The Same Money, Both Sides
The Democratic and Republican parties disagree on many things. Their donors, in significant part, do not.
Real Citizens United's founding thesis is that America's two-party system is largely funded from the same handful of accounts. Not entirely — there are real partisan differences at the level of individual mega-donors picking sides, and there are polarized industries in any given cycle. But at the structural level, the same donor entities give to both major parties simultaneously, buying reliable access regardless of which party wins.
This is why the platform is deliberately cross-partisan, and why the platform's endorsement model works per-issue rather than per-party. If you're a citizen who believes the political system does not adequately represent your interests, understanding whose interests it does represent — and noticing that the answer is largely the same regardless of which party is in office — is where the real change begins.
The pattern, sector by sector
Every major industry with something to gain or lose from federal policy operates on a bipartisan giving model. The names below are not aberrations — they are the standard operating procedure of American corporate political influence.
Real estate
The National Association of Realtors — the #1 federal lobbying spender in 2024 at $86.4 million — operates a PAC that gives to hundreds of Congressional candidates every cycle, split roughly evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Individual real estate executives across firms fund candidates in both parties. Real estate political money is bipartisan by design: whoever holds power writes the housing-finance rules, and the industry wants friendly relationships with whoever wins.
Pharmaceutical industry
PhRMA (the trade association) spent $31M on lobbying in 2024. Its member companies — Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, dozens of others — maintain corporate PACs that give to both parties. Individual pharma executives donate across the aisle. The industry has historically distributed political spending close to 50/50 between the parties, ensuring friendly relationships with committee chairs regardless of which party controls Congress. The result: healthcare cost reforms that could genuinely reduce prices for citizens are chronically stalled, regardless of which party wins.
Wall Street and finance
The finance and investment industry, at roughly $570 million in 2024 political spending, is one of the most bipartisan sectors in American politics. Goldman Sachs alumni have populated both Republican administrations (Steve Mnuchin as Trump's Treasury Secretary, Gary Cohn as his NEC director) and Democratic ones (Robert Rubin under Clinton, Henry Paulson bridging Bush to the Obama transition).
Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman gave heavily to Republicans in 2024 while Blackstone as a firm maintains bipartisan influence. Ken Griffin (Citadel, Republican mega-donor) and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Democratic mega-donor) are on opposite sides — but their industries fund each other's opponents anyway.
Defense contractors
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon (RTX), Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman all maintain corporate PACs that give to both parties. Cycle-wide, defense industry PAC giving in 2024 was around $30 million — split with a modest Republican tilt but heavy Democratic funding as well. Defense contractor influence transcends party: every administration since the Cold War has had former industry executives in senior Pentagon positions, and every appropriations cycle funds defense priorities across party lines. This is why the U.S. military budget rises regardless of which party controls Washington.
Cable, telecom, and media
Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon operate corporate PACs that are near-perfectly bipartisan in giving patterns. Comcast has been analyzed as one of the most bipartisan PACs in America, giving nearly equally to both parties for over a decade. When you have a business model that depends on federal regulatory approval for mergers, spectrum allocation, and pricing rules, you need friendly relationships with whoever will be regulating you next.
Health insurance and hospitals
Blue Cross/Blue Shield ($27.15M lobbying + $10.39M contributions in 2024), the American Hospital Association ($29M lobbying + $3.77M contributions), and other health-industry groups fund candidates of both parties, particularly those on health committees regardless of party affiliation. Healthcare regulation gets written by the industry regardless of which party is in nominal charge.
Big Tech corporate PACs (distinct from individual billionaires)
Meta, Google/Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple all operate corporate PACs that historically give to both parties. In 2024, that bipartisan corporate pattern held even as individual tech billionaires diverged sharply — Elon Musk on the Republican side, Reid Hoffman and Dustin Moskovitz on the Democratic side. The corporations themselves remain bipartisan; the founders picked sides.
The revolving door
The same industries that fund both parties also staff both parties' administrations. Former lobbyists become senior officials; senior officials become lobbyists. A defense-contractor executive who serves in a Republican administration will often move to a lobbying firm that also employs former Democratic officials — because their combined bipartisan access is the product being sold. Some illustrative cases:
These are not exceptional cases. They are the pattern. OpenSecrets' revolving-door database tracks thousands of similar transitions across the last several administrations — Democratic and Republican alike.
Where partisan differences actually exist
To be honest and accurate: the parties are not identical, and their donors are not identical. The bipartisan pattern above holds most strongly at the level of industry corporate PACs and trade associations. At other levels, real partisan divergence exists:
Individual mega-donors do pick sides. Elon Musk went overwhelmingly Republican in 2024 (~$277M). Miriam Adelson gave only to Republicans (~$100M+). Reid Hoffman gave overwhelmingly to Democrats. George Soros gave to Democratic causes. When individual billionaires get personally involved, they typically commit to one side.
Some industries have moved decisively in one direction. The crypto industry made a dramatic 2024 shift toward Republican giving after prior bipartisan positioning. Oil and gas leans strongly Republican. Trial lawyers lean Democratic. Teachers unions lean Democratic. These are genuine partisan divides.
Small-donor bases differ meaningfully. Democratic small-dollar giving (ActBlue) and Republican small-dollar giving (WinRed) both exist and support quite different candidates. Real grassroots money follows different patterns than corporate PAC money.
So the claim is not that everything is the same. The claim is that at the level of structural corporate influence, the same names appear on both sides — and that structural influence explains why the biggest policy questions (healthcare pricing, defense spending, financial regulation, telecom mergers, pharmaceutical pricing) don't fundamentally change no matter which party wins.
What this means for citizen strategy
If the same corporate money captures both parties on the biggest structural questions, then simply switching which party is in power does not solve the capture problem. Every citizen who has voted "the other party" hoping for real change and then watched the same policies continue has felt this directly — even if they did not know exactly why.
Real Citizens United is built on the recognition that party is largely the wrong unit of analysis for the accountability question. The right unit is: whose money is a given politician taking, and are they voting in line with their public commitments to their constituents? That's the question the accountability profiles are designed to answer, and it's the question the platform's endorsement model is built around.
We back individual politicians of any party who publicly commit, in writing, to vote in line with people-and-planet priorities on specific issues. When they keep their word, we back them again at scale. When they break it, we back their primary opponents. Party affiliation is not the qualifier. Whose interests they actually vote to serve — that is.
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Sources
- OpenSecrets — Top Federal Lobbying Spenders 2024. Base data for industry lobbying figures throughout.
- OpenSecrets — "Federal lobbying set new record in 2024". $4.4B annual federal lobbying figure.
- OpenSecrets — National Association of Realtors. Real estate industry bipartisan giving pattern.
- OpenSecrets — Comcast political giving profile. Paradigmatic bipartisan corporate PAC.
- OpenSecrets — AT&T political giving profile. Bipartisan telecom giving.
- OpenSecrets — Lockheed Martin political giving profile. Bipartisan defense contractor giving.
- OpenSecrets — Blue Cross / Blue Shield political giving profile. Health insurance industry pattern.
- OpenSecrets — PhRMA lobbying profile. Pharmaceutical industry lobbying and bipartisan giving.
- OpenSecrets — Revolving Door database. Systematic tracking of individuals moving between lobbying, government, and industry roles across administrations.
- OpenSecrets — Sector Totals 2024. Cycle-wide political spending by sector, used for finance industry ($570M) and other aggregates.
- Federal Election Commission — Campaign Finance Data. Primary source for all campaign finance filings.
Methodology. The bipartisan claims about specific industries and organizations reflect long-term patterns of giving as tracked by OpenSecrets across multiple election cycles. Individual revolving-door examples reflect publicly documented career transitions. Dollar figures are 2024-cycle where cited, and are drawn from FEC filings compiled by OpenSecrets. Where cited figures are aggregate industry totals, they include all federal political spending across corporate PACs, trade association PACs, and individual contributions from industry-affiliated donors during the cycle in question.