Money in politics has always been a crack in the foundation of our democracy. Citizens United, a Supreme Court ruling that overturned campaign finance laws by granting free speech rights to corporations, deepened that crack. 

But where does all that money come from? Good luck finding out. The campaign finance system we have in the U.S. is high on donations and low on accountability. In the most recent election, donations to presidential Super PAC’s surpassed $1 billion. 

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Fifteen years after the landmark Supreme Court decision, we’re taking a close look at how Citizens United has changed American politics and asking where do we go from here? Is campaign finance reform on the horizon, or is it just a pipe dream? 

Daniel Weiner, director of elections and government programs at the Brennan Center for Justice, joined The Metro on Wednesday to help explain how dark money came to be so ingrained in our politics. 

“Dark money actually comes because the Supreme Court and the lower courts seem to have sort of assumed that all this money that they were allowing to be spent would be transparent, that the sources would be disclosed,” Weiner said. “But it turns out that at the federal level and in many states — including Michigan — the laws and rules that require disclosure really just didn’t contemplate this. They didn’t expect to have corporations spending unlimited amounts of money on politics, and they didn’t apply disclosure rules to those sorts of entities.”

The Citizen United ruling opened the door for dark money and mega donor influence in Washington. But its impact hits much closer to home, said Bridge Michigan reporter Simon Schuster, who also joined the conversation.

Schuster says the Michigan Supreme Court race saw millions of dollars in dark money donations.  

“In the Supreme Court races, the candidates generally receive substantially less funding than we see in the house,” Schuster said. “And as a result, the outside funding that we see for these campaigns becomes that much more potent, especially in the Supreme Court race this year.”

We also asked our listeners:

“Is there too much money in politics?”

Elisa in Grosse Pointe Park said: “The one thing that just really struck me this morning was the idea of campaign donations, political donations, and how a donation is usually seen as like a gift, like freely given, and how it’s such a different, a different case in politics. And you know, it’s really more like payment for services expected or services rendered.”

Use the media player above to listen to the full conversation, plus other stories from “The Metro.”

More headlines from The Metro on Jan. 22, 2024: 

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