Your vote means nothing compared to theirs: Special interest groups are spending the money and calling the shots.

• Author: Alsever, Jennifer

AS MUCH AS 58 PERCENT of the $44 million in career campaign donations to current Utah lawmakers have come from special interest groups, according to data from OpenSecrets, a nonprofit with a tool that makes campaign finance donations transparent.

The Utah Association of Realtors came in at the top of the heap, throwing almost $1 million at current lawmakers since the start of their careers, while two energy companies, PacifiCorp and Energy Solutions, doled out $261,100 and $445,718, respectively. As much as $10 million in-state campaign donations came from out-of-state donors.

"It's something we're worried about," says Chase Thomas, executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah, a nonprofit that holds the government accountable to citizens. "It's hard to draw a straight line between contributions and a vote, but it still begs the question of whether lawmakers are making decisions for people or special interests."

Utah state candidates collected $25.2 million in political donations in 2020--that's up from $10 million in 2000. The state is an outlier among some rural states, such as Montana, where individuals tend to give more than special interests. Utah's officeholders draw higher dollar amounts from wealthy donors and corporations likely because Utah has no donation limits, says Pete Quist, deputy research director at OpenSecrets.

For-profit interests almost exclusively give money to incumbents, Quist says, because these are the people who are already in office and have the best odds of winning. Incumbents win 89 percent to 96 percent of the time. "If you're a large donor, you're more likely to get a meeting with the lawmaker," Quist says. "Whether or not they're in the pocket of donors, it's always an open question."

State-level campaigns are garnering more money than ever before. They broke a record in 2018 when donors steered $6.1 billion toward state elections across the nation. "We will likely break another record this year for the number of contributions," Quist says.

Money has poured into national elections at unprecedented levels as well, following the 2010 US Supreme Court's landmark ruling on the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections. Now, huge sums of money from anonymous companies and billionaires are influencing local politics, whether it's a US Senate race or a school board seat, says Bill Cortese, executive director of American Promise, a non-partisan, grassroots organization that advocates for the passage of the 28th...