TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
CRACKING
THE CODE
representative of the American
public. In the 2010 election, .05
percent of the U.S. population
made at least one then-maximum
contribution of $2,500 to a political candidate. Yet these donors
accounted for 37 percent of all
contributions to candidates, parties and PACs, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics. In
the 2012 election, these max-out
donors — there were slightly over
241,000 — accounted for 51 percent of all contributions.
A host of recent political science research has found that Congress is most responsive to the
concerns of the wealthy, while
hardly registering the opinions of
lower-income Americans.
Harvard Law School professor
Lawrence Lessig, one of the new
leaders of the campaign finance
reform movement, has been outspoken about the corrupting influence of money in politics.
“There’s a fundamental economy of influence in Washington
that’s kind of matured over the
last 30 or 20 years,” Lessig said.
“What’s striking about this story
is the pathological extent of this
influence is really relatively recent. So it was my view that we
weren’t going to solve this prob-
HUFFINGTON
10.27.13
lem by modest reforms.”
Lessig’s high profile in Silicon
Valley and across the Internet
has helped attract a wider audience outside Washington to the
issue of money in politics. In
a popular TED talk earlier this
year, he argued that the enormous amount of time spent fundraising from the wealthy plays a
major role in warping the institution of Congress, resulting in a
“dependence corruption” that he
called “democracy-destroying.”
“Now, by corruption, I don’t
mean brown paper bag cash secreted among members of Congress,” Lessig said in his talk. “I
don’t mean any criminal act. The
corruption I’m talking about is
Rep. Ed
Perlmutter
(D-Colo.)
admits that
being in a
swing region
generates a
lot of extra
pressure to
constantly
fundraise.