Big money is corrupting our elections and elected officials. There are ways to blunt its impact that can be taken now by Democratic Party officials and by state and municipal governments. Contact them and encourage them to act now to blunt the impact of big money in our political system.
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The U.S. economy is not working well for regular, working Americans. It is, however, working quite well for wealthy Americans and extremely well for the very wealthy. But for regular people, the affordability of every day life is often challenging and economic inequality is unfair. This is the result of government policies, including those for labor, taxes, health care, financial services, antitrust, corporate regulation, social services (e.g., child care and elder care), and the safety net.
The major reason that policies are so skewed to benefit the wealthy is the way we allow election campaigns to be financed. We now allow unlimited spending, unlimited contributions, and a lack of disclosure of who is contributing large sums of money. Citizens United and related Supreme Court decisions have greatly exacerbated the problem and made it difficult to tackle without a constitutional amendment – which is nowhere on the near-term horizon.
Here are three campaign finance reforms that can be done now and would dramatically reduce the influence of wealthy individuals and corporations in our elections:
- Democrats should ban super Political Action Committee (super PAC) money and dark money (where the true donor is hidden) from their primaries. The Democratic Party sets its own rules for its primaries, so it could do this without legislation or any outside action. Eight Democratic Senators have called for such a ban. The Arizona Democratic Party has passed a resolution banning super PAC money in primaries. [1] Please see the case study of AIPAC’s spending in Democratic primaries below for an example of why this is important.
- States and municipalities should enact campaign finance systems that use public funds to match small (e.g., less than $250) campaign contributions from residents of the election district. This previous post describes New York City’s public campaign financing system and its impact. And this post describes the role such campaign finance systems can play in supporting democracy.
- States should remove corporations’ power to contribute to political campaigns and PACs. States, and only states, not the federal government, charter corporations. Corporations have no powers until a state grants them some and they only have those powers granted to them by their state charters. Delaware, where more corporations are chartered than any other state, does not, for example, grant private foundations the power to spend money on elections. Although the lack of power to spend money on elections has not been a feature of most corporate charters, there appears to be no reason that it couldn’t be. In Montana, an amendment to the state constitution will be presented to voters this November that would eliminate the power to spend money on elections from the powers of corporations chartered or operating in Montana. [2] It would apply to local, state, and federal elections, as well as to spending on ballot questions. [3]
The influence of PAC money in our elections is tremendous. In the sixteen years since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, PAC spending has grown from roughly $150 million to over $4 billion. In addition, dark money spending has grown to hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. (There’s no exact figure because much of this money is unreported and intentionally hidden.) However, most of the dark money spending is done by non-profit corporations organized under Section 501(c)(4) of federal tax law, which could have their power to spend on elections eliminated. [4] (For an overview of how money is corrupting our elections and elected officials, see this previous post.)
The campaign spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a case study of the impact of PAC money in Democratic primaries. AIPAC unequivocally supports Israel and demands that the politicians it gives money to do so as well. In the 2023-24 election cycle, more than 80% of the members of Congress received money from AIPAC. It spent roughly $100 million (mostly raised from big Republican donors) targeting Democrats it deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. It spent $15 million to successfully beat incumbent U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in his Democratic primary. Bowman’s offense was that he cosponsored a resolution banning the use of U.S. funding for Israel from being used to harm Palestinian children. AIPAC also targeted Cori Bush (D-IA) for criticizing Israel’s crimes against humanity. She lost in her Democratic primary. The bottom line is that AIPAC, a single-issue lobbying and campaign donation group, using money primarily from Republican donors, has succeeded in muting, if not silencing, Democratic criticism of Israel, despite the atrocities and horrors of Israel’s war against the Palestinians. On the other hand, AIPAC has supported politicians with white supremacist views as well as ones who deny that Biden won the 2020 presidential election because of their unequivocal support for Israel. [5]
Big money has far too much influence in our elections to have a true democracy. I urge you to contact national and state Democratic Party leaders and elected officials and to ask them to ban PAC and dark money in Democratic primaries. I also urge you to contact your state legislators and statewide office holders, as well as municipal officials, and ask them to create a campaign finance system that matches small in-district contributions with public funds, as New York State and City have done. While you’re talking with them, ask your state officials to remove corporations’ power to contribute to election campaigns, including ballot question campaigns if you have those in your state.
[1] Corbett, J., 6/17/25, “8 Senators demand Super PAC, dark money ban in Democratic primaries,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/super-pac)
[2] Reich, R., 1/24/25, “How to get rid of ‘Citizens United’,” (https://substack.com/@robertreich/p-177418904)
[3] Moore, T., 9/15/25, “The Corporate Power Reset That Makes Citizens United Irrelevant,” (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power-reset-that-makes-citizens-united-irrelevant/)
[4] Moore, T., 9/15/25, see above
[5] Conwright, A., Nov. 2025, “The Congressional Black Caucus’s silent partnership with AIPAC,” The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/congressional-black-caucus-aipac-gaza/)
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