Ten years on, Citizens United ruling has changed U.S. politics — but not in the way many feared
and others. Citizens United allowed them to use super PACs as vehicles for unlimited infusions of money into politics. It also allowed nonprofit groups to more easily keep the sources of campaign funding secret, allowing so-called dark money to influence elections.
To be sure, any Supreme Court ruling that put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the American Civil Liberties Union on the same side had the potential to disrupt long-held alliances and smash stereotypes.The Citizens United decision was widely perceived as a boon for the right and may have played a role in thein 2010, the year the ruling came down. But since then, Democrats have mostly caught up.
“In other words,” according to a report by the Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board, a business-oriented research group, “individuals, including a relatively small number of individuals who make seven- or eight-figure contributions, have been responsible for the dramatic growth of super PACs.”
These massive infusions came as the influence of money in American politics was expanding. Spending on presidential elections, for example, grew 66% from the 2000 campaign between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore to the 2016 campaign between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. At the same time, spending on congressional campaigns grew 143%.
The power of corporate contributions in modern times — $95 million in 2016 — is arguably about the same as it was in 1896, when businessman Mark Hanna was able to raise the 2019 equivalent of $90 million from banks and insurance companies on behalf of Republican presidential candidate William McKinley to battle the populist Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan. McKinley won.
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