Jane Mayer Quotes

There is now a fairly crowded field out there of people who are incredibly wealthy that are giving money to advance their own political agendas.

I wish I had the billions of dollars that George Soros has that he has used to fund Democratic causes in the past.

Many of these [big political] donors are my friends. Those people are not like charities ... They Want. These are total tough cookies. When they give millions and millions of dollars, they're not doing it for the good of the American Cancer Society. They're doing it for themselves.

The donor party is the 2 million people who contribute more than $5000 to political candidates. Unless you are elected by the donor party, you cannot run for major office.

When most people find themselves running afoul of the law, they might change their ways. When the Koch brothers found themselves running afoul of the law, David Koch decided to run for office so that he could change the law.

One reason George Soros has been able to be so active in the political arena is that he has received a considerable amount of our tax dollars to fund his activities.

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money is this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

There isn’t a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system.

Money and donations are an important part of our political system. They are hard power.

Some of the donors are - many of them are good people and they're donating because their ideas are those embodied by the candidate and that's really what they're doing, they're promoting the ideas. But many of them are desirous of things in addition to that. So when I see [Donald] Trump not respond 'cause he can't spend the money, I'm secretly hoping it isn't gonna hurt him.

I would like to have an ample fund to spread the light of Republicanism, but I am willing to undergo the disadvantage to make certain that in the future we shall reduce the power of money in politics for unworthy purposes.

The Kochs are very much involved in this election, not backing [Donald] Trump but backing everything down the ballot from him. They're pouring money into capturing the Senate and the House of Representatives, and state Houses across the country.

I'll be active in politics through PACs at a later date.

The Washington Post said that 50% of the contributors of the Republican Party were Jewish and 70% of the Democratic Party. That's 2% and they control America.

I'm against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it.

That's why they're in the problem - having the problem they're having. They're not conservative. They're being run by their donors.

There's not as much big money on the left, but you've got George Soros, who has the Open Society Institute. He's pushing liberal policies.

The possibility exists that the Kochs will walk away with even more power if [Donalds] Trump's defeated.

The Tea Party was a grass roots movement and then the Koch Brothers came along. So now we have the Tea Party on coke.

What is a super PAC? It’s like a PAC that got bitten by a radioactive lobbyist.

Political contributions are an astonishingly good investment for oil companies.

Donald Trump came to a political field that had already been shaped by big money in politics.

That is not something I embrace. I think there are real distinctions between the Koch brothers and us.

Charles and David Koch, two billionaire brothers, have been funding the infrastructure behind the Republican Party's right-ward shift since at least 1980.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, among the world's richest men, believes his personal fortune can erase the liberty of every American who would exercise the right to keep and bear arms. He plans liquidation of our rights a step-at-a-time - spending millions of dollars of his bottomless personal fortune at a time.