Like a majority of Americans, I don’t give money to political campaigns. That’s in part because for the last decade I’ve been working as a journalist, and have thus stayed far away from any kind of political support for any party or candidate. But I sometimes wonder, if I had a different career and I could donate — would I?
It’s a tricky question, at once practical and philosophical, and I think people feel differently about local races compared to congressional and presidential races.
Polling can be unclear, and often misses important details like how much people give and whether they support local or federal candidates, and of course relies on what people say they’re doing, as opposed to actual campaign finance records.
When it comes to top-of-ballot races, the way we pay for elections is broadly unpopular. A recent Politico poll found that 72% agreed there was too much money in politics (13% had no opinion, and just 5% disagreed).
That sentiment has much to do with ‘dark money,’ courtesy of the 2010 Citizens United decision. As the liberal-leaning Brennan Center reported last year, the 2024 election was “the most secretive” in recent history.
“Dark money groups, nonprofits and shell companies that spend on elections without revealing their donors, plowed more than $1.9 billion into last year’s election cycle, a dramatic increase from the prior record of $1 billion in 2020,” analyst Anna Massoglia wrote.
Opinions of Citizens United are mixed but skew negative. A January Ipsos poll found just 15% of Americans said they believed unlimited spending on political campaigns should be protected by the First Amendment, while half disagreed (roughly a third were unsure). Democrats and independents were more likely to disagree with the Citizens United ruling, though Republicans also disagreed with unlimited corporate campaign spending more than they agreed with the ruling.
When it comes to national races, that’s had at least two impacts. One is a sense of frustration. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, a LendingTree survey found the number of Americans who donated (or planned to donate) to a campaign was down ten points from 2020, from 36% to 24%. For a lot of people, that was because of financial constraints, but at least a quarter of people said they didn’t think their donation would make a difference.
The other is the dramatic increase in smaller donations, powered in part by fundraising platforms like WinRed and ActBlue. By some estimates, small donations in congressional races increased by 400% from 2016 to 2020, surpassing super-PAC donations. For voters on both sides of the aisle, feeling like you’re part of a movement gives meaning to a $20 donation that might otherwise feel like spitting in the wind of major corporate donations.
This led to some on-brand consternation in The Atlantic, where staff writer Idrees Kahloon lamented the effect of small-donor power — which he dubbed the “smalligarchy” — to “benefit immoderate and spotlight-seeking candidates of both parties” and the expense of moderate candidates. (Kahloon does concede this might still be better than oligarchy, which I think most people agree is corrosive.)
I take Kahloon’s point that demagoguery is profitable, especially on social media, but I think it ignores what you might call ‘normie populism.’ There are plenty of people who get excited about the prospect of government helping them — whether it's childcare, housing, healthcare, or education — more than they do about histrionic viral clips on TikTok.
Locally, things look a little different, and with a few exceptions, we don’t have that much dark money to deal with — although the costs of running for office are certainly ticking up just as they are nationally. Since covering my first election here in 2016, I’ve watched some pretty significant increases in campaign spending.
Back in 2017, WECT reported that one Wilmington council candidate had a “huge fundraising advantage” because he’d received over $25,000 in donations, compared to under $10,000 for the other candidates. Flash forward to 2025, and the Wilmington City Council race went well over the quarter-million-dollar mark; a majority of eligible candidates raised over $30,000.
This year, state and county candidates in New Hanover County have raised over $2.5 million, with the most intense quarter yet to come (one candidate, incumbent Republican State Senator Michael Lee, accounts for roughly half of that). Former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s Senate race against Republican Michael Whatley is expected to be extremely expensive (if short of the excitable $1-billion estimates thrown around earlier this year).
In our recent reporting, we saw numerous donors to local candidates give the maximum allowed under state law, twice – $6,800 for the primary election and another $6,800 for the general election. While we saw this more for Republican candidates than Democrats, we had to ask: what would motivate anyone to give that much to a single local candidate? Even for the prosperous, $13,200 is a nonnegligible sum. For some people, that’s a year’s rent.
While there is PAC and party spending in these races, the vast majority comes from individual donations — that is, identifiable people, most of whom live here (although not all). One major exception is the consistently nasty and expensive races for New Hanover County’s senate seat, which has seen seven-figure spending from the state parties (often through their Senate caucus funds).
So, in most cases, you can put a name — and usually a face — to much of the local campaign donations.
Based on my conversations over the years, that’s led to some social pressure to donate. It’s a thing you do in some circles, a political tithing, akin to a membership at the country club. It’s like a status symbol and familial obligation, rolled into one. This often also comes with access, although more from being part of a specific community than in exchange for a one-time gift. For obvious reasons, that’s more true at the local level than nationally: being a consistent donor at, say, the $1,000-a-cycle level is more likely to get you the ear of a councilmember or commissioner than face time with a congressional representative or a senator. But it’s not really why you give as much as it is a perk, part of the in-crowd package.
This kind of giving becomes a dutiful habit: folks set aside a certain amount of money and give every election cycle. And that, I think, helps explain why people continue to give even when their candidate seems destined to do poorly — or, conversely, has already racked up huge receipts and looks likely to win.
Often, this is more philosophical than practical, less about specific candidates (and their specific campaign needs), and more about being a ‘good Democrat’ or a ‘good Republican.’ It’s this type of donor — on both sides of the aisle — that has told me they’ve stopped giving, entirely, because they think the party has lost its way.
Then there are those donors who are overtly proud of supporting the politicians of their choice, in a more engaged and intentional way. They often pay more attention to the logistics of campaigns, and understand the specific ways their donations will help those candidates get visibility. And even if the jury is out on the effectiveness of political signs (they might move the needle by a percent or two), it’s hard to deny that name recognition goes a long way. Civic literacy is low, and local races, especially in even years and doubly so in presidential years, are competing for attention.
There have been successful candidates who won elections with modest or minimal fundraising but strong outreach — Democratic city councilman Kevin Spears is a good example. And we’ve seen candidates rake in donations like gangbusters and still lose — last year, Republican Luke Waddell raised over $130,000 and ran a solid campaign, but it didn’t secure him a spot on election day. But most people I’ve spoken to believe money is a ‘necessary but insufficient’ requirement for a successful campaign. In general, the sense is that you usually have to have something to say, and it helps to be charming (or at least memorable), but for that to matter, people need to hear and see you — and that costs money.
It’s a little bit heartwarming that the vast majority of the people I talk to don’t expect anything in return for their donations. They don’t develop a parasocial relationship with the candidate or expect a meet-and-greet or anything like that. Notably, most of those people make relatively small donations; as polling shows, while somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-25% of Americans donate to campaigns (depending on the year and how high-profile the races are), about a half-percent of people give more than $200.
When people give more, sometimes things get a bit weird. In fact, some folks are downright squirrely about their political donations — despite those contributions being a public record for anyone giving over $50 in a state or local race, or over $200 in a federal race. I’ve been told off on several occasions by people who find reporting on campaign donations to be ‘sordid’ or ‘tacky.’
Some of that is driven by a kind of southern gentility, where people feel like money and politics are private (even if donation records are public). The same folks might also blush at disclosing what they spent on housekeeping or private schools for their children. There’s also sometimes the issue of being ‘outed’ as a Republican or a Democrat, not just in name but in financial deed, which has occasionally been cause for pearl-clutching. I find that less common these days — perhaps because tribal affiliation has become de rigeur, or because the idea of keeping your beliefs to yourself has become beyond quaint in the era of social media self-presentation. It does still happen, though, usually with people for whom an apolitical stance is beneficial in their line of work (or who cross party lines with their donations, which can be awkward at cocktail parties).
There’s also a special category of sensitivity around donations from developers.
In southeastern North Carolina, where real estate is both a driving economic force and bone of contention (and boogeyman) on both sides of the aisle, donations from developers often receive acute scrutiny. In the populist imagination, the real estate industry is buying elected officials left and right — but it’s rarely that blatant.
People occasionally remind me of a story I wrote back in 2019 for Port City Daily about developer Jeff Kentner, who had given $13,000 to Wilmington councilman Charlie Rivenbark, then a Democrat, enlisting his wife and children to get around donation limits. Kentner would eventually tell me that, since he was from Charlotte, he wanted to make sure he was on the radar with someone on council. For a guy who worked on eight-figure deals, he told me, it was worth $13,000 to make sure someone in Wilmington would pick up the phone when he called.
It seemed clear Kentner wanted preferential treatment, and I think in some cases he got it. But you could attribute that to Kentner’s relentless approach (which sometimes struck me as out-and-out bullying) just as much or more than to his campaign donation to one council member. I couldn’t point to a time when a city decision had clearly been flipped. It’s true that Rivenbark stepped in now and then to address concerns Kentner had – but that’s also been true of other developers, as well as random strangers with mundane concerns about uneven sidewalks or disputed responsibility for tree branches. (As I wrote in my exit interview with Rivenbark last year, he was the most responsive councilman I’d covered in my time covering the city). Additionally, when there was a vote on one thing or another, council as a whole had approved it, and there was never any evidence Rivenbark had (or even could have) pressured them to change their votes.
And, of course, Kentner’s Galleria never came to be. After a series of setbacks and public pushback, he eventually sold the project to another developer, who is just now — seven years later — completing construction.
I can’t recall another time when a political donation was so explicitly given for the sake of access — but I get why people regularly jump to that conclusion. It’s obviously possible that a developer might simply share a candidate's politics, or like them personally, or generally support their party (or, at least, abhor the opposing party). But it’s hard to see past the plausible incentives based on their line of work. And, for that reason, local journalists have been paying attention to how developers spend during elections — in case one of their projects does come before a council or board to whose members they’ve donated.
For what it’s worth, the Kentner donation was in 2017 (I only caught on to it later), when the groundswell against development had really heated up, driven by controversial mixed-use developments in the Mayfaire area like the Swain family’s Centerpoint project and billionaire super-yacht enthusiast Roy Carroll’s The Avenue (which is still just a pile of dirt and rocks in a cleared field, all these years later). For years, officials from both parties seemed to dismiss frustration with development — but lately that’s changed, and most candidates have been very careful to acknowledge those concerns. (I haven’t seen anyone go so far as to return a donation from a developer, though.)
And, there’s also a difference between the bombast of developers like Kentner or Carroll who come from out of town. Local developers tend to have a lighter touch. For most of my tenure here, what I’ve seen isn’t so much offering donations as part of specific quid pro quos, but as support for whoever is pursuing pro-growth policies. Often that’s meant offering support for both parties.
Take, for example, the partners and executives at Cape Fear Commercial (and its associated entities), who often give to the same candidates. They’ve supported Republicans like Commissioner (and current state house candidate) Dane Scalise and Democrats like Mayor Bill Saffo. The firm has done several public-private projects, but they’ve often been supported by bipartisan votes. If they’re trying to tip the scales – and that is, for many, what a campaign donation is — it seems to be towards candidates with a certain philosophy on development, not a particular project. These days, that looks more like ‘smart growth’ or a balance of growth and greenspace than the ‘sky’s the limit’ enthusiasm of a decade ago.
None of that will be particularly soothing for critics of campaign finance in general. Someone working in real estate is obviously entitled to their opinion about how the government should manage growth, and as a constituent they should certainly be heard by candidates seeking to represent them. But if how loudly and clearly you’re heard depends on how much money you have, that’s clearly gonna strike some people as unfair, even undemocratic.
Suffice it to say, I think the system is flawed — and polling shows I’m hardly alone. And yet, people keep giving, and giving more.
Why? It obviously varies, and there are — as with most things — a Venn diagram of motives for some people.
Interestingly, a quarter century ago, a lawsuit over a new national campaign finance law unearthed an internal document from the Ohio GOP, which laid out the party’s understanding of why people voted, distilled into seven categories.
As CBS reported in 2002, “It turns out that actually believing in the cause or the candidate — surely the purest reason for getting involved in a campaign — counts for something, too, according to the list. It counts for fifth place.”
The top reason was habit, followed by personal relationships. Other motivations included access — of course — and “fear of the other side,” a reminder that tribalism is not new or unique to Trump-era politics. Last, but not least, on the list: CYA — cover your access. That’s for those folks who give to both sides to make sure that, whoever wins, their calls will get answered.
While politically things look very different in 2026, I think that list holds up. But I somehow don’t think any of those reasons would motivate me to donate, even if I could.
I think, candidly, if I had the time and the resources, I would put them towards finding a better way to run our elections.
With all the respect that is certainly due to the people who work — and more often volunteer — tirelessly to support candidates and causes they believe in, the current system feels egregiously expensive, and I’ve seen it routinely fail to really inform voters about candidates and issues (and often outright misleads them). That’s part of the reason I became a journalist in the first place.
