Billionaires and Stealth Politics
Billionaires and Stealth Politics
b e n j a m i n i . p a g e
j a s o n s e a w r i g h t
m a t t h e w j . l a c o m b e
the university of chicago press
chicago and london
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2019 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 58609- 0 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 58612- 0 (paper)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 58626- 7 (e- book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226586267.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Page, Benjamin I., author. | Seawright, Jason, author. | Lacombe, Matthew J., author.
Title: Billionaires and stealth politics / Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, Matthew J. Lacombe.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018031838 | isbn 9780226586090 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9780226586120 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226586267 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Billionaires—Political activity—United States. |
Rich People—Political activity—United States. | Wealth—Political aspects. |
United States—Politics and government—21st century.
Classification: LCC hc79.w4 .p34 2018 | ddc 320.973086/21—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031838
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
Figure and Tables vii
Preface ix
Introduction 1
chapter 1. Who the Billionaires Are 10
chapter 2. Stealth Politics on Taxes and Social Security 25
chapter 3. Four Billionaires Up Close 54
chapter 4. Keeping Quiet on Social Issues 77
chapter 5. Reshaping State and Local Politics 100
chapter 6. What Is to Be Done about Billionaires? 126
Appendixes 145
1.
Comparison between 2013 and 2016 Forbes Lists 145
2.
Keywords Used for Taxation and Social Security Searches 148
3.
Position Taking among Forbes Top 100 on Economic Issues 148
4.
Position Taking among Forbes Top 100 on Social Issues 151
5.
Keywords Used for Social Issue Searches 155
Notes 157
References 181
Index 203
figure
4.1 Perceived Threat of Immigration and Importance of the Goal of
Reducing Illegal Immigration, 1994– 2016 / 93
tables
2.1 Frequencies of Statements on Taxes and Social Security / 39
2.2 Regression Predicting Number of Statements about Taxes / 40
2.3 Regression Predicting Directionality of Statements about
Taxes / 41
2.4 General Political Activity by the One Hundred Wealthiest
Billionaires / 43
2.5 Frequency of Billionaires’ Policy- Related Actions on Taxes and
Social Security / 44
2.6 Regression Predicting Directionality of Nonstatement
Actions on Taxes and Social Security / 45
2.7 Regression Predicting Bundling or Hosting at Least One
Fund- Raiser / 46
4.1 Frequencies of Policy- Related Actions on Social Issues / 83
4.2 Frequencies of Statements on Social Issues / 84
4.3 Frequencies of Statements on Abortion, Same- Sex
Marriage, and Immigration / 85
4.4 Correlations of Wealth and Visibility with Statements and Actions
on Social Issues / 89
4.5 Regression Predicting Number of Same- Sex Marriage
Statements / 91
viii
figure and tables
4.6 Regression Predicting Direction of Nonstatement Actions on
Same- Sex Marriage / 92
4.7 Regression Predicting Number of Immigration Statements / 95
5.1 Boundary- Control Expectations / 111
5.2 Firth Logistic Regression Model Predicting Use of Boundary
Control / 115
5.3 Estimated Effects of Changes on Boundary- Control Independent
Variables / 116
Preface
This book grew out of a collaborative study of multimillionaires: the
Survey of Economically Successful Americans and the Common
Good, or SESA. A survey of the top one to two percent of wealth holders
in the Chicago area, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago,
SESA was the first study of the political attitudes and actions of a rep-
resentative sample of wealthy Americans. The findings— some of them
noted in this book— seemed interesting. We hoped to build on them by
conducting a definitive survey of a representative sample of multimillionaires across the United States as a whole.
For a good part of two years, we tried to assemble a consortium of
foundations or wealthy individuals who would provide the millions of
dollars required to select, contact, and conduct personal interviews with a truly representative, nationwide sample of multimillionaires. No luck.
Meanwhile, however, one of us (Jason Seawright) was germinating a quite
different idea. Why settle for multimillionaires, those notorious (perhaps unfairly notorious) “one- percenters,” whose wealth was paltry compared
to that of the very wealthiest Americans? Why not go for the wealthiest
of all: billionaires? Billionaires would be impossible to interview, but perhaps publicly available information about them— if comprehensively gath-
ered and carefully analyzed— could tell us a lot.
Accordingly, Seawright devised the systematic “web- scraping” tech-
nique for studying billionaires that is described in chapter 2 below. Benjamin Page signed on. Matthew Lacombe— then a graduate student at
Northwestern University— was persuaded to combine his dissertation
research on the NRA and gun control with major attention to the politics
of billionaires. We obtained some generous— and, as it turned out, very
patient— financial support. We hired a number of research assistants. We
x
preface
were off and running, though our initial sprint evolved into a marathon;
the work ended up taking several years to complete.
For getting us started, we are particularly grateful to our collaborators on SESA, including Christopher Jencks, Larry Bartels, and Fay Lomax
Cook, and to Eric Wanner and the Russell Sage Foundation, who funded
SESA. For helping us try for a national survey of multimillionaires, and
for then funding the b
illionaires project itself, we are very grateful to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, especially Robert Gallucci, Julia Stasch, and Valerie Chang. They stuck with us for more years than anyone could reasonably expect. We also thank the Gordon Scott
Fulcher research fund at Northwestern University and Northwestern’s
Department of Political Science, which has provided a stimulating and
supportive environment for conducting multimethods research.
We benefited from careful and diligent work by several talented re-
search assistants, including graduate students Jacob Rothschild and Laura Garcia and undergraduates Pauline Esman, Alexander Froy, Hane Kim,
and Kenneth Hill.
We are grateful to Tom Ferguson and Paul Jorgensen, who generously
shared their data on political contributions, and to a number of colleagues who have commented on various drafts of one or more sections of the book.
They include Ed Gibson and Dan Galvin (particularly on the “boundary-
control” strategy) and panelists and audience members at venues where
we presented parts of our work: the Midwest Political Science Association (twice), the American Political Science Association, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Cornell University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara.
We owe a great deal to Chuck Myers, our insightful and hard- working
editor, and to four anonymous reviewers who pushed us hard and led us
to make significant improvements in the book.
Most of all, we are grateful to our families and friends, who provided
emotional support, put up with the travails of the writing process, and gave us some good ideas about billionaires too.
Introduction
In 2016, when millions of Americans voted for billionaire Donald J.
Trump to be president of the United States, many of them hoped that
Trump’s personal wealth would free him from depending on wealthy do-
nors and allow him to “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC. But then
Trump appointed several billionaires and multimillionaires— including
Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross, Linda McMahon, Steven Mnuchin, and Gary
Cohn— to high government positions. And he pursued a number of poli-
cies that were perceived as billionaire- friendly: relaxing environmental and workplace regulations on businesses; proposing to cut corporate and
high- end income taxes and to abolish the estate tax; and trying to reduce federal spending on health care and other social safety net programs.1
What was going on? Has the United States entered a new Gilded Age
like that of the late nineteenth century, in which politicians of all sorts ca-tered to the plutocrats of the time?
For several decades, the incomes and wealth of most working- class and
middle- class Americans have stagnated, but the fortunes of those at the
top have soared. The gap between the wealthiest and everyone else has
become a chasm.2 The few who hold one billion dollars or more in net
worth have begun to play a more and more active part in politics, perhaps creating serious imbalances for democracy— imbalances that this book
explores.
One billion dollars— $1,000,000,000, one thousand million dollars— is
a lot of money. As of October 2017, according to Forbes magazine, 569
Americans enjoyed fortunes of $1 billion or more— in some cases, a great
deal more. In autumn 2017, the ten wealthiest had a net worth of $89 bil-
lion, $81.5 billion, $78 billion, $71 billion, $59 billion, $48.5 billion, $48.5 billion, $46.8 billion, $44.6 billion, and $43.4 billion, respectively. The next
2
introduction
ten did not lag far behind: number 20 was George Soros, with $23 billion.3
Late in 2017 the grand total of wealth held by all 569 American billion-
aires taken together was $2.7 trillion ($2,700,000,000,000)— an astounding sum that exceeded the entire annual gross domestic product (GDP) of
Italy (~$1.8 trillion) or France (~$2.5 trillion). In fact, the total wealth of US billionaires exceeded the total GDP of dozens of fairly populous
countries added together.4
A bare one billion dollars is no longer enough to make the Forbes list of 400 wealthiest Americans, which closed out in 2017 at $2 billion. That left some 169 US billionaires off the prestigious Forbes roster.
To a billionaire, a mere million dollars here or there is basically pocket change. Billionaires have plenty of disposable wealth to spend on politics, if and when they choose to do so. Many do. Quite a few US billionaires
regularly contribute hundreds of thousands— or millions— of dollars to
political parties and candidates (most of the money goes to Republicans,
but plenty of Democrats get it too).5 Many also give to policy- oriented organizations and causes.
In the 2014 congressional elections, billionaires David and Charles Koch
assembled nearly $300 million to help elect conservative Republicans. The Koch brothers laid plans (never fully carried out) to spend $889 million in 2016.6 In that year Donald Trump got substantial financial help from billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer, among others. According
to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top thirty US billionaires alone made over $180 million of reportable contributions in 2016.7 This figure
actually understates their total influence— perhaps understates it a great deal— by excluding secret “dark- money” contributions.
The vast sums invested by billionaires and multimillionaires in recent
years have made up a big part of total political contributions in the United States, with money from the top 0.01 percent (1/10,000) of Americans
making up an extraordinary 40 percent of total federal contributions as
of 2012— again excluding dark money.8
Not only Donald Trump, but most other US billionaires, too, tend to fa-
vor wealthy- friendly public policies that diverge sharply from what majorities of Americans want. Many billionaires— including some who contribute
to Democratic candidates— seek tax cuts for businesses and wealthy indi-
viduals. (A favorite aim is to abolish the estate tax.) Many billionaires favor completely free trade and investment across international borders, without providing much help to ordinary Americans whose wages are pressured
downward by trade. Many billionaires want less government regulation of
introduction
3
the economy. Many seek cuts in spending on social welfare programs like
Social Security that are crucial to millions of middle- class and lower- income Americans.9 Each of these policy ideas is far less popular among Americans with lower levels of wealth.
Recent research has shown that affluent Americans have a lot more in-
fluence on the making of public policy than average Americans do.10 But
the “affluent” people who have been studied constitute a large and diverse group; they include many members of the upper middle class, not just the
exceptionally wealthy. We do not really know exactly which of the affluent have how much influence. If money tends to produce political influence,
however, it makes sense that more money probably produces more influ-
ence: that multimillionaires have more political clout than merely affluent members of the upper middle class. And it makes sense that billionaires—
who have about one hundred times as much wealth as the least wealthy members of the perhaps unfairly notorious “one percent”— can probably
exert the most political clout of all.11
There has been at least one survey into the political attitudes and activities of a representative sample of mul
timillionaires.12 But until now there has been very little systematic research into the politics of billionaires.
Darrell West has provided a thoughtful essay about US billionaires,
putting them into a worldwide comparative context.13 A few biographies
of individual billionaires and their families include interesting political material. Jane Mayer has done important investigative reporting on several of the most politically active billionaires14 of recent decades— Richard Mellon Scaife, John M. Olin, Lynde and Harry Bradley, and especially
Charles and David Koch.15 Theda Skocpol and her research group have
examined the politics of the Koch brothers and their extensive network
of wealthy conservative donors.16 And Nancy MacLean has done remark-
able archival research on the Koch- funded libertarian intellectual net-
work centered at George Mason University.17 But scholars have not been
able to learn much about the politics of today’s US billionaires as a group—
the hundreds of very quiet billionaires, as well as the handful of noisy or visible ones.
The reason is simple: billionaires are hard to study. Most of them are
very busy. They carefully protect their privacy. Most have no desire at
all to reveal their private lives or their political views to outsiders. Most billionaires employ professional gatekeepers, whose jobs include fending off outsiders like journalists, social scientists, survey interviewers, and other snoops. Some wealthy people’s gatekeepers themselves have
4
introduction
gatekeepers.18 To sit down and chat for an hour with even a single billionaire is a distant dream for most researchers. To systematically survey the political attitudes and behavior of a representative sample of billionaires would be utterly impossible.19
The best that can be done to get at the politics of most contemporary
billionaires, then, is to gather and analyze publicly available information about them, including whatever letters and documents exist; official records of financial contributions to political candidates and causes; and
reports of the billionaires’ words and actions in print or electronic media.
In this book we examine the politics of the one hundred wealthiest US
billionaires— the top tier of the Forbes 400- wealthiest list. We take what can be called a “web- scraping and public records” approach to studying