So, What's Up With Those AOC Donations?
Making sense of the campaign donation fiasco that has both the Left & Right upset with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
One of American politics’ most prodigious fundraisers, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York recently drew a torrent of criticism for sharing some of her wealth with Democratic colleagues in tight races. Supporters of hers from the Left expressed anger that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez gave campaign contributions directly to candidates like Conor Lamb, Carolyn Bourdeaux, and Elissa Slotkin because of their opposition to progressive pillars of Ocasio-Cortez’s own platform like Medicare for All.
Then, to add insult to the injury of her progressive bonafides, Bourdeaux, Lamb, and Slotkin all reportedly rejected the much-needed cash from Ocasio-Cortez because they didn’t want to be associated with her.
We spoke with Political Science Professor and campaign finance expert Dr. Robert Boatright of Clark University about this embarrassing and confusing situation. The full audio of the full interview can be found on a special episode of the Deconstructing Consent podcast (below).
In many ways this sticky situation for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the DCCC, her colleagues and the entire Democratic Party is something not at all out of the ordinary. “The Democratic Party and I think the Republican Party as well basically set quotas for what Representatives are supposed to give back to the party. So, in doing this, she’s really just being a team player. Everybody is expected to give back money if they don’t need it for their own campaign and in her case she has way more money than she’s ever going to need to win re-election. So, mostly she’s just being a good sport,” Boatright explained.
“She’s had a complicated history with the DCCC since her time in office so in some ways it’s kind of a peace offering to the DCCC as well.”
As you may have already read in other reports, part of the confusion appeared to be that Ocasio-Cortez chose to give money directly to candidates instead of giving cash to the DCC to distribute as it saw fit. Furthermore, it has been reported that no high-ranking DCC officials were made aware in advance, nor were the candidates Ocasio-Cortez attempted to give donations to.
“There are two ways as a member of Congress that you can hand out money from the campaign treasury. You can give as much as you want to the DCCC or, you can give money directly to other candidates,” Boatright explains.
“If you give money directly to another candidate, obviously you have more control over where the money goes but you have to obey campaign finance regulations on that…It appears that what was controversial here was money that she directly gave to members of Congress. In hindsight, had she wanted to avoid this she could have given it all to the DCCC.”
According to Dr. Boatright it isn’t atypical for Congress members to circumvent the DCC and give directly to one another. It is, however, “unusual for a second-term member of Congress to have so much money,” as does Ocasio-Cortez.
Dr. Boatright also doesn’t think it is strange for Ocasio-Cortez to have attempted to help colleagues who don’t share some of the important policy goals that she says are important to her, like Medicare for All.
“I think she recognizes as most Democrats do that it’s, at best, a 50/50 proposition that the Democrats will hold the house in 2022,” he reasoned.
“So, strategically for Ocasio-Cortez she will need a Democratic majority in order to have any input at all so it’s in her interest to help out people even if they’re not people who see eye-to-eye with her on everything.”
If Ocasio-Cortez had chosen to funnel her cash through the Democratic party instead of giving it to particular candidates herself she would not have received hypothetical credit for helping out those colleagues, though she also would likely not have gotten any of this blame. “No, she would have gotten credit from the party for contributing to the DCCC but it would not have been possible to trace those donations to any particular member of Congress. There would have been no controversy whatsoever…My guess is that she had no idea that it would turn out the way it did,” Boatright said.
Politicians feeling compelled to give back money from sources they find embarrassing isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. Dr. Boatright does believe that Democratic Congress members giving to one another becoming so suddenly controversial is a newer development, however.
“It is not uncommon for politicians to refund contributions that are going to look embarrassing to them…If we go all the way back to the Enron scandal, for instance, around the time of the 2002 election, Enron had given money to virtually every member of Congress and then when they wound up getting in legal trouble every member scrambled to return that money so that they could claim the high-road,” he continues.
“I think that what she’s getting caught up in is that over the last year or so I think that the amount of this sort of performance – people refusing campaign contributions or refusing to give to people has gotten to be a bigger deal. For instance, around January 6th, around the time of the insurrection at the Capitol a number of corporations very publicly said, ‘well, we’re not going to give money to Josh Hawley or other members of Congress that we saw supporting this…[we’re also seeing this in Georgia] where a lot of corporations are now being pushed to not give money to a variety of Georgia politicians. So, the amount of performance around campaign contributions has really grown a lot in the last few months. I think had she given this money in her first term I don’t know that this would have been as big a deal.”
Despite the apparent pressure to engage in this type of performative rebuke, Dr. Boatright says it is difficult to find empirical evidence that such donations from the likes of politicians with progressive or socialist reputations like Ocasio-Cortez to conservative members of her party actually hurts their electoral chances, in and of themselves.
“It’s pretty indisputable that in the last election cycle Republican attack ads tried very hard to associate every single vulnerable Democrat with Ocasio-Cortez or other members of the so-called Squad or Nancy Pelosi,” he allows.
“I don’t think at the end of the day it makes any difference if she gave them money. If I’m a Republican ad consultant I’m still going to find some way to mention AOC in my attack ads, regardless of what the connection may be so in some ways I think these members are being overly risk averse. It sounds like a regrettable controversy on everybody’s part.”