The United States is living in a plutocracy. From the immense financial threshold that is required to run for office by campaigning, to the availability of free time needed to fulfill such goals, (something that the majority of Americans cannot afford) there is little place for politicians that embody the American experience. To be successful in politics, you must have funding, and funding usually comes from the wealthy, usually with their own intentions in mind. The reality is that the candidate with higher campaign funding in congressional elections usually wins.
According to data from the Federal Election Commission, in 2014, 91 percent of the winners of congressional races outspent their competitors. Ninety percent of these winners were also incumbents with pre-existing public relations funding and campaign networks. This is not just an isolated case, in a 2008 study conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics found that in the 2004 election, 98 percent of the winning House of Representatives candidates had outspent their competitors and that 88 percent of the winning Senate candidates had done the same.
In the words of Mark Hanna, the campaign manager for President McKinley, “There are two things that are important in politics, the first is money, and I can’t remember what the second is.” The ratio of money spent on campaigning by winners to losers was 20:1.1 million US dollars, even though the average salary according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor in 2023 was just under 60,000 dollars. Look no further than Obama’s 2008 campaign, which actually won him a Cannes award for the best advertising campaign. Why should a candidate, whose purpose is to reflect the interests of the public, be treated as an advertisement which is innately meant to influence an audience rather than represent them? The American public should be heard, and their interests truly reflected in our politics. They should not be the product of the wealthy who limit the average American’s ability to participate as candidates in our electoral process by heavily outspending their competitors.
Nicolas Kalani Magsanay,
San Ramon, California