How Mega-Donors Could Drive MAGA to Victory

By Gabriel James

MAGA Mega-donor, Tim Mellon, has made massive strides to pump outside spending into the Trump Campaign. As a massively influential and wealthy figure, Mellon could make much more than a footnote in the 2024 election cycle.

In 2024, Mellon has become the single largest donor to the MAGA (Make America Great Again) Inc., which is one of Donald Trump’s largest political action committees (PACs), spending around 350 million dollars in advertisements for the former president and against Kamala Harris. This PAC is poised to make waves in ways that even the most seasoned political watchers might not have anticipated. 

MAGA Inc. is not under Donald Trump’s personal ownership, as PACs are not legally permitted to be directly affiliated with political candidates. PACs act independently as a sort of loophole for significant donor funds to be spent on political advertisement without coordinating any spending with the candidate themselves. Donors, rather than donating millions to candidates (which is technically illegal), can donate unlimited funds to PACs, who can endlessly spend money indirectly on campaigns.

Just this year, OpenSecrets reports $165 million has been donated by Mellon to the far-right political action committee, and an astounding $155 million has been spent by MAGA Inc. on disrupting democratic campaigns. 

The impact of these contributions is felt quite instantaneously, with incremental donations of tens of millions of dollars being made every month. There is no telling how much more money Mellon might donate between now and Nov. 6.

What is troubling is the ability of Super PACs like MAGA Inc., which can receive and spend unlimited funds from donors on campaigns, to collect such substantial contributions so rapidly at a time of such a contentious election. MAGA Inc., with almost $300 million in total contributions, has not donated any money to the actual Trump Campaign; rather, it is spending money on political attack ads against Kamala Harris. 

Super PACs and their role in American elections not only ally the rich with our elected leaders but it has removed all accountability from making contributions. 

“Corporations, especially companies that are vulnerable to consumer pressure, don’t necessarily want their name appearing in the disclosure bit of a TV attack ad,” said Andrew Mayersohn, committee researcher for OpenSecrets.

Mayersohn also says if it wasn’t for PACs like MAGA Inc. to distribute contributions, “corporations would have to spend money on independent expenditures themselves rather than routing it through a super PAC.”

Who Allowed this? 

Campaign finance laws have been loosening since the 1970s, but it has been worse than ever in the last 15 years. 

Most will attribute the loosening of campaign finance restrictions to Citizens United VS FEC, the ‘landmark’ case that identified corporations, unions, and billionaire benefactors, like Tim Mellon, as “individuals” with the right to spend their money on any political action under the First Amendment. 

Sure, this was the start, but just three months after Citizens United, a court case – arguably much more dangerous – implemented a system that threatened the sanctity and fairness of American elections to come. 

Speechnow.org VS FEC, decided in March of 2010, was the case that conceived what we know today as SuperPACs. This case, decided by the D.C. District Court of Appeals, allowed for ‘individuals’ to donate unlimited contributions to political action committees.  

Journalist covering campaign finance for the Hill, Harper Neidig, described that “the groups can spend and raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations and individuals on political campaigns. While they are legally prohibited from coordinating with political parties or candidates, super PACs are free to spend money to boost or hinder particular candidates”. 

When Citizens United passed after decision by the Supreme Court, individuals were still able to donate money, but if a billionaire or corporation, let’s say Coca-Cola, wanted to spend money on conservative advertisements, the name “Coca-Cola” was implicated, thus Americans could boy-cot or criticize Coca-Cola. Speechnow.org eliminated this accountability, allowing companies to anonymously contribute unlimited amounts of funds to be redirected into political action.  

The Federal Election Commission (FEC), created specifically to regulate campaign finance, has expressed, according to New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, that passing Speechnow.org could “lead to preferential access for donors and undue influence over officeholders”.

According to U.S. Representative, Ted Lieu, in his attempt to resurface and overturn Speechnow.org to SCOTUS during the campaigning for the 2016 election, he suggests that contributions can be made through groups such as 501(c)(4) organizations, allowing contributors to remain anonymous while making excessive political contributions. 

To put it simply, PACs act as a middleman between the large donors and the campaigns themselves – and these middlemen have been unbelievably effective to directing these funds, as in Neidig’s report, just in “the 2020 election cycle alone, super PACs reported raising $2.5 billion and spending $1.9 billion” on political action. 

Candidates Under Control 

With the General Election only a week away and the first real presidential debate concluded, the motivations of our leaders should be on the front of our minds. 

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have both explicitly expressed policy support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East, and a point of contention in the democratic party has been exasperated by a large base of supporters calling for a ceasefire due to the tragedy taking place in Palestine. Yet, Kamala has not loosened her support of Israel.  

Harris/Walz have also continued to expressed support for continuing to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia. 

Why do we continue to fund foreign conflicts? Some will argue there is political interest in the nearly nine million dollars spent on democrat and republican PACs, as suggested by analytical writer Kayla Zhu, by military contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman since the beginning of 2024.

What should be understood is that reported money isn’t ALL the money. Lots of money donated to PACs cannot be reported as being given to campaigns as it isn’t given to candidates; it is spent on advertisements that support candidates or pay influencers or media to say certain things about candidates. 

In regard to politicians and their ties to billionaires, these ties are frequent and not unprecedented, often working in favor of the wealthy rather than the average American. 

Donald Trump often makes a case of being a candidate for the working class, but he’s made very clear recently that he wishes to reduce the corporate tax to 15% for companies manufacturing products in America – a policy reminiscent of George Bush’s deregulatory action on hedge fund and private equity in the early 2000s which arguably led to complete economic collapse. 

Trump also made sure to thank, in a speech in New York last month, his “friends” and “respected business leaders”, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan/Chase CEO and massive Democratic donor, and Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone CEO, who has donated millions to republican PACs in just 2024 according to OpenSecrets.

He mentioned several other massive hedge fund/private equity donors and former secretaries of transnational debt organizations like the World Bank.

Kamala Harris also mentioned during the presidential debate that she received an endorsement by former Vice President Dick Cheney, a well-known war-monger. Cheney made millions from his ties with Halliburton Oil & Defense and its subsidiary, Kellog Brown & Root, during the invasion of Iraq/Afghanistan in the early 2000s after falsely claiming Saddam Hussain was in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction as reported in the New York Times.

SpeechNOW and Citizen’s United have seemed to have devastating implications for the future of American politics in more ways than one. It allowed for the rise of the SuperPAC and the normality of their influence in elections. 

It further set a precedent for money to be a primary factor of political motivation, thus a higher frequency of ultra-wealthy individuals making good “friends” with our political leaders. 

Endorsements have become a sneaky way of saying, “I support someone for favors they can provide”, and elected officials have become more and more cozy to the idea of pulling favors for their most loyal donors. 

Even though tracking the money isn’t always easy, it does not take spreadsheets of data to infer that money is used to by results. 

Jack Abramoff, former lobbyist convicted of conspiracy and bribing federal officials, said himself, “money is used to buy results! Thats how I used money, I knew what I was doing”. 

As frightening as dark money is, we can place much of the blame on SpeechNOW and its precursor Citizen’s United for paving the way for unlimited contributions to political action. 

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OpenSecrets: More Money Less Transparency