The 2021 Off-Year Elections: Triumph of the Millionaires
The November 2,
2021 governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, the only non-judicial
statewide races on the ballot, were scrutinized for portents of trends for the
forthcoming 2022 mid-terms.
In Virginia,
Republican Glen Youngkin defeated former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe by
63,688 votes out of 3,276,512 cast or 1.9%. Turnout surged from 47.59% in 2017
to 55.05%, validating the adage that they turn out to throw them out.
In New Jersey,
Governor Phil Murphy managed to hold on to win re-election by 114,286 votes out
of 2,648,814 or 4.3%. Turnout rose from 38.5% when Murphy was elected in 2017
to 40.5%. New Jersey's voters were decidedly unenthusiastic about the choice on
offer. Murphy was the first Democratic governor to win re-election since
Brendan Byrne in 1977, 44 years ago.
With
Republicans winning one race and Democrats the other, both by narrow margins,
most pundits saw the election as a draw, with a slight Republican edge because
Virginia flipped from Democratic, although Murphy broke the trend on failing
Democratic re-election races.
Overlooked is
the fact that both Youngkin and Murphy bought their respective party's
nominations. Both are multimillionaires. Youngkin was co-CEO of the Carlyle
Group, a private equity leveraged buy-out firm, while Murphy made his fortune
with Goldman Sachs. Murphy had some governmental and political experience,
working in Europe, as Democratic Party Finance Chair in 2006, and as Ambassador
to Germany under Obama, but none at the state level.
The bigger point, that the top jobs are being reserved for
the super-wealthy who know little or nothing about the actual workings of the
government over which they are going to preside the situation is the same in
both parties. No matter how hard-working, competent, or experienced state
legislators may be in either state or either party, it is unlikely that they
can rise to the top of their field on the basis of accomplishment.
The
2018 Illinois governor's race between incumbent Bruce Rauner and J.B. Pritzger
was between two multimillionaires. Rauner, chairman of a private equity firm
for 30 years before becoming governor, earned $180 million in 2015. Pritzger's
family owns Hyatt Hotels.
Donald Trump started life in his family's real estate
firm that was worth an estimated $200 million in 1974, and the Bush family
fortune comes from the Wall Street firm of Brown Brothers Harriman.
Money is
Speech
So, how did it happen that the oligarchs have become our
elected leaders? Simply, because the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) ruled that
money is speech. Citizens United ruled
that money is a form of political speech and that any limits on political
spending were unconstitutional. Just as the First Amendment protects free
speech, it also protects the unlimited expenditure of money for political speech.
Fine, you say.
So, if I like a candidate, can I give that candidate unlimited amounts of money
to buy the political speech that is protected by the Constitution? The answer
is no. The Supreme Court permits limits on campaign contributions because
otherwise the contributor is buying influence or creating the appearance of
corruption. Neat system, isn't it? It allows only the personally wealthy to
spend unlimited amounts of their own money on political campaigns. Sounds fair
to me.
But wait, there's more.
Not only are ordinary citizens limited as to how much money they can contribute
to candidates of their choice, but if they're foolish enough to support an
independent candidate who is not a Republican or Democrat, their candidate can
be excluded from publicly-funded forums and debates because (get this) their
poll numbers are so low that they can't win.
This piece of
hypocritical legerdemain came from the Forbes
v. Arkansas Educational Television Commission and was one of Bill Clinton's
contributions to the two-party system. During the 1992 race for Arkansas' Third
Congressional District, the Arkansas Educational Television Commission (AETC)
‒ a state-owned public television broadcaster ‒ sponsored a debate
between the major party candidates. Running as an independent candidate with
little popular support, Ralph Forbes sought to participate in the debate but
was denied permission.
The Supreme
Court held in a 6-3 decision that public broadcasters could selectively exclude
participants from their sponsored forums because they had little support.
Forbes couldn't be excluded because of any of his opinions or positions like on
abortion or gun control, but he could be because of low poll numbers. This
empowering of polling over a citizen's first amendment right to petition is a
radical reallotment of political power from the public to the private sphere.
In effect, the Supreme Court has outlawed poor or
political candidates of modest means. Until Reagan became president, there had
been an "equal time" provision in the Federal Communications Act
designed to ensure that all points of view in the political debate were heard.
In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that Forbes, even though he filed a valid
petition with 2,000 signatures, could be excluded from a debate funded by
public money. This decision makes it difficult, if not impossible, for
little-known candidates to gain popular support without spending money.
In
addition, Forbes' supporters were limited as to how much money they were
allowed to contribute to a campaign. The campaign contribution limit favors the
independently wealthy candidates who can just write big checks to their own
campaigns and spend all their time and effort contacting voters to make their case.
The non-wealthy candidate first has to spend her or his time raising money from
many people before being able to campaign for votes. All these obstacles
combined explain why the multimillionaires are dominating the elective offices.
The
rationale for these obvious injustices is that the Supreme Court thinks
favoring a two-party system of Republicans and Democrats promotes stability.
The only problem is that giving Republicans and Democrats a monopoly on
political power does not necessarily grant them a monopoly on viable political
solutions to the problems being faced by the voters.
Denying voters' alternatives is precisely what the United
States Constitution was designed to prevent. If there is no peaceful way of
being heard, if the political playing field is not level, violence is
inevitable.
Look for the independently wealthy candidates to be the big
winners in 2022.