Emily's OpEd: Do You Have To Be Wealthy To Be A Successful Politician?

Many successful politicians have been wealthy.  For example, George Washington had a net worth of $525 million.  Thomas Jefferson, who we all studied last year, had a net worth of $212 million.  There are many more successful presidents that have been wealthy.  From this, we can see that there is some link between wealth and how successful these presidents are, but there are also some links between less wealth and high success.  Even in our current election, both of the primary candidates have money.  Hillary Clinton has a net worth of $31.1 million.  She even has a husband with wealth too.  Donald Trump has even more.  Although these candidates might or might not be as successful as previous candidates and presidents, they have made it this far, so it is worth including them in the mix.  While it might seem like you have to be wealthy to be a successful politician, I don’t think this is a necessary component.  It is very helpful because having a large net worth can give a candidate more freedom, but it is not necessary.  If a candidate can get large amounts of donations and increase media outreach, they can be successful without a high net worth.

First, if a candidate can receive a lot of donations, they can be successful.  These donations don’t  have to be large.  For example, Bernie Sanders got the mass of his budget from small donations.  Although he might not have been the most successful candidate, he did get a fair amount of attention and did raise a significantly large budget.  The total amount of money he raised was $185.8 million compared to Clinton’s $186.7 million as of March.  This is very impressive because the median donation amount was $27 in Sander’s campaign.  This is proof that these small donations can almost come to the same amount as one of the leading candidates.  We could argue that this form of receiving donations could be better than from large corporations.  With this method, candidates can reach out to a larger amount of people from all different socioeconomic backgrounds.  Sanders valued his ability to reach out to the people.  He gained the votes of people from the lower end of the socioeconomic range that maybe the other candidates didn’t because they got the majority of their money from large corporations.  With these small donations, candidates can increase their relationship with the people they are fighting for.  

Social media and the internet have become so popular and helpful in political campaigns, especially presidential campaigns.  With this relatively new and popular creation, candidates can also use this to reach out to as many people as possible.  For example, basically all of the presidential candidates have their own websites, which makes them more accessible to more people.  While doing this, candidates can reach out to more people without traveling to every single place; they can connect with everyone without having to spend mass amounts of their budget on travel expenses.  Candidates can also use many forms of social media.  There are many different sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that candidates can use to reach out.  The benefits to using these is that most people have social media.  On top of that, most people have more than one form of social media.  For example, if they have Facebook, they are likely to have an Instagram too.  Candidates can reinforce their ideology on many fronts and most people are likely to see each different one.  The other benefit of using the internet and social media is that there is no cost.  Candidates can reach out and gain more support for free.  With this, candidate's save money while having the opportunity to gain more support instead of traveling everyone and spending more money out of their budget.  

These are the main two tactics that candidates can use to gain support without taking huge chunks of their budget.  Not only will these strategies take less money out of their budgets, they both have benefits that might gain each candidate more support.  When supporting and encouraging small donations, candidates are increasing the people that can support them.  They open doors for the people that maybe can’t give thousands or even hundreds of dollars to give their support.  This increases each candidate’s support (and budget).  With utilizing the media and internet, candidates can also increase their support without traveling and spending more out of their budget.  If both of these tactics are utilized, they will have the opportunity of success without the need of a high net worth.