Pirate's Cove

This is not a good thing

Record cash pours into Georgia Senate races, with a large chunk from California

With early voting well underway and both sides expecting extremely close races, record amounts of money continue to pour into Georgia’s twin Senate runoff campaigns, including a large chunk of cash from donors in California, new Federal Election Commission filings show.

The two Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, shattered all-time fundraising records over the last two months. Their Republican opponents, Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively, hold a financial edge, however, thanks to outside Republican groups that can raise massive sums mostly unconstrained by federal campaign laws.

Much of that outside money comes from donors whose identities remain undisclosed.

Warnock brought in just over $103 million in the two months from mid-October to mid-December, according to his filing. Ossoff raised even more — almost $107 million. Perdue raised $68 million and Loeffler, $64 million.

All four candidates have received much of their money from out of state, with California donors contributing the most.

All four surpassed the previous fundraising record for a Senate candidate — the $57.9 million that Jaime Harrison, a Democrat, raised in the third quarter this year in his campaign to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Of course, Harrison lost, a reminder that more money provides no guarantee of victory.

First off, I thought Democrats were against all that dark money? No? Oh, right, only when it isn’t coming to them.

Second, and more important, how does this serve the People of Georgia to have the candidates be essentially be beholden to individuals and entities not from Georgia? This is a big problem in our Federal Republic, where everything is national and the political parties take precedence over the citizens in states and districts. That senators and representatives, and, heck, even state and local politicians, are getting enormous amounts of money from outside their cities, states, and districts, perhaps even a majority of their campaign funds. At that point, do they care about their constituents, or the big money donors? Not necessarily picking on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I just remember see the statistic, but, 80% of her 2018 election funding came from outside her district. Does she serve the people in her district or those donating big money?

And, yes, I have been down this road long ago: I would disallow all campaign funding from outside the sphere of election. For a US senator, nothing from outside the state, federal representative, nothing outside the district, etc. Yes, there would still be some games played. A company could say “well, we actually have operations in that city/district/state, so, we can donate.” It wouldn’t be perfect, but, it would certainly help, because too many politicians do not represent their voters.

And get rid of the 17th Amendment, institute term limits for Congress.