The Democratic Party is attempting to paint Republicans as the party of the “oligarchy” — pointing to billionaire backers like Elon Musk.
But as they do so, they could risk ostracizing liberal donors, especially as the price of winning elections continues to climb and asking for big donations continues to be a crucial part of the political process.
Rep. Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview with MSNBC over the weekend that Democrats need to “clearly sever our ties with the billionaire class and clearly become the pro-worker, anti-billionaire, anti-corruption party.”
Distancing themselves from big-money donors doesn’t necessarily mean cutting ties entirely with the wealthy — especially those who agree with Democrats and want to give the party money. But, Casar argued, Democrats shouldn’t shy away from talking about billionaires in their races out of fear of alienating them.
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“We should be campaigning on taxing billionaires, raising worker wages and getting big money out of politics,” Casar told NOTUS on Tuesday when asked to elaborate on his statement. “If that’s central to our message, we’ll have better results in elections and better results in the country.”
“Democratic members of Congress and Democratic elected officials across the country should be willing to get uninvited from a fancy dinner or two if it means winning the elections,” Casar added.
In interviews with several high-fundraising Democrats, members told NOTUS that what’s more important than the income of their funders is shared values. Plus, until campaign laws are changed, these members said, there’s nothing to stop billionaire influence on politics.
“We need campaign finance reform, and we shouldn’t have all the money in politics that there is,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who raised tens of millions of dollars for her race the last election cycle, told NOTUS. “But unfortunately, the Citizens United decision that came out in 2010 has made that incredibly challenging.”
In 2024, eight of the top 10 individual donors to political campaigns supported Republicans, including billionaires like Musk and Timothy Mellon. A majority of the money coming from top donors into elections is flowing through super PACs, which can accept unlimited sums.
It’s the loopholes that allow indirect, unlimited spending via super PACs that Democrats want to see closed. But the fact that someone is a billionaire shouldn’t disqualify them from financially supporting the party, several Democrats said.
“What we shouldn’t be doing is taking corporate money or super PAC money,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California told NOTUS. “If [billionaires] are limited to $3,500, I think that’s perfectly fine. Like Bernie, for example, took individual contributions from folks.” (Khanna, a prolific fundraiser, does not accept PAC money and introduced a bill in March with six other Democratic co-sponsors to put a $5,000 per calendar year limit on contributions to super PACs, “effectively abolishing them.”)
Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said that in close races, it’s not really an option to turn down a high-net-worth donor.
“I had to raise $75 million to run an R+9 state,” Gallego told NOTUS. “Whoever is willing to give me money to defeat Republicans, I’m going to take it.”
Big money in the Republican party has continued to flex its muscle since the 2024 election. The state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin in April became the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, in large part due to money from billionaires. Musk spent at least $3 million on the race himself, and other Musk-funded groups spent a total of over $18 million.
But Democrats had a few billionaires of their own show up in Wisconsin, including George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who spent a combined $3.5 million.
That’s proof that a person’s values aren’t tied to the amount in their bank accounts, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas argued, disagreeing with the notion that Democrats are “tied” to billionaires.
“We know that JB Pritzker is a billionaire, but do I think that we should somehow kneecap him when he has been on the right side of history?” Crockett told NOTUS. “We should always be looking at people’s shared values.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who previously chaired the progressive caucus, said she largely agrees with Casar’s sentiment but also doesn’t think all billionaires fit into the mold of those who intend to shape policy in their favor.
“It’s very clear that we can’t be in bed with just any billionaire who doesn’t share our values,” Jayapal said. “To me, there are certainly billionaires that we work with who want us to push for higher minimum wage, who want to be taxed for their wealth, and I have a bunch of them in my district.”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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