Why do I care?
Well, for a couple reasons:
Before I came to grad school, I worked in the Senate for Jon Corzine, now Governor of NJ. When I told people I worked for him, the responses I heard nearly always included “oh, the guy who bought his seat, right?”. Getting that question all the time got the wheels turning in my head – how do I feel about wealthy individuals paying for their campaign out of their pocket?
So I’ll skip to the punchline: given the way the money system in U.S. politics currently works, I think self-financed candidates buy accountability to voters instead of donors. And that’s a good thing. It’s closer to how the ideal democracy should work.