Copyright realclearpolitics
American politics is broken, but not in the way most people think. The problem isn't just the money it's where the money comes from. Since Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" in 1994, we've watched congressional races transform from local contests into nationalized referendums. Every House and Senate race has become a proxy war for party control, with millions of dollars flooding across state lines to tip the balance in competitive districts. A senator from Montana doesn't answer primarily to Montanans anymore they answer to donors in New York, California, and Texas who will fund their next campaign or their next primary challenger. This nationalization has produced exactly the dysfunctional Congress we deserve. Members have little incentive to break with party leadership, even when it would serve their constituents. Compromise becomes politically toxic when your next primary opponent will be funded by ideological purists from across the country. The old ethic of "bringing home the bacon" for your district has given way to performing for national audiences and donor networks that will never cast a vote in your election. The problem extends beyond Congress. Elon Musk can pour over $100 million into Wisconsin Supreme Court races despite living in Texas. George Soros can fund district attorney campaigns across the country from his New York base. These aren't Wisconsinites or locals deciding who prosecutes crimes in their communities they're billionaires treating state and local elections like pieces on a national chess board. The citizens of these states become extras in someone else's political drama. The Founders designed a federal system where states retained significant power, and local accountability mattered. Our current campaign finance system has effectively abolished that design. When a Senate race in Ohio or Pennsylvania can attract $200 million from out-of-state sources, we're no longer practicing federalism we're practicing a kind of financial colonialism where the wealthy few in donor states determine representation everywhere else. Here's a reform that would change everything: You can only donate to candidates and political organizations in the state where you are registered to vote. Not where you own property. Not where you have business interests. Not where you "care deeply" about the issues. Where you are registered to vote the place where you've committed to being a citizen and living with the consequences of governance. This single rule would fundamentally reshape American politics: For individual donors, it creates a meaningful constraint. A tech billionaire in California who wants to influence a Montana Senate race would have to move their voter registration to Montana giving up their political voice in California. It's a zero-sum choice that forces people to invest where they actually live. For corporations, it would effectively end direct corporate spending, since corporations don't vote. Corporate employees could still give as individuals, but only in states where they're registered voters. This preserves political voice for workers while eliminating the fiction that corporations themselves are "speaking" through campaign spending. For SuperPACs and outside groups, the same rule applies. A SuperPAC could only raise money from voters registered in the state where it plans to spend. No more national organizations carpet-bombing swing states with advertising funded by a handful of mega-donors from elsewhere. The beauty of this reform is that it doesn't favor either party it favors actual representation. Rich Democrats in New York would still dominate New York politics. Wealthy Texans would still shape Texas races. But they couldn't pour millions into tipping elections in states where they have no intention of living or voting. Candidates would need to build genuine coalitions in their states. Fundraising would require real relationships with constituents, not just the right connections to national donor networks. Members of Congress would show up differently, listen differently, and legislate differently when they know their political survival depends on people back home, not ideological activists in distant states. Would this reduce the total amount of money in politics? Probably. When you can't tap into national outrage or excitement, fundraising becomes harder. A Montana Senate race simply cannot raise $100 million from Montana voters alone which means campaigns would cost less, require less constant fundraising, and allow members to spend more time actually doing their jobs. Would this de-nationalize our political debates? To some extent. National media and social media would still exist, but without the financial fuel of cross-state spending, the "every race is a national emergency" framing would lose its engine. Local media might matter again. Retail politics might make a comeback. The kind of politics Tip O'Neill described where "all politics is local" could actually return. The enforcement mechanism is straightforward: voter registration is already tracked, verified, and protected by serious legal penalties for fraud. You can only be registered in one place at a time. The infrastructure exists; we'd simply be linking campaign finance law to voting rights in a direct way. The constitutional challenges would be real. Courts have treated political spending as speech, and geographic restrictions might face First Amendment scrutiny. But we already accept that you can only vote where you're registered the principle that political participation has geographic bounds isn't foreign to our system. This reform wouldn't solve everything. Presidential races would still be national (though we could choose to apply the same rule and accept that swing states would dominate presidential fundraising). Issues would still have national dimensions. But it would restore the accountability that federalism was supposed to provide. Congress has been failing us for 30 years, not because the wrong people get elected, but because even well-intentioned members are trapped in a system that rewards national performance over local service. Change the incentives by changing where the money comes from, and you change what kind of people can succeed in politics and what kind of Congress they create. It's time to return politics to the people who actually have to live with the results.
