committee dockets, dole out pork and establish the national agenda, this quid pro quo debased government to a whole new level of crass political patronage and being “for sale to the highest bidder.”

But keep in mind, the GOP leadership was only able to do this because most incumbents don’t need to spend a dime on their own re-elections. And that’s because of the “winner take all” district-based system in which most incumbents live in safe, non-competitive districts due to natural partisan demographics.

The Pyramid of Money symbolizes the shape and flow of private money in our political system. The fact that a lot of candidates receive chunks of money from various lobbyists, corporations, and special interests, as well as boosts from various PACs and super PACS, while definitely a toxic relationship that needs to be disrupted, is not proof that these politicians have been “bought.” Oftentimes the donors and politician-recipients are part of the same Pyramid team, because they have the same beliefs and legislative priorities. One is the point person in the legislature, the other is the honcho raising the money needed to win elections.

So when you want to understand the crucial dynamic of how money works, don’t think of high rolling donors buying candidates or shadowy lobbyists offering briefcases of bribes. Think of the Pyramid of Money, with its octopus arms redirecting money between the private and public sectors to the handful of battleground races that will decide congressional majorities. The lobbyists and special interests follow the lead of political leaders, not the other way around. They scratch each other’s backs, each playing their respective roles inside the Pyramid of Money.

That Monopoly Politics also means that party primaries are the real battle in those 94% decided districts. And that's also where party leaders who have raised millions spread it around to help their hand-picked candidates to win their primaries.

In short, the Pyramid is the problem, with its one-party winner-take-all fiefdoms and kings and queens sitting atop the slush pile, directing the show.

The Supreme Court’s ideological bias enters the winner-take-all game

The impact of the Supreme Court’s horrendous Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United decisions -- which equated money with political speech -- is made even worse every election due to the perverse dynamics unleashed by the basic architecture of our winner-take-all political system. Even with strong campaign finance reform or independent redistricting reform, breaking up the pyramid will be very difficult as long as we are using a winner-take-all system in which most legislative seats are lopsided one-party strongholds due to partisan residential demographics, and invincible incumbents can funnel their campaign funds to party leaders and their super PACs.

Now that we understand the Pyramid of Money, it’s clear that the most effective and simplest type of campaign finance reform would be to stop the ability of politicians to share money with other candidates, whether for the November general or in party primaries. Why should a politician raising money from San Francisco tech billionaires or Oklahoma oil tycoons have an absolute “soft money” right to share those funds with candidates running 2000 miles away? Curtailing their ability to do so would have a much greater impact than what we usually call "campaign finance reform."

But to really overturn the pyramid, we need to do more than plug the holes that the Supreme Court has ripped open via several terrible SCOTUS decisions. We also need to reform the winner-take-all, district-based electoral system.

How can we topple the Pyramid of Money?  

The most crucial fix to these anti-democratic tendencies of our political system is to elect all our legislatures using a method founded on the bedrock of proportional ranked choice voting. The recently introduced Fair Representation Act would get rid of geographic-based, single-seat, winner-take-all districts and elect House members in multi-winner “super districts” of up to five seats each. That would result in “moderate proportional representation” in which every part of the U.S. would be competitive for both major parties, and multiple political parties would be able to win seats. It would produce more contested and more competitive races, and virtually all voters would be able to cast a vote for a winning candidate or party. And it would disrupt the Pyramid of Money in ways that would turn it on its head. Party leaders would still have an important role, but they wouldn’t be able to target money to the handful of battleground races.

It also would add a new vibrancy to our politics by opening up elections to new voices and new ideas, and giving voters a lot more choice. It would create a vibrant dialogue between the political center and the margins, allowing new parties to act as the laboratories of new ideas and better ensure that policies are enacted with the support of a majority of Americans.

When combined with public financing of campaigns and free media time for candidates and parties, so that all players have sufficient resources to reach voters, these reforms would topple the Pyramid of Money and revitalize US democracy. If we don't understand the dynamics of how our political system actually works, we will miss the mark when we try to reform it.

Steven Hill @StevenHill1776