Commentary: (Don't fear) money in politics

In late June, the Supreme Court ruled against limits upon state political party spending in federal elections. The specter of Money in Politics, already looming large, grew several sizes. It begs the question, naturally: just how much will all this additional inflow affect our elections? And can anyone compete against so much damn money?

In late November 2020, the website OpenSecrets reported that some 88% of federal races that year were won by the candidate who raised the most money. That’s eight in every nine. That’s decisive. That’s dominant.

Or is it?

Consider that the majority of these races were in lopsided states or districts where the outcome was never really in question, and the hopeless challengers weren’t able to muster much in the way of donor or party excitement. Consider how many times the candidate who ran the stronger campaign, who had the more resonant message, simply attracted more support. And consider that much of the donations involved weren’t meant to sway results at all — they were meant to curry favor with whom donors perceived to be the likely winner.

Does money matter? Of course it matters. As an independent strategist, I’ve seen the major parties whip out the war chest for mass mailers, TV ad campaigns, text and phone barrages, and field teams on every street corner. These things can make a difference. They can very much impact electoral outcomes.

But what seems to have an even greater impact is the perception that money rules politics, that it is an impossible hurdle for most any outsider to overcome. The very idea of money in politics, of the major parties’ infinite and insurmountable war chest, creates a sense of defeatism and hopelessness in many would-be challengers and their supporters — all of which is precisely what the major parties would want.

I present this not to argue that parties’ political spending should be unlimited, or that the massive amounts of money in our politics aren’t corrupting our institutions. The calls for reform are very much justifiable. The outrage is very much justifiable. But that outrage can be weaponized against the very reform-minded candidates and political movements.

The numbers that matter

At the end of the day, all political spending serves to do is broadcast a candidate’s message to prospective voters, and to build out the campaign infrastructure — field teams, consultants, media capabilities — to make that broadcast as far-reaching and as loud as possible. Reaching voters doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to sway them, and that’s often not what political campaigns are trying to do, anyway.

In a 2018 study, political scientists Joshua Kalla of UC Berkeley and David Broockman of Stanford conducted a meta-analysis of 49 field experiments covering canvassing, phone banking, direct mail, TV ads, and digital advertising across multiple election cycles. What they found was that the persuasive effects of all of these outreach methods on voters were essentially zero. Voters, it seemed, were not terribly swayed.

But persuasion isn’t necessarily the point, as Kalla and Broockman themselves observe. What campaign spending can do, and what it does reasonably well, is mobilize: to make sure the voters who already support their target candidate have the motivation to go out and vote, and that they remember when Election Day is (this can be especially important in primaries). Donald Green and Alan Gerber, the authors of Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout, have led the way for decades in researching this mobilizing power of promotion, and what they’ve found is that it does work, if done properly.

That this limited effect has nonetheless justified the multi-billion dollar industry of political advertising speaks to a sort of commoditization of our politics. When most of the voters know who they’re going to vote for (if they vote), and when the candidates are just about interchangeable, turnout becomes a key difference-maker, because it’s just about the only difference-maker left in play.

This is why the political spending machines are fundamentally limited, and why they’re beatable. When you can break from the commodity model of politics, and offer something dramatically new, with an appeal to a large coalition of voters not bound by a single party label, you can get the numbers — the most important numbers — on your side. If you can add new resources and technology to broadcast your message more effectively, then this supposedly insurmountable barrier begins to feel distinctly surmountable.

The equalizers

The spending gap is real, but it is not the whole story. A new generation of tools, organizations, and structural realities is quietly rewriting the math for coalition-minded insurgents — and the parties, for all their resources, cannot buy their way out of any of them.

The clearest proof of concept is social media. For better or worse, platforms like X, TikTok, and YouTube have already shattered the myth that controlling the information environment requires controlling the ad budget. Outsider candidates and movements have built massive audiences, driven news cycles, and toppled well-funded incumbents on the strength of a message that travels organically. Money did not save establishment candidates from viral moments they didn't pay for. The gatekeeping function of political spending — the ability to simply drown out challengers by outbuying them — has been permanently disrupted.

The catch, for the independent movement specifically, is that social media's organic amplification tends to favor the loudest and most inflammatory voices, with tribal allegiances carrying each message forward. The algorithm rewards outrage and conflict, precisely the dynamic that most coalition-minded independents are running against. But what social media demonstrates — that new technology can fundamentally alter the calculus of political broadcasting — points directly toward the tools that do serve the movement well.

Organizations like Good Party (not actually a party) have begun equipping nonpartisan and independent candidates with the voter data, outreach tools, and campaign management infrastructure that used to require either a party machine or a seven-figure budget to access — often at little or no cost. Meanwhile, the Forward Party (yes, actually a party, in places) has developed a model for providing party infrastructure and ballot-access mechanisms to candidates without machine-like control or ideological obligation. Neither of these existed in their current form even half a decade ago. Both are growing.

These tools help candidates earn attention rather than buy it. A single well-placed news story, a debate performance that breaks through, a viral moment of authentic connection — these generate coverage that no ad spend can manufacture, and that coverage bolsters the perception of viability. This perceived viability matters enormously in a political environment where the notion of major party inevitability is the parties’ first line of defense against outside challengers.

Underneath all of this sits the structural reality that no amount of party spending can fix: the voters are exhausted. Congressional approval hovers around 15%. Nearly two-thirds of Americans tell Gallup they want a new political party or a genuine alternative to the two on offer. That is not a niche sentiment. That is a supermajority of the electorate waiting to be reached — by candidates with the tools, the message, and the credibility to reach them.

The money doesn't control that. It never did.

Hills left to climb

Even with a growing resource network, the journey is far from easy for coalition-minded upstarts. There are many more barriers to entering and competing in the political arena than money alone, and the parties have spent decades making sure of it.

The most basic obstacle, and the first to clear, is simply getting on the ballot. In states like Georgia, independent candidates for U.S. House must gather petition signatures equal to 5% of the district's registered voters — tens of thousands, a threshold so punishing that no independent has successfully submitted the required petition for a House seat in Georgia since 1964. Texas requires independent candidates to collect signatures from registered voters who did not participate in either party's primary — a window that opens only after the primaries close, compressing an already difficult process into a matter of weeks. These laws did not emerge from neutral administrative logic. They were designed, over decades, to protect incumbent parties from the inconvenience of competition.

And when structural barriers aren't enough, things can get dirty. In Nebraska this summer, a mysterious effort emerged to create a new political party called the "Nebraska Working People Party" — a name strikingly similar to the established national Working Families Party, which forcefully denounced the effort and announced it was considering legal action. Nebraska Democrats alleged the campaign was backed by groups aligned with Senator Pete Ricketts, who faces independent challenger Dan Osborn in November — the apparent goal being to divide the vote and muddy the waters. Whether the allegation proves true, the playbook is familiar: when you can't beat a challenger on the merits, manufacture confusion.

That the parties are all too eager to press these advantages, to use underhanded tactics and structural roadblocks to ward off independent and third-party challengers, is not exactly a sign of strength or confidence. If it were so simple to simply overpower by outraising and outspending, then they wouldn’t need to be doing this. But they do - because they understand that their position may not be as safe as it seems. Because they’re scared. And they can’t hide behind their piles of money forever.

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Nathan Smolensky is a political messaging and communications strategist specializing in independent campaigns, and the author of Common Ground from the Ground Up.

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