There’s recently been quite a hubbub over the pressure being applied to Senator Collins (R-Maine) concerning the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. In essence, a group is collecting IOUs from donors that will be burned if Collins votes against the Kavanaugh nomination, and will be collected and donated to Collins’ next re-election opponent if the Senator votes for Kavanaugh.
Reports have the total IOUs worth more than $1 million [WaPo].
The surface storm concerns the appropriateness of this approach to campaign finance. Senator Collins calls it bribery, and while I think that’s nonsense, it’s apparently getting some serious attention from legal experts.
But I don’t think that’s the real problem for the GOP. I think there are two underlying ideas that upsets them, or at least should upset them.
First, there’s the fact that this can happen at all. The people, who they’d like to claim to represent, just rose up and took a stand in opposition to a GOP-anointed SCOTUS candidate. Remember way back when Speaker of the House Ryan (R-WI) endorsed amateurism, the collective wisdom of the unwashed masses?
Well, if this funding effort is really constituted of small donors, then this is the unwashed masses kicking Ryan in the nuts.
But there’s another dynamic playing out here that I only became aware of this morning as I thought about Senator Collins’ dilemma, and it’s this: the types of donors to the political parties. While it’s true that both have what are termed mega-donors, it sure seem as if the Republicans are far more heavily funded by the mega-donor class than the Democrats.
A quick look at the table of mega-donors OpenSecrets vitiates my point slightly, but I think I can rebolster my point by citing the experience of Rep. Collins (R-NY) (no relation to the Senator to my knowledge) (yes, the guy who was just indicted on insider trading charges) with his donors, as noted by The Hill last year:
A House Republican lawmaker acknowledged on Tuesday that he’s facing pressure from donors to ensure the GOP tax-reform proposal gets done.
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) had been describing the flurry of lobbying from special interests seeking to protect favored tax provisions when a reporter asked if donors are happy with the tax-reform proposal.
“My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,’ ” Collins replied.
So what, you say?
So this: these mega-donors are, virtually by definition, individuals or small family groupings. These aren’t the hoi-polloi of which Speaker Ryan spoke in such confident and glowing terms. These are people such as Adelson and the Koch brothers and, presumably not for this election but verifiably in others, Betsy DeVos.
In other words, people with specific agendas that are quite often well out of the mainstream. DeVos, for example, is an outspoken advocate for for-profit and religious schools.
And this means the GOP is swinging back and forth, quite like the Sword of Damocles, where the thread is made of the opinions of all these mega-donors.
This crowd-funded financial weapon being waved in Senator Collins’ general direction, on the other hand, represents the opinions of many people, all agreeing on at least one thing: that Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions on abortion are incompatible with the American mainstream. By implication, that crowd of donors are also backing the Democrats. And it’s the multiplicity which virtually guarantees mainstream support for the Democrats.
The rise of the mega-donors is a great strength for a party, left or right, but it’s also an Achilles’ heel for them, because the outsize influence on the party’s direction and operation must be right – or it can wreck the party.
