The Billionaire's Ball: The Precedent-Setting 2024 Presidential Election
We’ll never know just how much political cash was raked in by the two major 2024 presidential candidates because so much of it nowadays is funneled through dark money entities, but it’s already clear from the latest round of campaign finance disclosures that new official records were established during last year’s race in all major fundraising categories. The combined gross receipts to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump thus far come to about $3.4 billion, which tops the take from Biden-Trump 2020 by $600 million and is about three times higher than the total raised by the two major candidates during Clinton-Trump 2016.
Harris’s campaign netted more than $1.1 billion and Super PACs and other outside committees that supported her brought in another $843 million. Her total haul of just shy of $2 billion – thus far and what we know of – sets a new fundraising record by a Democratic presidential nominee and for
Trump donors delivered about $464 million to his campaign and another $976 million to groups that backed him, adding up to more than $1.4 billion, a new record for GOP candidates.
What’s most significant about the 2024 campaign isn’t the combined take of the two major nominees, it’s that a handful of billionaires delivered a huge, unprecedented share of the cash. Trump’s side got $500 million, more than one-third of the total, from three people: Elon Musk, co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump II administration, chipped in at least $250 million, Timothy Mellon, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune, provided another $150 million, and Miriam Adelson, a fanatical backer of Israel, pitched in $100 million.
Harris’s biggest known donor was Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who provided about $51 million. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was right behind at $50 million, Bloomberg LP owner Michael Bloomberg gave roughly $19 million, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman sent $17 million, and a variety of other Democratic megadonors made contributions of multiple millions of dollars.
A campaign finance expert I interviewed described the current situation as the “inevitable endgame” of the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 ruling in the 2010 case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which barred the government from limiting how much money donors could contribute to Super PACs and other purportedly independent entities. "Everyone knew Citizens United would allow big donors to gain more influence and that’s exactly what happened, but 2024 was sui generis,” the source said. “This was the first true billionaire’s election, where a tiny group of ultra rich contributors, maybe 50 or so, have become so powerful that ordinary people are basically irrelevant to the political process.”
“We’re past the winking and nodding stage,” he added. “This is straight up corruption.”