The Real Importance of the 2010 Elections

Due to the recent Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, this fall’s midterm election will not be remembered as the end to the huge Democratic majority in the House, but as the election that spent an unprecedented amount of money on this year’s campaigns. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, interest groups alone have raised and spent about $300 million, a whopping four times greater than the amount spent by interest groups in the 2006 midterm elections.

In this past election, much more money was spent towards promoting conservative, Republican candidates and causes, than Democratic liberal ones. In this year’s midterm according to The Charlotte Observer, Republican interest groups have outspent Democratic interest groups by a 2-1 ratio, a complete reversal of the 2006 election where the Democratic groups led the spending by a 2-1 ratio.

The socially conservative interest groups particularly have won big this year. Groups, such as anti-abortion groups like National Right to Life Committee and anti-gay marriage groups, have not only donated more this fall towards independent campaigns, but were the ones that originally called for a change in the campaign finance laws last year. This year they saw it successfully pass in the Supreme Court, allowing them to increasingly and anonymously fund independent campaigns mostly for Republican candidates who support their causes. Socially liberal interest groups however are anxious about relationship between these conservative social interest groups and Republicans; saying that, “It’s an unholy marriage between some politically extreme elements and a very well-financed corporatist push”.

This 2010 election marks the beginning of the "privatization of America’s election process", in which political parties will now indirectly receive unlimited funding from corporations and organizations. With social issues like abortion and gay-marriage already being such huge dividing issues in politics, this new privatization phenomenon that allows social interest groups to play an even more integral part of the campaigns begs the question -- will we be seeing an even more hyper-pluralistic society and a larger division between America's two parties?