Political donations and political influence
Lazy political commentators tend to write stories that go something like this:
- Politician A received more money from Company B than any other source.
- Politician A supported legislation that helps Company B in some way.
- Ergo Politician A is in the pocket of Company B.
There are a few problems. The first problem is that the money generally came from employees of Company B. When Mitt Romney receives a lot of money from Bain, it could be that Bain is trying to buy influence. It’s much more probable, however, that Romney’s rich friends are donating money to his campaign. Additionally, companies with a lot of highly-paid employees are likely to make more financial donations. Obama, for example, has received huge amounts of money from virtually every industry. This isn’t influence peddling—this means that he has a lot of support. (Or, rather, if we’re going to make charges of influence-peddling, we need to do more than simply look up where the money came from.
That said, you might be able to tell something about what industries like the policies espoused by a particular candidate by who the donations go to.
