According to The Washington Post, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who has yet to officially announce a presidential run, is trying to keep the biggest of the big money from too quickly overwhelming his anticipated bid.
The move reflects concerns among Bush advisers that accepting massive sums from a handful of uber-rich supporters could fuel a perception that the former governor is in their debt. The effort is also driven by a desire to build as broad a pool of donors as possible among wealthier contributors.
So even as Bush is headlining a series of high-dollar events for a super PAC backing his bid, fundraisers have been instructed not to ask donors to give more than $1 million per person this quarter.
Apparently receiving just $1 million from a donor wouldn’t lead anyone to assume that Bush is indebted to them.
The money spigot, of course, will eventually flow far past this limit. And to call it a limit at all shows just how outsized an influence money holds over our democracy, and what a tiny, unrepresentative sliver of society Bush is catering to.
A minimum wage worker earning $7.25 per hour would have to work full-time for more than 66 years to make $1 million. That’s before taxes. And food. And lodging. Raising kids? No room for that, either. That’s an entire gross income for what could be an entire working life just for a single political contribution.
Say you’re lucky and you make four times that amount, $29 per hour. Making a Bush-style contribution would still consume your entire income for more than 16.5 years.
As Public Campaign’s Adam Smith puts it:
Anyway, isn’t bragging about how you have too many multi-millionaires willing to give you money as bad of optics as $1M+ gifts?
— Adam Smith (@asmith83) March 4, 2015
#GetMoneyOut is about a lot more than telling the super-rich to #SaveItForLater.
Grassroots activists have been pushing for money in politics reform to make clear that we want a democracy that’s run by the people, not millionaires and billionaires. In just five years since the Supreme Court ruling, 16 states and more than 600 cities and towns have officially called for a constitutional amendment to overturn decisions like Citizens United, and five million Americans have signed their name to a petition calling for such an amendment. There’s also a “Defending Democracy” legislative package that can take critical steps forward while the amendment movement grows even stronger.
There are many solutions working together toward the same end goal: a democracy in which everyone participates, everyone’s voice is heard, everyone knows who is trying to buy influence, and everyone plays by commonsense rules and is held accountable to those rules.