Can Citizens Unite?

On paper, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire in June with the blockbuster initial public offering of his SpaceX rocket and satellite company. I say, “on paper,” because SEC restrictions preclude him from selling any pre-IPO shares for a year, but it’s a significant milestone, nonetheless.

There was much commentary about what Musk’s trillionaire status says about the widening wealth gap in our society. Most of the coverage, however, had fun with all the things Musk can buy with his one trillion dollars. That list includes every single professional sports team on the planet, 2.5 million homes in the U.S., every car sold in the U.S. this year, and, my favorite, Switzerland.

And thanks to the 2010 Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, you can add more elections to the list.

When I ponder how we’ve become such a polarized nation, the ironically-named Citizens United tops my list, alongside the explosion of social media.

In a nutshell, the Citizens United ruling, named after the conservative nonprofit that filed the case, allowed special interest groups, individuals, and corporations to spend unlimited money on political causes, reversing campaign finance restrictions that had been in place since the 1800s.

What resulted was an influx of campaign spending unseen in our country’s history.

According to the Roosevelt Institute, billionaire spending in U.S. elections was $16 million in 2008. In 2012, two years after Citizens United, it was $231 million, ballooned to $1.2 billion in 2020, and reached an astounding $2.6 billion in 2024.

Of that amount, Elon Musk spent over $290 million on PACs and super PACs supporting mostly Republican campaigns, with another nearly $700 billion spent by other right-leaning billionaires.

Citizens United was decided in 2010, and two years later, Facebook reached a billion users. Ten years after that, in 2022, just before the 2024 election, Musk bought Twitter, converted it to X, and unraveled most of its staff and monitoring functionality.

These are facts. And they illustrate how the combined influence of billions of dollars in unfettered spending by billionaires and reckless management of social media outlets has conspired to poison our political discourse and collectively drop our national IQ to new lows.

Of course, it goes both ways, with plenty of Democrat-friendly billionaires pouring exorbitant amounts of money into various political campaigns and causes. However, the profligate spending of these left-leaning fat cats like Michael Bloomberg and George Soros is dwarfed by the collective contributions of right-leaning donors, particularly of late.

According to the non-partisan Open Secrets research group, which draws data directly from public FEC filings, the top seven mega-donors in the 2024 election were all solidly Republican/Conservative. Six of those seven, including Musk, contributed more than $100 million to Republican campaigns.

Party politics aside, Americans across the board are sick of it all, with a solid majority wanting to unwind Citizens United. That’s a heavy lift, requiring an amendment to the Constitution, but some rising politicians are advocating just that, including James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the Texas Senate race.

Talarico, who claims to have never taken any PAC money in his various races, has made campaign finance reform a core issue in his campaign, including proposing legislation to ban super PACs and corporate PACs.

Unfortunately, his possible colleagues in Congress will have a tougher time stomaching that approach, given how their pockets are already lined with PAC and dark money.

And, of course, there’s the ultimate irony. Super PAC money is now pouring into the Texas race for Senate, denigrating Talarico’s “masculinity” as he takes on the baggage-laden Ken Paxton, setting up a “tough guy versus the wuss” choice for voters.

So much for talking about the substantive issues that voters care about.