Commentary
by Brandon Burley and The Redemption Project
Money is damaging American elections.
Not always by breaking the law.
That part matters.
A lot of the money moving through modern politics is legal. Super PACs can raise and spend large sums. Independent groups can support or oppose candidates. Wealthy donors, corporations, unions, nonprofits and political committees can all play roles in shaping what voters see and hear.
The problem is not simply that political money exists.
The problem is that modern election money increasingly moves through structures that make it difficult for ordinary citizens to know who is shaping the race, why they are doing it and whether local elections are being turned into national investment opportunities.
The people still vote.
But too often, the conversation has already been purchased.
That does not mean votes are fake. It does not mean elections are illegitimate. It does not mean every candidate supported by outside money is corrupt or controlled.
It means voters often walk into the booth after months of messages, attacks, ads and issue campaigns paid for by people and organizations they may never clearly see.
That is a civic problem.
And it is bigger than one party.
Campaign finance is one of those subjects that gets buried under legal language, partisan suspicion and social media slogans. People hear “dark money” and attach it to whichever side they already distrust. They hear “megadonor” and picture the villain their political tribe has trained them to recognize.
That is not enough.
If citizens are going to talk seriously about money in elections, they have to separate the pieces.
There is candidate money. That is the money raised and spent by the official campaign.
There is outside spending. That is money spent by groups other than the candidate’s campaign.
There are super PACs. These are political committees that can raise and spend unlimited sums for independent expenditures, but cannot give directly to candidates or coordinate that spending with campaigns
There are independent expenditures. Those are communications that expressly advocate for or against a clearly identified candidate and are not made in coordination with the candidate, campaign or political party.
There is dark money. That usually means political spending where the original donors are not disclosed to the public, often through nonprofits or other entities.
Those definitions matter because the public often talks about “campaign money” as if it is one pile.
It is not.
A candidate’s bank account may tell voters less than the ad market does.
That is one of the most important things citizens need to understand. A voter can look at a candidate’s official campaign filings and still miss a large part of the political operation shaping the race. The outside group attacking a candidate may not be part of the campaign. The group praising a candidate may not be controlled by the candidate. The issue ad that appears in a local race may be connected to a national policy network.
None of that automatically proves wrongdoing.
But it changes what voters are seeing.
The Federal Election Commission says independent expenditures are not contributions and are not subject to amount limits, as long as they are not coordinated with a candidate, campaign or political party. The FEC also says a campaign benefiting from an independent expenditure has no reporting obligation for that outside spending.
That is the legal structure.
And it creates a practical problem for citizens.
If the candidate does not have to report the outside spending, and the outside group is operating through layers of committees, nonprofits or donor networks, the average voter may have no simple way to understand who is trying to shape the race.
This is not just a Washington problem.
Tennessee voters are already seeing it.
Tennessee Lookout reported that Jeff Yass, a national Republican donor, gave $1 million to Team Tennessee PAC, a political action committee set up to support U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign for governor.
That does not prove illegal coordination. It does not prove candidate control. It does not prove corruption.
It does show how national money can enter a Tennessee race through an outside-support structure.
That distinction matters.
Citizens should not overclaim.
They also should not ignore what is happening in front of them.
Tennessee’s school voucher fights show the same larger pattern. Tennessee Lookout reported in 2024 that pro-voucher groups spent nearly $4.5 million across Tennessee legislative primaries, with much of that spending connected to groups and donors supporting school-choice policies.
Again, the point is not that every dollar is illegal.
The point is that policy fights, donor priorities and local elections are increasingly tied together.
That should concern citizens no matter where they land on the policy itself.
A voter can support school vouchers and still want to know who is paying to influence the race.
A voter can oppose school vouchers and still need to separate documented spending from unsupported claims.
The same standard should apply across parties, candidates and causes.
Transparency is not a partisan value.
It is a civic necessity.
Self-government depends on the people being able to see who is trying to persuade them. If a wealthy donor supports a candidate, voters should know that. If a national policy group wants to shape a local primary, voters should know that. If a nonprofit or other entity helps move money into election messaging while hiding the original source, voters should know that too.
That does not tell voters what to think.
It gives them the information needed to think clearly.
The modern campaign finance system often makes that harder.
Some of this grew from court decisions. Some grew from political incentives. Some grew because both parties learned how to use the rules and then had little incentive to change them.
That is how institutional distrust grows.
Institutional distrust happens when people lose confidence that public systems are operating openly, fairly and for the public good. Some distrust is earned. Some is manipulated. But when citizens see large sums of money moving through structures they cannot easily understand, distrust becomes predictable.
That does not mean citizens should become cynical.
Political cynicism says the whole thing is rigged, everyone is corrupt and nothing matters.
That is not civic clarity.
That is surrender.
The better response is disciplined skepticism.
Ask who paid for the ad.
Ask whether the message came from the candidate, the party, a super PAC, a nonprofit or an issue group.
Ask what the disclaimer says.
Ask who funds the group.
Ask whether the spending is supporting a candidate, attacking a candidate or shaping a policy fight.
Ask whether the donor is local, national or hidden.
Ask what the candidate says about the issue connected to the spending.
Ask what the donor or group may gain if the policy moves forward.
Those are fair questions.
They are not conspiracy theories.
They are basic citizenship.
The danger in modern elections is not only that money helps some candidates more than others. The deeper danger is that money can shape the public conversation before voters realize the conversation has been shaped.
It can decide which issues become urgent.
It can define candidates early.
It can repeat attacks until they feel like common knowledge.
It can frame policy fights as moral emergencies while leaving tradeoffs out of view.
It can make a local race feel local while the money behind the message is national.
A republic does not only need ballots.
It needs public understanding.
If citizens are going to govern themselves, they need to know who is speaking to them, what interests are behind the message and how much money is being spent to make one version of reality feel unavoidable.
That is where campaign finance becomes more than paperwork.
It becomes a test of civic trust.
Some people will say this is free speech.
There is truth in that. Political spending is often connected to political speech, and the First Amendment matters. Government should be careful before restricting political expression.
But free speech does not require public blindness.
Citizens can defend the right to speak and still demand transparency about who is paying for the microphone.
That is not contradiction.
That is accountability.
Others will say both sides do it, so there is nothing to discuss.
Both sides using the system is exactly why there is something to discuss.
When a system rewards opacity, political actors learn to use opacity. When a system rewards national donor networks, campaigns and causes learn to court national donor networks. When a system rewards outside groups that can attack without the candidate carrying the same visible burden, candidates can benefit from messages they did not officially approve.
That is not a defense of the system.
It is the problem.
The issue is not whether Republicans use outside money or Democrats use outside money.
They do.
The issue is whether citizens are willing to accept an election culture where the loudest voices are often the best funded, the original funders are sometimes hard to identify and local voters are left trying to sort out the truth after the ad has already done its work.
No law can remove money from politics completely.
Nor should citizens expect that.
Candidates need to communicate. Citizens have a right to organize. Groups have a right to advocate. People with strong policy beliefs have a right to spend money advancing them within the law.
The goal should not be fantasy.
The goal should be visibility.
Voters should be able to tell the difference between a candidate’s campaign and an outside group. They should know when a local race is being shaped by national money. They should know when a policy fight is being pushed by donors with interests beyond the district. They should know when the source of money is hidden.
That information does not decide the election for them.
It lets them decide with their eyes open.
For Tennessee, this matters now because the 2026 cycle is already underway. The governor’s race is moving. Congressional races are moving. State policy fights are moving. Outside money is already looking for influence points.
Citizens should be watching too.
Not with panic.
With discipline.
Do not assume every ad is false.
Do not assume every donor is corrupt.
Do not assume every candidate supported by outside money is controlled.
But do not be naïve.
Ask who paid.
Ask what they want.
Ask why this race matters to someone who does not live there.
Ask whether the message is informing voters or conditioning them.
Ask whether local elections are still being treated as local acts of self-government, or whether they are becoming investment opportunities for national political networks.
Money is damaging American elections because it is making influence harder to see.
Not always illegally.
Not always corruptly.
But too often quietly, through systems that are layered, nationalized and difficult for ordinary citizens to trace.
That is the civic problem.
The ballot box still matters. It is still where citizens make the final choice.
But if voters cannot clearly see who paid to shape the conversation before they arrived, then self-government has already been weakened before the first vote is cast.
I am a retired detective and criminal justice / government educator based in Tennessee. I am a commentary write for Tennessee Lookout and a weekly columnist with Knox TN Today. My work examines public policy, public safety systems and civic responsibility. My reporting and commentary have also appeared in Governing, The Arizona Capitol Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Police1, among other state and regional outlets.
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