It's
widely reported that one big reason Joe Biden was pressured to drop out of the race was because of big dollar contributions to his campaign from major donors were on track to drop by half if he stayed in, like from 50 million dollars in June to a projected 25 million.
And we've gotten used to astronomical campaign funding numbers, but where does this big money and politics leave the average voter?
We turn to Nick Ramos, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks expenditures. And Nick, thanks a lot for being here.
Oh, it's a treat to be here.
So to that question, who is running the show when it comes to choosing candidates?
Oh, I mean, I think you have to look to the wealthiest of the wealth. I mean, if you look to just the way that our campaign finance laws are structured, especially in a state like Wisconsin, you can just look back to 2015.
And under the Walker administration that campaign finance law rewrite that we saw, it really created a scenario where it's like the Wild West here.
It's a scenario where individuals are able to donate and max out instead of $10,000, you can max $20,000 to within the state to the governor or to the Supreme Court.
You can do unlimited amounts of campaign donations to political parties and committees.
And then it took off the guardrails as far as the transactions between the committees and the political parties.
And so it almost has created this money laundering scenario where now we get into a federal election where, let's say you've maxed out to your candidate of choice.
In a presidential election, you can only max out $3,300.
But let's say you got a lot of money that you want to spend.
You go straight to the party of your choice or you go straight to the committee of your choice and you can just write a blank check.
And then they can take that and go straight to the campaign.
And so for people like you and I who, I mean, I don't sit on tens of thousands or even millions of dollars that I get to play with every day.
We get to look on the outside looking in and they're over here playing kingmaker trying to pick the candidate that's going to do their bidding and going to serve their bottom line and do their agenda.
And so we've been in desperate need of campaign finance reform for so long.
And Citizens United has opened the floodgates and Pandora's box in a way that it leaves the everyday citizen a little less powerful than what we could be if there were better regulations to actually give us a better seat at the table.
So over the course of the past 14 years that Citizens United has that ruling has been in place, what do the numbers look like in this cycle in terms of spending?
I mean, before we were coming into this year, I was just studying last year and a off year.
And here in Wisconsin, I mean, we broke records.
I mean, we were at $56 or $55 million spent on a nonpartisan Supreme Court seat.
And then coming into this year, both the head of the Democratic Party and the head of the Republican Party both said we're predicting that we're going to break records this year.
And now we're in 2024, a presidential year.
We've got new maps.
We've got constitutional amendments.
We have all these things happening.
And so the electorate's really paying attention.
And it's looking like we're on pace to break even more records.
And like in the Senate race between Baldwin and Hovtey, Hovtey, they're already in the top 10 as far as money raised and money spent in the entire U.S.
And so we're right now, I mean, like I said, the Wild West, I mean, I think that's just minimizing it.
Is there a particular party that has the edge in this money raising?
I mean, as far as edge, I think, I don't know necessarily if that's the way to look at it because both parties know what the animal is in the room, which is they need to out raise out the other party.
But when you look at, at least in a state like Wisconsin, I can tell you this much, from the numbers, it looks like the Republican party has been taking more out of state money than the Democrat party.
It looks like that way.
At least that's how the trends are.
And so, and that's interesting just because, I mean, here in Wisconsin, I mean, we live here and people here obviously want to have skin in the game.
And so if there's people that are coming in from out of state and there's dark money, they don't want necessarily people making decisions on their lives if they're just outside the state throwing money and then making decisions.
And so, to that point, I think both parties are doing everything in their power to try and find the ways to try and shore up as much money and burn it as fast as possible so that they can try and get their candidate in office.
Because it is an arms race.
Nick Ramos.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
The answers that you gave.
I had each of those as questions.
Oh, stop.
Oh, so I'm over here taking them off the page.
You are.
That's it.
You did.
But that's good.
Well, I mean, I'm just a guy trying to figure it out every day.
Yeah, you were great.
I appreciate it.
You tell me when I suck.
Oh, for real.
Because at the end of the day, like, I'm always for constructive criticism and...
No, I thought you were great.
It was interesting.
And sometimes this kind of discussion, you know...
It could be dry.
Yeah.
But it's fascinating, though, because honestly, honestly, I get the opportunity to travel state.
I get to look at focus groups.
And it is absolutely interesting to watch.
It doesn't matter if I'm in rural communities, urban communities, the most northern parts, southern parts, east west, everybody says,
money is tampering with our politics.
And then some people, you know, they'll go really off the deep end and they'll say,
it's corrupting everything and I don't trust anybody.
But everyone's like, it's a problem.
And then when I go to the Capitol down the street and I talk to Republicans, Democrats, independents, they're all like,
yeah, we got to do some about it.
But man, the minute that the calendar flips and it's election time, all bets are off.
Nobody cares.
They're like, I got to beat that guy.
I got to beat that guy.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I think we're going to see a lot of things change after November.
Now that we got the fair maps here and democracy campaign, we worked our tails off for years to try and make that a reality.
And it's like, I think the gerrymander temporarily being off, I think we're going to get opportunity to have some real conversations about it.
So I'm hoping, I'm really hoping that we can get public campaign finance back.
We can hopefully give the little guy a better seat at the table.
And I got ideas around that.
So we're going to see.
Nice.
Well, we will have you back to talk about that.
Hey, you're my hero.
I can't wait.
And see, we're nice like Mr. Rogers.
Hey, you're my hero.
And Big Bird.
Oh, Big Bird.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you so much for coming home.
Thank you.