08/26/08 As congressional elections become more and more expensive,wealthy folks in Greenwich are increasingly picking up the tab.

Thanks, Rich People!

The Rise of the Political Donor Class


Miller-McCune



As of this writing, the 2008 congressional candidates have already raised close to $1 billion for their campaigns (about $700 million in the House and $300 million in the Senate).



By November's election, that total could top $2 billion.It's a lot of money, and given the geographical distribution of wealth in America, an oddity emerges: many candidates who represent places in the United States without much disposable income raise the millions necessary to run for office these days.



Increasingly, they’re not bothering to ask the folks whom they are actually paid to represent for campaign cash. Instead, they are flocking to a handful of super-wealthy ZIP codes in places like Hollywood; the Upper East Side of Manhattan; Greenwich, Conn.; and suburban Washington, D.C. - the "political ATM's" of the campaign trial.....



...According to an analysis by University of Maryland political science professors James G. Gimpel and Frances E. Lee and graduate student Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz, as of 2004, more than 2 out of 3 U.S. House campaign contributions (70.2 percent) came from somewhere outside the district. That’s a steady increase from 54.5 percent in 1996 and 63 percent in 2000.



Moreover, as of 2004, only 1 in 5 congressional districts provided the majority of contributions for the candidates seeking to represent that district. And in 18 percent of congressional districts, more than 90 percent of money now comes from out of district. ....



.....Craig Holman, legislative representative for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, also notes that the donor class is a very small percentage of U.S. citizens. In 2004, for example, he says that less than 0.6 percent of voting-age Americans contributed more than $200 to a campaign. And 86 percent of those $200 or more campaign contributions came from households earning $100,000 per year or more......



...“I think people in favor of an elitist interpretation of American political power would be very pleased with these results,” Gimpel said. “There is a concentration of wealth, elites are close together and that is across parties. They share a lot of the same values, not just culturally but even politically.....

...We think there is a lot of sociology involved,” Gimpel said. “These folks are status-seeking, and they want to be part of the donor base, to go to these events to see and be seen. I’ve been to some of these fundraisers, and what you observe is people coming together who know each other, and it is a major social event.”....



...But while the coasts and a few major metropolitan areas in between are awash in campaign fundraising events, there are large swaths of land in the middle of the country that are generating virtually no political money.
“We were quite astonished to see that there are major sections of the country that give almost nothing,” Gimpel said. “There are a great many congressional districts where there just isn’t much wealth.”



So far, however, there has yet to be much of a backlash in what coastal elites tend to refer to as “flyover country.” While the professors do write that Alaska, Vermont and Oregon have all made attempts to restrict out-of-district funding, the issue has yet to gain wide attention.....



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