Obscene money sloshing through US politics becomes central theme ahead of midterm elections

One of the more wickedly inventive political adverts of recent years is airing on Texas local television networks and features grainy courthouse footage and a very flashy pen. In 2013, a local attorney named Joe Joplin was passing through the security machines at the courthouse in McKinney and accidentally left his Montblanc pen behind him.Blurry security footage later showed another man snaffling the pen for himself and walking away. The man was Ken Paxton, the state attorney general and current Republican candidate for John Cornyn’s Senate seat. The advert voiceover claims Joplin could have pressed charges but decided against it, because “Joe Joplin is a nice guy”.READ MOREPaxton has spent a decade adamantly explaining the incident away as an honest mistake. But his opponent was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The advert replays the footage of that day, before ending with Joplin brandishing the thousand-dollar pen and endorsing James Talarico for senator.“Vote for James Talarico,” the advert ends. “He won’t steal your pen.”Although the 2024 presidential election demonstrated the shifting significance of the media landscape, with Donald Trump adroitly harnessing popular podcasts such as Joe Rogan’s to reach fringe voters, the television advert remains a key weapon in bare-knuckle regional campaigns. Talarico, the 37-year-old pastor who can mix biblical allusion with vicious political retort, has been having fun using the advert to bolster his message that Paxton is not to be trusted.“He took this guy’s $1,000 Montblanc pen in broad daylight. It’s all on camera,” he told a crowd at a recent rally in Killeen.“Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in Texas. He will steal your tax dollars, your healthcare, and now we know he will steal your pens.”Talarico had been a rising star for the Democrats long before he clinched the primary nomination, charming and impressing a slew of media influencers – including Rogan, who told him: “You need to run for president.” But he’s also a formidable fundraiser and has benefited from a super political action committee (PAC), Lone Star Rising, that has raised $21 million (€18.1 million) in just over a year, almost twice the total of Paxton’s war chest. It was enough to cause Paxton to make a direct appeal to donors on a recent Fox News appearance. “We’re trying to get help from all over the country. We need help.” [ ‘Fight the system. Not the neighbour’: Democrat James Talarico preaches third way in TexasOpens in new window ]His problems are compounded by a residual loyalty to Cornyn, who lost his primary – and a Senate run that goes back to 2002 – after Trump decided to endorse Paxton. Cornyn is a proven fundraiser but has indicated he will be using his influence to help candidates in other states, leaving Paxton to fend for himself. Thus came Thursday’s visit to Houston by Trump, shortly after his renaming of Lake Ontario. Meantime, Talarico popped up on text messages and online small adverts presenting himself as a champion of the little guy. “Five dollars is all I’m asking” to take on “the billionaire megadonors and their puppet politicians”, he told his audience.But the Montblanc advert is symbolic of the eye-watering sums of money it takes to run for a congressional and Senate seat. The obscene money sloshing through US politics has become an underlying theme of the midterm elections.The 2010 supreme court Citizens United ruling, which essentially removed all guardrails from donor contributions, has had a transformative effect on the impact of mega donors and dark-money contributions (organisations whose list of contributors can remain private) to candidates from interest groups. The intervention by Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, midway through the 2024 presidential election, when he pitched some $250 million into Trump’s campaign, took the logical outcome of the 2010 decision to new extremes. But it coincides with a growing unease among the electorate over the sense that their choices and candidates have become mega-donor pawns.The success of many democratic socialist candidates in the midterm primary election cycle has been down to their avowed refusal to accept donations from super PACs.Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate candidate, made a virtue of the fact that his Democratic primary opponent, Haley Stevens, outspent his campaign by four to one during their election race. (Stevens accepted the narrow loss with grace and offered a swift and full endorsement).Last week, Axios reported that Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate running against El-Sayed, has asked AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee, not to run adverts on his behalf for fear of a voter backlash in the state.[ Keith Duggan: Talarico preaches third way in TexasOpens in new window ]El-Sayed, meanwhile, has made a reversal of the Citizens United decision a key element of his campaign manifesto. “Government won’t actually work for people until we get billionaire and corporate money out of politics.” His campaign fund war chest stands at $4.5 million, raised from $100-or-less donations from private citizens. It’s an impressive sum but won’t buy all that much television advertising space. El-Sayed has been making up for that by popping up in unexpected places. Earlier this week he sparred with Jesse Watters, the Fox night-time news anchor in a wild interview. At one stage, Watters asked the candidate why someone such as Beyoncé, who recently joined America’s billionaire club, should have to pay more tax on the fruits of her labour.“I think she would be happy to invest in good roads in her community. I think she’d be happy to pay a little bit more so that everybody would have a little bit more. I thought you were for the everyday man. Billionaires don’t make their money off their labour. That is where you and I head off.“Billionaires make their money off their money. So, if you have a billion dollars, your billion makes another 100 million. That’s not the fruits of your labour. That’s just the fruits of your money making money. If we tax you at 7 per cent, you’re still going to make a cool 30 million dollars of your billion. They’re going to be okay, Jesse.”Watters thought about this and moved on.As prime-time television space goes, you couldn’t buy it.