The Figures of Speech
When Tim Sheehy ran against incumbent Jon Tester for a Montana Senate seat in 2024, it looked like an uphill battle. But for Sheehy, it turned into a battle royal, as he gained the backing of a billionaire. And then another billionaire. And so on, and so on. “At least 64 billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members donated directly to his campaign … When also accounting for money that flowed through political committees that support Mr. Sheehy, an analysis shows that billionaires contributed about $47 million in the race that Mr. Sheehy went on to win.” These days, there’s a word for the way Sheehy used the backing of billionaires to ultimately win his race. That word is normal. Since the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, which found that donations were a form of speech, billionaires have been investing the equivalent of rounding errors to dominate political races like never before. NYT (Gift Article): Billionaires Are Swaying Elections in All Corners of America. “The extraordinary spending in Montana is part of a new era of political power for the rapidly growing number of billionaires minted over the past eight years. The Times analysis found that 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions — in federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees. Five presidential elections ago, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending was almost zero — 0.3 percent, to be precise.” Of course, the dominance of billionaire money in campaigns will result in winning candidates who support policies that will make more billionaires. “The number of U.S. billionaires jumped 50 percent by some estimates between 2017 and 2025.” If this trend keeps up, who knows, we may soon have enough billionaires to turn ourselves back into a democracy. In the meantime, Americans are left hoping the billionaires on their side beat the billionaires on the other side, as our election system goes bankrupt.
