There is a persistent lie in American politics: that any sufficiently rich person can simply buy any election. It sits at the heart of the worldview of our socialist friends on the other side of the aisle and their eternal crusade against the wealthy. They insist that spending money on elections destroys American democracy, that “undue influence” demands yet another stack of special rules, and that wealthy donors single-handedly bend elections to their will.
That simply isn’t true.
On Monday, California Rep. Ro Khanna blasted SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk for his record spending on Republcians in the 2026 midterm elections, which total to about $366 million, making him the largest known individual donor of the 2026 midterm election cycle.
"Tax billionaires so they can't buy democracy," Rep. Khanna wrote on X. "Stand with @BernieSanders & me & support a 5% tax on California billionaires. Not with Newsom, Thiel & Musk opposing it."
Tax billionaires so they can't buy democracy. Stand with @BernieSanders & me & support a 5% tax on California billionaires. Not with Newsom, Thiel & Musk opposing it.
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 12, 2026
The belief that wealth automatically and consistently converts itself into electoral victory suffers from a convenient selection bias, where critics remember the candidate who outspent an opponent and won, and yet forgets the far more common case of candidates or even lobby groups who spent a fortune in an election and still lost. Why is that you may ask? A democratic electorate still has a mind of its own, no matter how much money is spent trying to change it.
Let's take several examples.
In 2024, Kamala Harris raised and spent more than $1 billion against now-President Donald Trump, yet lost every battleground state and the popular vote. Trump’s campaign spent roughly half as much.
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Just last year, New York City’s wealthy class coalesced against socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, pouring more than $40 million into stopping him, a historically unprecedented sum. Mamdani won anyway, because he was the candidate voters wanted.
And just this year in California’s gubernatorial race, progressive billionaire Tom Steyer spent between $213 million and $215 million of his own money, more than six times the next-most-expensive campaign, only to lose to Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton in the primary election.
Now to lobbying in particular.
In 2021, the pharmaceutical industry spent a record $389 million on federal lobbying, with industry groups on pace to spend roughly $700 million across the 2021-22 cycle as Democrats advanced the Inflation Reduction Act, all to stop Medicare from negotiating prescription-drug prices. That failed.
In the late 2000s, the ten largest banks in the country spent more than $87 million lobbying Congress from 2009 to 2010 to stop the Dodd-Frank Act. It passed anyway.
During the same period, health insurers spent $86.2 million opposing the Affordable Care Act, while the broader healthcare sector spent more than $1.1 billion lobbying on the bill in 2009 alone, and yet the ACA passed anyway.
And tobacco companies spent nearly $73 million on federal lobbying in 1998 alone and roughly $755 million from 1998 through 2020 to oppose smoking regulations and a the Master Settlement Agrrement, and still it did not save them.
Money does not buy elections unless it is combined with popular support, and that support is the necessary ingredient. Without it, all the money in the world cannot change the outcome of an election or a policy fight.
Yet socialists like Rep. Ro Khanna want you to believe the wealthy possess some irresistible, undue influence over American democracy. They do not. This country was built on representation and on checking concentrated power. Those guardrails do not suddenly vanish the moment someone writes a large campaign check, hires a lobbying firm, or a politician decides it is convenient to pretend otherwise.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
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