By Robert Burch

image provided by Piqsels under the Creative Commons License

In 2010, the Supreme Court issued its infamous Citizens United ruling, a decision that essentially gave corporations the right to make unlimited political expenditures for causes benefiting their interests. The ruling threatened to usher in an era of minimal transparency and skyrocketing political spending by shady political action committees (PACs). It exacerbated the long-existing influence big money had over government and politics. By allowing corporations, special interests, and wealthy donors to skirt individual donation limits and pump millions into elections through unrestricted “Super PACs”, Citizens United opened the door for new levels of corruption in politics. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, outside political spending not linked directly to a campaign or candidate ballooned from $500 million to over $2 billion in the decade following Citizens United. And those in our government responded to that increased spending. Take, for example, Senator Mitch McConnell, who has received over $2 million from the Insurance Industry over the past decade while consistently using his position as Senate Majority and Minority Leader to sabotage attempts at expanding healthcare. Or look at Senator Joe Manchin, who has taken almost $200,000 this year from Oil and Gas Lobbies and has since made headlines for blocking his fellow Democrats’ climate provisions in various legislation. For a more expansive view, look at how congressional Republicans, who have consistently stood against common sense gun control, take all but a few of the spots on the list for the top 20 Gun Lobby donation recipients for both the Senate and the House every year this decade. These examples of the increasing trend of favorable treatment for big donors (made easier by Citizens United) are found on all sides and levels of government. And although this may paint a dreary (yet not unfamiliar) picture of a government beholden to special interests and lobbyists, a new trend in campaign finance that’s now gaining traction offers some level of hope: small donors.

Nearly twenty years ago, Howard Dean went from the barely known former Vermont Governor to the leading candidate in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary and record holder for the most quarterly money raised by a Democratic campaign ($14.8 million). Instead of only closed-door fundraising and selling his soul to wealthy donors, Dean chose to look at the potential of internet fundraising from small donors. This gamble paid off, and small donors with an $80 average donation size catapulted him to the front of the race and rewarded him with tens of millions of dollars throughout the campaign. On the flipside, many of the other campaigns in the 2004 cycle chose to forgo internet small donor fundraising. Instead, they followed more traditional tactics of in-person large donor fundraisers with single contributions that could max out donation limits, exhausting the potential for future engagement. Dean’s new and unconventional tactic allowed him to engage more people with his campaign, connecting him new, excited supporters who felt more valued by the campaign while helping him far outraise his opponents. And while a couple political gaffes ended Dean’s campaign, his strategy lived on in another underdog candidate’s 2008 campaign: Barack Obama.

While Howard Dean started the small donor trend, Obama perfected it. Once a little-known Illinois senator, Obama’s message of hope resonated with millions of voters, and his campaign’s utilization of the internet allowed him to capitalize off that. Propelled by small donors, almost 30% of whom contributed less than $200 (the cutoff to be considered a “small” donor according to the Campaign Finance Institute), Obama quickly shot to the front of the 2008 primary election. And after his win in 2008, he repeated his small donor success in the 2012 election, only this time, according to the CFI, small donations amounted to half of the money raised by his campaign.

Obama’s success with small donors changed the way political fundraising was approached. The next candidates to utilize the growing small donor power came in the 2016 primaries. One was Donald Trump, who amassed 64% of his campaign’s funds from small donors under $200 and the other was Bernie Sanders who consistently bragged of his $27 average donation size, his 2.5 million individual donors, and his whopping 77% of donations received by small donors. The small, yet powerful, political force expanded into the 2018 midterms, with over one hundred federal candidates utilizing the strategy. A notable example is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose army of small donors catapulted her from bartender to the House Representative with the largest portion of campaign funds coming from small donors (62% according to the Center for Responsive Politics). She then built on her success with small donors in the 2020 campaign, collecting 79% of her $20.6 million in campaign funds from small donors (Center for Responsive Politics). The power of small donors even reshaped the messaging around campaign finance in the 2020 Democratic primary, with a multitude of candidates boasting their small average contribution sizes and showing off their small donor percentages to attract support. The democratic party even allowed candidates to qualify for debates if they had enough small donors. 

It is worth noting that the small donor trend has been most popular among Democratic candidates, largely because of their early adoption of online the donor service ActBlue. ActBlue is a technology nonprofit that has so far, according to its website, helped raise over $9 billion for Democratic and progressive campaigns since 2004 by allowing people (especially small donors) to easily contribute online. However, small donors are not only confined to the Democrats. Republican campaigns have started to adopt this strategy as well, boosted by their implementation of WinRed in response to ActBlue in 2019. Besides Donald Trump, notable examples of Republican success with small donors include Rep. Duncan Hunter (67% of his campaign’s $1.6 million from small donors according to the Center for Responsive Politics), Rep. Jim Jordan (66% of his $18.3 million from small donors), and Rep. Matt Gaetz (65% of his $5.9 million small contributions). Even if the trend is more commonly used among Democrats and tends to yield higher small donor percentages for them (maybe because of their head start with ActBlue), the small donor phenomenon is clearly replicable and successful on all sides of the aisle.

 Regardless of level of success, small donors are more than just a trendy new way for candidates to flex their fundraising skills and raise millions. They also represent a real chance to combat the rapid encroachment of corrupt corporate interests into politics and government. While the number of political contributions from Super PACs has greatly increased over the years since Citizens United, contributions from individual small donors have begun cutting into the portion of election funding coming from corporations and interest groups, therefore decreasing the influence these special interests can have over our elections and public officials. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, compared to 2016, small donor contributions accounted for almost 10% more of total campaign finances in 2020, while PAC and Super PAC portions counted for 5-6% less than they did in 2016. This shift has emboldened many candidates to take a stand against the corrupting influence of big donors and shady dark money. When money from organizations that don’t represent the best interests of most voters is no longer as important of a source of funds for candidates, those outside interests can’t use their financial support to dictate a politician’s agenda as effectively. Getting more support from small donations can make politicians more accountable to their constituents instead of lobbyists.

Thanks to the increasing viability of small campaign donors, it has become relatively common for campaigns to swear off donations from corporate PACs and closed-door meetings with large contributors. For example, fifty-two members of Congress (including members from both sides of the aisle) in 2018 had rejected donations coming from corporate PACs. In 2020, all 24 of the Democratic primary candidates for president at some point swore off corporate PAC money, and many of them even refused Super PAC and large donor help, according to Vox. With the rising success of small donor fundraising, money not accepted from PACs can be made up by donations from large groups of people who are more representative of these candidates’ constituents. The small donor movement and the coinciding “no PAC pledges” by candidates allow everyday people to take back political power long held by special interests. This change to campaign finance can serve to make campaigns more financially reliant on the people they represent as opposed to large donors and lobbyists. Politics is often about money, so when the money comes from small donors and everyday voters, it’s in the candidates’ best interest to listen more to those voters instead of voting against their interests in support of other organizations that offer financial support.

The increased emphasis on small donors doesn’t just benefit the everyday people who get to take back political influence from special interests. It also benefits the candidates. Whereas wealthy donors and PAC money can often reach the legal contribution limit in one donation, small donations do not. This allows the campaigns to continue to solicit donations from the voter, keeping them in contact with supporters, keeping the supporter engaged with the campaign, and giving the potential for multiple consistent donations throughout the course of the campaign. And even if candidates still miss out on money from some corporate contributions and wealthy donors due to their no PAC pledge, refusing corporate PAC money also serves to prove to voters that the candidates’ interests are aligned with their citizens and not the highest bidder.

Reliance on excited and engaged groups of small donors was virtually unheard of in elections even 20 years ago. It was only in 2004 that the rise of the internet coincided with Howard Dean’s unconventional campaign strategy to make what is now standard in politics a possibility. Since then, droves of small donors have been increasingly standing up to the powers that once kept politics removed from the people. This unexpected reform to campaign finance has in a matter of years rewritten centuries of political practice, and there’s no reason to believe small donor armies are slowing down any time soon. The small donor movement represents a rare power shift in campaign finance towards the people. Constituents, corporations, and candidates alike should pay attention to that. It’s not every day you get to witness normal people take down a nationwide political machine.

Robert Burch ’25 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at burch.r@wustl.edu.