Big Political Donors Are Indeed Different

Politicians will raise and spend about $1.6 billion in this year’s federal elections. In 1994, the average winner in the House spent about $500,000 for his or her seat; the cost for a seat in the Senate was about $4.5 million--and it’s not getting any cheaper.

Large private donors--the fat cats of political lore--provide more than one-third of all of this money. Yet, the Center for Responsible Politics reports that in the last election cycle, fewer than 800,000 Americans--less than one-third of 1% of the country--contributed $200 or more to a campaign. Naturally, they are clustered in the neighborhoods of the rich and famous--Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Washington’s K Street corridor, Beverly Hills and posh zip codes of San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.

The views of this select group have significant influence on our chosen leaders. Essentially, they get to vote twice: early in the “money primary” that separates realistic candidates from dreamers before most voters even learn their names; later at the polls, with the rest of us. To examine this, Lake Research was asked to do a survey comparing the views of the general public with those of the largest political donors (individuals who gave $5,000 or more to federal candidates over a 28-month period). Here is a summary of those results.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald might say, big political contributors are different from you and me. And their views of the world contrast drastically with those of most Americans.

More Americans think the country is on the wrong track than the right one. Most think of the economy as generating increasing instability rather than increasing opportunity. In contrast, most large donors think of the economy as providing more opportunity than instability.

Average Americans embrace populist views about why things have gone wrong. Fully 83% believe--59% strongly--that “average working families have less economic security because corporations have become too greedy and care more about their profits than about being fair and loyal to their employees.” Only 15% of the public expresses any disagreement with that statement. But a majority of big political-check writers disagree, and more than 33% disagree strongly.

For the public, concern about corporate greed is mirrored by fears of the inordinate influence of corporate America. Two of every three Americans (68%) believe large businesses and corporations have too much influence on the government in Washington. In contrast, a major- ity of big donors think business has the right amount of influence or not enough.

These differing perspectives lead to strikingly discordant views about what should be done. On trade, a large majority of Americans think free-trade agreements cost jobs rather than create them; while almost two-thirds of big political donors think the opposite.

While a large majority of big donors believe “government regulations go too far now” (58%), most of the public believes “we need to make government regulations tougher” (53%). By a margin of two to one, political patrons believe “government spends too much, taxes too much and interferes with things better left to individuals and businesses.” More of the general public believes the problem is that “government is too concerned with what big corporations and wealthy special interests want, and does not do enough to help working families.”

There are significant partisan difference among both the public and political angels. Democratic Party contributors tend to be far more conflicted than GOP donors about the influence of business, and the need for greater regulation. A majority of Democratic givers even agrees that corporate greed is a central source of economic insecurity. But Democratic donors are even more convinced of the blessings of free trade than monied Republicans, and both are markedly less populist than the public. The contrast is even more stark when the views of Democrats who write the checks are compared with those of the non-college educated, working people that are the heart of the Democratic Party.

Both rich contributors and the general public display similar cynicism about politics. Asked who has the most control over what goes on in Washington, both large donors and the public are more likely to pick “special interests and lobbyists” than either the president or Congress. Asked to define “special interests,” both are far more likely to specify business interests--though big givers rank labor unions second, while the public barely mentions them.

Both have a jaundiced view of the people we elect. Large majorities of both the monied and the many believe members of Congress decide what to do based on what their political contributors want 50% of the time or more (as opposed to what they believe is right).

The remarkable gender divide that provides President Bill Clinton with his commanding lead over Republican Bob Dole is evident in the attitudes of both the public and big donors. As Lake Research revealed in a series of polls, women feel more economically insecure than men and are more willing to see a role for government in helping people. In this poll, a majority of women supported tougher regulation of corporations (58% to 34%), while men split more evenly--with 49% agreeing, but 43% saying regulations go too far already.

Female political angels are closer to the general public than male check writers. They are less positive toward business and more conflicted about regulation. While male patrons overwhelmingly think free-trade agreements create rather than cost jobs (76% to 16%), female donors split more evenly (46% create, 38% cost). Large givers are still overwhelmingly male, but the efforts of Emily’s List and other groups to promote a culture of political giving among women could help diminish the gap between the people and political money.

In the past 20 years, the United States has suffered an unprecedented redistribution of income and wealth upward. Inequality has reached levels not witnessed since before the Great Depression. Even in the recovery’s sixth year, the Census Bureau reports that wages continue to decline. Americans grow more populist and more cynical. Yet, neither political party offers anything close to a program that might hope to deal with declining wages and rising insecurity.

There are many reasons for this--the triumph of free-market ideology, the globalization of the economy, widespread skepticism about big government.

But surely the conservative views of those who pay for the parties contribute to this bipartisan default. A system that relies on private money will tend to produce candidates who reflect the values and the views of those who have the lucre. In an economy of growing inequality, this breeds a troubling divide, as the views of those who pay for the parties are likely to be increasingly divorced from those expected to vote for them.