The Dark Money King

Money, Money, Money, Money

Just before the pandemic, I spent a few months in Norway lecturing on American politics in the Trump era. Whenever I talked about our dark money donors, someone in the audience would pipe up, in the most innocent and polite Scandinavian way: but is that legal? And I’d have to set them straight. In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Citizens United that to try to restrict big money in politics is akin to restricting speech. The floodgates opened.

This week The New Republic published an article I wrote about an elderly Chicago electronics magnate who strongly resembles the Monopoly banker, and whose legacy will be that he spewed a firehose of cash at American progressives, effective altruism in reverse. When I first read about Barre Seid’s record $1.6 billion dark money bequest to DC dandy, Christian right court-packer Leonard Leo, I wondered what would provoke a man to leave so much money to a regressive movement, and not a penny for homeless dogs and cats, or humans? Put the D in Dickensian!

What was his Rosebud? I went to my hometown, Chicago, checked out his haunts, tried to talk to his friends and foes.