The lie of Trump’s self-funding campaign

In the 2018 cycle, 185 Democratic candidates have promised not to accept money from corporate PACs, according to End Citizens United, a Washington, D.C.–based group working to reverse the eponymous Supreme Court decision. Eighty-five of them have won their primaries so far. Many are national names: The pledge was one of Lamb’s claims to fame in Pennsylvania’s 18th District, where he won in an upset election in March. Same with Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated the PAC-backed incumbent Joe Crowley in New York in June, and Randy Bryce, the mustachioed ironworker hoping to replace Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin. It’s happening on the Senate side, too: Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Sheldon Whitehouse have all taken the pledge this year, joining several colleagues who’d previously made the vow. (Two Republican representatives, Phil Roe of Tennessee and Francis Rooney of Florida, have also eschewed corporate-PAC funds.)

The pledge has roots in earlier election cycles where the rejection of PAC money fueled candidates’ grassroots support. The then-candidate Barack Obama pioneered the trend in 2008 by refusing contributions from all kinds of PACs, not just corporate ones, during his presidential run. So did Bernie Sanders, who eschewed large donations from corporations in 2016 but did accept cash from some PACs. While he broke his promise to self-fund his presidential campaign, Donald Trump accepted fewer PAC contributions than almost all of his Republican primary opponents.

In this way, the 2018 contenders refusing corporate-PAC money are part of a larger trend in politics, but one that’s never been seen with quite these numbers. “I think it’s smart for [the 2018 candidates] to have figured it out,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder and the president of Justice Democrats, a PAC that formed after the 2016 election to support progressive candidates who pledge not to take money from corporate PACs or lobbyists. This year, the group has endorsed, among others, Ocasio-Cortez, Bryce, and Cynthia Nixon, who’s running for governor in New York. “People are realizing that the winning message is the progressive message,” Chakrabarti said. “Not taking corporate money is a core part of the progressive message.”

But while the pledge might help attract voters, it isn’t otherwise consequential—at least not yet. Corporate-PAC donations don’t constitute a significant amount of any Democratic candidate’s funding, and nothing precludes candidates from accepting individual donations from corporate executives. But progressives say the symbolism still matters, and that it’s a step in the right direction for reforming America’s campaign-finance system.

“There’s an intuitive sense in voters that most of the dysfunction in Washington is a result of a broken system,” said Steve Israel, a former representative from New York and a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “I think it’s essential for Democrats to tap into that intuition, and one way is to boldly proclaim you’re not going to accept those corporate funds.”