Fundraising figures are often used in the war of words between presidential candidates and their supporters. But, what is exactly true of those claims, and how are the candidates' supposed principled stances actually making a difference? Let's see if things are as simple as some may have you believe.
First of all, a simple introduction into a few basics of fundraising for a presidential race. I'm oversimpliflying a little, and skipping some details, but here are the basics:
Campaign donations are regulated by campaign finance law, which underwent its last major revision with the McCain-Feingold bill in 2002. The Federal Election Committee (FEC) is the federal agency which oversees campaign financing.
An election is divided into two cycles: primary and general. Donations are bound to a maximum per cycle. Individuals can donate up to $2300 to a candidate per cycle. Political Action Committees (PACs) can donate $5000 to a candidate committee per cycle. Donations above $200 have to be reported to the FEC, and their data is made available to the public after they are filed (quarterly).
A word on PACs: simply speaking, they are organizations that collect donations and then donate them to campaigns in a way that they think will suit their purpose the best. This purpose can be anything from an ideological issue (environment, women's rights, unions, etc) to a business issue (big companies often have their own PACs).
Since McCain-Feingold tightened regulations on campaign finance, bundling has become a more important way to raise campaign cash. Bundling means that individual supporters of a candidate go out and collect money by organizing fundraising events where others make (preferably big) donations.
Various websites have been set up that allow you to search the publicly available FEC database. The most commonly used sites are Newsmeat, Opensecrets or the FEC website itself.
Some sites, like opensecrets, provide breakdowns of how much money coming from different sources candidates have raised: PAC money, and money from certain industries. Here we come to my first important point: it is important to note how the industry number is obtained. read it here for opensecrets.org:
These contributors were either the sponsors of a PAC that gave to the politician, or they were listed as an individual donor's employer. Donors who give more than $200 to any federal candidate, PAC or party committee must list their occupation and employer. Based on that information, the donor is given an economic code. These totals are conservative, as not all of the individual contributions have yet been classified by the Center.
In cases where two or more people from the same family contributed, the income-earner's occupation/employer is assigned to all non-wage earning family members.
As you can see, they add PAC money and individual contributions of people (and their immediate family) who work for employers in a certain sector of industry, and add them all together to form the total amount of money. In other words, if you are someone who has a job in industry X, and have donated more than $200, you are counted as part of the total amount that industry X has donated to a certain candidate.
Now, let's look at some of the things that are claimed during presidential campaign season.
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"Candidate X has taken a large amount of money from industry Z, and is therefore beholden to them"
This claim is always based on the methodology used by opensecrets.org. Which is obviously problematic: you can't just add individual donations by people who have jobs in a certain industry, and present them as a big bag of cash given to a candidate with the purpose of "buying" the candidate. For example, if you are a computer engineer, and donate more than $200 to a candidate, you are part of an effort by the computer industry to buy this candidate, according to the people who make claims like this.
Obviously, such claims are not based on facts.
It is possible to make such a link with PAC money. After all, PACs donate with the specific intention to further their cause. However, PAC money plays a very minor role in presidential fundraising. Most presidential candidates get 1% or less of their total campaign warchest from PACs, and it would be a stretch at best to claim that this influences them.
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"Candidate X has taken the most money from industry Y, so obviously they think that (s)he will do their bidding, or is influenced by them".
First of all, such a claim is likely to be invalid for presidential candidates because of the point I made to refute claim 1). Secondly, it is important to look at percentages. If money equals influence, then obviously we need to look at percentages: a candidate that gets, say, 50% PAC money would obviously be more inclined to be influenced by these donations than someone who gets 1%. It doesn't matter what the absolute values are. Lastly, taking "the most money" is even less of a meaningful thing to say when you base the number on individual donations (like the opensecrets.org methodology largely does). A popular campaign will get more individual donations, so also more donations from people who happen to work in industry Y. So, in absolute numbers, you'll usually find the biggest fundraisers on top, which is why you'll find the biggest fundraising campaigns at or near the top of these lists.
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"Candidate X is in the pocket of industry Y; the proof is in the donations".
That's the most wide-ranging statement, and most likely to be false for presidential candidates. To prove this, you need to show that the candidate got a substantial percentage of money from industry Y with the intent to influence (e.g. PAC money, you can't make this claim for individual contributions). Furthermore, you then need to show that the candidate has a voting record that clearly benefits industry Y.
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"For Candidate X, bundlers buy influence"
At first glance, there is something to be said for this claim. Bundlers provide larger amounts of cash by organizing fundraising drives. However, again, the amount they provide is often not large, percentage-wise. For example, the biggest bundlers for a big campaign can bundle about $1 million. But, a big campaign will also rake in about $100 million per cycle, so, again, that's no more than 1% of the total cash. To say that the presidential candidates will be directly influenced by the bundler, or the industry the bundler works for, is an argument that is hard to support. Also, when used as an argument by a candidate against another candidate, it has to be noted that all major campaigns use bundlers, and that they mostly come from the finance and law sectors.
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"I, candidate X, do not take money from lobbyists".
The Edwards and Obama campaigns are refusing donations from federally registered lobbyists. It is hard to see how this would make an actual difference when it comes to the amount of influence that special interests have on their campaigns. Lobbyists can donate, just like any other private citizen, up to $2300 per cycle. For a big candidate who raises $100 million in one cycle, this would be 0.0023% of the total amount of cash. Not exactly a convincing argument for a lobbyist when they come knocking for influence after the election.
Furthermore, the distinction seems very arbitrary. Why refuse money from a lobbyist when you do take money from someone that the lobbyist works for (say, a company CEO)? And the same distinction between lobbyists and others is also shaky at best when applied to the sister statement to this one "I, candidate X, do not use lobbyist bundlers".
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"I, candidate X, do not take PAC money"
In principle, I think this is a good position to take. However, as I already pointed out, the total percentage of PAC money in the war chest of presidential candidates who do take PAC money, is very small. So, while I agree with the principle of it, it is a very weak argument to use as "purity" argument over other candidates.
A decent article on some of the aspects of this recently
was written on politico.com. It notes not taking PAC money makes little difference in practice, and is mainly campaign rhetoric. It also notes that the arena where PACs do count more are Congressional races with lower fundraising numbers, where the amounts raised are much smaller, and $5000 or $10,000 donated by a PAC can make a noticeable difference. Which is why I am only talking about presidential campaigns here.
So, beware of campaign rhetoric. In general, but especially when it comes to fundraising. I agree with candidates who say that money has too much of an influence on the political system. I do not doubt that they have the intention to reduce the influence of money. But campaign rhetoric like "I do not take money from lobbyists, my opponent does, and is thus beholden to special interests" is most likely untrue in the context of the Democratic presidential primary, and not helpful.