Written by Judayah Murray

Assignment: Choose a politician now holding national office and, using the sites and resources above, analyze the patterns of his or her support. Write an 800-word blog post about your findings.

Donald J. Trump is a billionaire–A business tycoon from New York, born on June 14, 1946. Today, he serves as the Presidential-Elect of the United States of America. Some like to say that whoever can potentially raise the most money and spend the most on their political campaign will end up winning the presidential seat. However, the national election of 2016 proved this theory to be very wrong. Hillary Clinton, who raised $866.6M to Donald Trump’s $453.1M, lost in a landslide after the electoral college votes were tallied.

So, Trump won and Clinton lost. That, however, is not what sparks my curiosity. After the election, I was intrigued to know who exactly made donations to his campaign, and if he may have to return any favors in turn for the gracious offers. Websites like OpenSecrets.org, exist to allow anyone to look up how much a politician has raised and who the funds have come from.

As it is understood, Trump ran under the Republican party, which is known to be more conservative in their ideologies, policies and arguments. However, he, himself, is more liberal in his views. Actually, according to OpenSecrets, “Trump has been a frequent donor to both Democratic and Republican federal political candidates, spending tens of thousands of dollars supporting them and causing some to question his sincerity as a GOP candidate.” I’m interested in seeing who supported him with their dollar, and maybe look into why he didn’t receive more.

Many organizations raised money on the behalf of Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential Election. “Donald J Trump for President”, “Rebuilding America Now”, “Make America Number 1” and “Great America PAC” are just of the few Pro-Trump organized groups. The campaign, “Donald J Trump For President” actually raised the highly significant amount of $247,541,449, that is almost half of his ending financial outcome.

The four anti-Trump organizations that were mentioned were split in their fundraising. Two of them raised almost $325K combined, the other two raised nothing.

The Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization that hosts an open government website, allows citizens to have a closer, more personal view of politicians as well. In an article written by Drew Doggett and Louis Serino, the question is posed: “Is Donald Trump really self funding his own campaign?”.

According to their sources, as of February 20, 2016, Trump had “poured in over $17.7 million of his own money – that’s over 70 percent of the $25.5 million his campaign has raised over the entire cycle. Nearly all of that ($17.5 million) came in the form of loans; meanwhile, none of the other candidates have loaned their campaigns so much as a dime. On top of that, he’s also supplied over $250,000 worth of in-kind contributions, such as rent and payroll, to his committee.”

That raised eyebrows for me.

Why would Trump willingly dish out his money to pay off supporters, when he could fundraise more and get the costs covered? I wasn’t sure, and the uncertainty didn’t sit right with me. I kept digging to see if I could possibly find out more information on the donators. I wanted individual names and clear dollar amounts attached to them.

I fell across this site called FollowTheMoney.org. After typing in Donald Trump’s name, the first contributors that popped up, evidently, were all under his name–different entities, but all with the same label. The Donald J Trump Campaign Committee, like the others, didn’t list employee names but registered itself as a legitimate committee. My intuition tells me Trump made donations to himself under registered groups, but my findings don’t necessarily prove that to be 100% true thus far.

Another question that many people raised is: Why would Trump choose Pence as his running partner. Trump already deals with backlash from his constant insensitive harmful banter. Pence’s clear and extreme disdain for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Queer, plus (LGBTQ+) population seemed rather harmful to the ballot. What was the purpose of bringing him on board?

BillMoyers.com reports that Mike Pence is an aggressive fundraiser. “In particular, he is a favorite of the dark-money-churning Koch brothers, whose vast political network often plays a role in coordinating donations among other right-wing moneymen,” the article reads. (Bill Moyers) It goes on to say that the Koch subscription reaches millionaires and billionaires worldwide who regularly pay membership dues of six-figures. The Koch brothers make frequent donations to Pence’s campaigns. It can be expected that Trump thought adding Pence to the ballot would assure him more donated monies, but according to the records, those people did not make monetary donations to him.

Back to square one, I am still extremely puzzled by the financial work of Trump this election. The man who is known as a businessman, that could take a two million dollar loan from his father and turn it into multiple billionaire-dollar corporations, but couldn’t raise more money than his losing opponent makes no sense to me.

But, the election taught me that perhaps, it did not matter. Trump did win. He won without an egregious amount of monetary support, without a lot of ads, but a whole lot of “Make America Great Again”-dad caps.