I read an article about GOP Political Action Committees, or PACs, spending over $1 billion to influence the upcoming election. This is ridiculous, I thought, so I started looking into PACs and found a fine website called OpenSecrets.org that had some pretty interesting statistics.
Of the 218 PACs that have raised money, 97 support Republicans where only 59 support Democrats. The rest are independent. Of the 25 PACs that have raised over $1 million, 12 are conservative and 9 are liberal. Of the 4 PACs that have raised over $10 million, 4 are conservative to 1 liberal. In total, conservative PACs have raised over $161 million to the liberal PACs meager $45 million. Of the money raised, conservative PACs have already spent over $97 million compared to $12 million spent from liberal PACs.
Among the largest donors to PACs is Harold Simmons, who donated over $11 million, most of it to American Crossroads, a conservative PAC. He lives in Texas and is worth over $9 billion. He buys and sells companies. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson donated $20 million to Winning Our Future, another conservative PAC. Their net wealth is over $21 billion which comes from casinos and resorts. Only one of the 11 people listed are considered liberal – Jeffrey Katzenberg. Jeff contributed $2 million to Priorities USA Action and is worth around $1 billion. He is CEO of DreamWorks and former Chairman of Disney Films.
The following will outline what industries is spending money to influence the election of a certain political party. I would assume they do this because that particular candidate has policies that benefit them – mostly or entirely monetarily.
-Electrical Utility companies seem to favor Democrats, as do Miscellaneous energy companies (no doubt renewable energies for the most part) and environmental companies. Most contributions go to Republicans, though, with mining (coal) and oil & gas being the largest donors. 73% of all oil and gas contributions went to conservative PACs.
-Unsurprisingly, Commercial banks gave more money to conservative PACs
-Intriguing – the healthcare industry contributes more money to liberal PACs.
-Human Rights, Environmental, Pro-Israel and Women’s Issues organizations give most of their money to liberal PACs. Gun Rights organizations give 74% of their money to conservative PACs. Gun Control organizations, however, give 100% of their donations to liberal PACs (only $6,600… but still!)
-Labor unions favor Democrats – 93% of donations from the Labor sector went to liberal PACs.
-The Education sector gives primarily to liberal PACs, as do Non-Profit organizations.
What to learn from all of this? Most billionaires spend money to get a Republican elected as president. The highest earning companies in the US – oil companies – spend a lot of money to get a Republican in office. Big business and billionaires want Republicans whereas social sectors of our country want Democrats. I guess this is nothing new, but people should be aware of who they support, and who else is supporting the same candidate.
