Campaign Financing and Influence Peddling: A Look at Donald Trump's Contributions

Since the early 1970s there have been very strict limits (individuals are limited to $2,000 for primary, runoff, and general elections each) on campaign spending. This was done in order to prevent any one individual to profoundly affect the chances of a candidate to get elected (in other words, to make sure individuals don't "own" politicians). One of the results of such laws has been the way affluent individuals are able to "hedge" their bets when it comes to politicians.

A great example of this is Donald Trump, who has made very clear that he is liberal. In a recent interview with Donny Deutsch, Trump had nothing but negative remarks for President Bush and was unable to think of a single positive comment for him. I've seen other interviews were his criticism has included spending, taxes, military, etc. There are few things he shares in common with Bush. However, his campaign contributions convey a different story. Actually, they don't provide any story at all, since his giving is all over the political map. Over the last several years he has given to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, its Republican counterpart, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), Sen. Hillary Clinton, Rep. Charles Rangel, and (surprisingly) the very conservative Sen. George Allen. The list goes on and the eader is encouraged to visit it. By the way, he split his contributions around 60/40, Democrat/Republican. The list is over the entire political spectrum and although the amounts are not always significant the dispersion of them is huge.

Because of campaign spending limits, individuals like Trump are allowed to influence numerous races without spending a significant expenditure on any. Considering that all these parties and candiates have such wildly different convictions, it appears clear that he is trying to spread the influence based on geography (many from New Jersey and New York), as well as committee assignments, and other factors. That is one of the latent "benefits" to influence peddlers found in campaign spending limits. This is not a practice limited to Trump, of course, but to virtually everyone who is both affluent and influential enough to spread their wealth.