Money & American Politics · 2026

Follow the Money

The companion deck tells the story in totals — $4.4 billion in lobbying, $4.5 billion in outside spending, $1.9 billion in dark money. But money in politics also has a geography. It is drafted in specific buildings, prosecuted in specific courtrooms, and — in one state — voted down at a specific ballot box. This is the map of where the influence lives.

By vizmaya · May 2026
74.9%
The share of Maine voters who approved a 2024 ballot initiative banning super PACs — the lone bright cell on the national map.
Start with the exception. In most of the country the post-*Citizens United* settlement is simply the weather: super PACs spend, dark money flows, and reform dies in the Senate. Then there is Maine, where in 2024 voters approved a ballot initiative banning super PACs by a margin of 74.9% — a direct test of the premise, from *SpeechNow*, that independent spending cannot corrupt.
K Street
Roughly 13,000 registered lobbyists work the capital; federal lobbying set a $4.4 billion record in 2024.
Fly south to Washington. Along K Street and the blocks around the Capitol sit the offices of the influence industry — about 13,007 unique registered lobbyists in 2024, with federal lobbying spending hitting a record $4.4 billion. And registration captures only the visible layer: American University's James Thurber estimates the real number of working "shadow" lobbyists is closer to 100,000.
The Bill Citigroup Wrote
More than 70 of 85 lines of a 2014 Dodd-Frank rollback were drafted by Citigroup lobbyists.
Move north to Lower Manhattan. In 2013 the New York Times reported that Citigroup's own proposed language made up more than 70 of the 85 lines of a House bill rolling back Dodd-Frank's derivatives "push-out" rule. Mother Jones published the document showing the bank's lobbyists had drafted most of the text. The provision was enacted in the December 2014 "Cromnibus" spending bill — legislation written, almost literally, at a bank's desk.
The Senator's Closet
FBI agents found over $480,000 in cash and ~$150,000 in gold bars at Sen. Bob Menendez's New Jersey home.
Cross the Hudson into New Jersey. When the FBI searched Sen. Bob Menendez's home in 2022, they found more than $480,000 in cash — stuffed into jackets and closets — plus roughly $150,000 in gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz. On July 16, 2024 he was convicted on all 16 counts, including acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, and in January 2025 was sentenced to 11 years. He is the first U.S. senator convicted of acting as a foreign agent.
Where the People Voted
Reform that bypasses Congress wins; reform that runs through it does not.
Return to Maine. The contrast is the whole argument. The For the People Act passed the House but died to a Senate filibuster; the DISCLOSE Act has been blocked every Congress since 2010. Congress must vote to constrain the very money that funds its campaigns — and reliably declines. But when the question went straight to Maine's voters in 2024, 74.9% said ban the super PACs. The fight has simply moved off Capitol Hill.
Who Watches the Money
The enforcers are designed to deadlock.
Pull back to the whole country. The structural problem is that no one is positioned to act: the FEC is a six-member commission built to tie 3–3 on party lines, and the IRS has been barred by an annual appropriations rider from even clarifying the 501(c)(4) dark-money standard. The *Citizens United* / *SpeechNow* framework can be undone only by a constitutional amendment, a new Court majority, or a successful challenge to *SpeechNow*'s "no corruption" premise — which is exactly what Maine's voters just teed up.
Methodology & sources

This map visualizes the geographic spine of a fact-checked research report, The Systemic Influence of Money on American Politics; the dollar figures are developed in the companion deck story. Sources: OpenSecrets (lobbying totals, lobbyist counts), the New York Times and Mother Jones (the Citigroup / Dodd-Frank drafting, 2013), the Department of Justice and trial record (the Menendez conviction and January 2025 sentencing), and official 2024 Maine election results (the super-PAC ban, 74.9%).

The ~100,000 "shadow lobbyist" figure is James A. Thurber's estimate and is imprecise by nature. State fills on the opening map spotlight Maine as the single confirmed 2024 ballot-measure reform in the report and are not a ranking of all 50 states.