Farm & Food File: Everywhere else it’s called kleptocracy

Trying to stem the flow of money in American politics is like trying to hold back the Mississippi River. It’s dirty, dangerous work that, in the end, is almost always washed away by a flood of even more money.

Don’t take my word for it; just follow the, well, you know. For example, despite only one mildly competitive race in any party’s presidential primaries, all 2024 candidates combined — from Doug Burgum to Marianne Williamson — raised $692 million for their campaigns, according to opensecrets.org, the authoritative, nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

That was just for starters. Outside groups raised another collective $812 million for the presidential candidates to boost the total take to a pig-choking $1.5 billion.

Equally remarkable is that more than half of the amount, or $831 million, was raised by the Trump and Biden campaigns before either party’s convention and long before the Nov. 5 general election.

But the Dem money machine kicked into overdrive when Biden chose to exit the race July 21. In less than 24 hours of him yielding to presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris, the party was showered with at least $81 million in campaign money and another $150 million in campaign pledges.

That small fortune is chicken feed when compared to what one high-tech billionaire, Elon Musk, reportedly pledged to contribute to the Trump campaign a week earlier: $45 million per month through Election Day.

Musk is now downplaying the pledge, claiming he will still give millions, just not the $180 million implied in his week-earlier pledge.

Agribusiness joined the 2024 White House cash dash, too. According to OpenSecrets, Big Ag has given the Trump 2024 presidential campaign $7.4 million, almost seven times more than it gave Joe Biden, $1.1 million, and the Dems.

In fact, ag’s big political players gave Nikki Haley’s not-going-anywhere White House bid $1.7 million, or almost 50% more than incumbent Joe Biden’s didn’t-go-anywhere campaign.

Regardless of the candidate, no fat-cat contributor writes five-, six-, seven- and now even eight-figure campaign checks without expecting some candidate love after a hoped-for win.

Musk, say political analysts, is simply making a very public, very big bet that a Trump White House will impose prohibitive tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles, a rising competitor to Tesla and Musk’s $73 billion stake in the company.

Likewise, Big Sugar has given $4.9 million to many Senate and House ag committee members this election cycle.

The reason is simple: With the 2024 farm bill still hanging fire, the aggressively political American sugar industry wants Congress to keep in place its long-time protective import tariffs and domestic loan price programs.

Sugar isn’t alone. To date, 2024 campaign contributions from “agribusiness” to members of Congress, again according to OpenSecrets, totals $42.2 million.

The split between parties strongly favors Republicans who were given $29.4 million while Democratic members pulled in a comparatively small $12.75 million.

Meanwhile, money spent by agribusiness to lobby Congress in 2023 was a knee-buckling four times greater, or $178 million, reveals OpenSecrets.

Overall, interest groups spent an unfathomable $4.2 billion lobbying Congress in 2023. That’s a mind-bending $7,850,500 per senator or congressman.

All that lobbying — meetings, favors, dinners and trips — takes time, of course, which may partially explain why Congressional “lawmakers did not manage to pass much legislation” in 2023, reported NPR late last December. In fact, NPR continued, “only 27 bills passed through both chambers.”

Twenty-seven, barely two per month. That means you wrote more grocery lists last year than Congress wrote necessary and often overdue legislation like the 2023 — now 2024 and soon to be 2025 — farm bill.

But what’s never overdue is the river of money flowing through our political process. It’s wide, powerful and corrupting.