Ian Hodgson
speaker
58 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 16 Sep
Ian Hodgson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Hey, Sonia.
Yeah, so so far this cycle, about $2.8 billion has been raised by various campaigns and super PACs.
And if we just look at the top twenty of the biggest mega donors, they already account for over one third of that 2.8 billion.
Sixteen of those are predominantly giving to Republican leaning super PACs.
The only one of our top twenty who was predominantly on the Democratic side was George Soros, who's, you know, a longtime Democratic donor.
How unusual is this?
Yeah.
So when I talk to experts, it sounds like this is sort of a minor aberration from the trend.
Mega donor money has been going up cycle after cycle.
But what really stood out to the experts I talked to is just how tilted it is towards Republicans this cycle.
Right.
So there's a subset of the donors who are really interested in those issues that sort of impact their own bank accounts.
I mean, there's been tremendous amount of wealth created in the tech, AI, and crypto spaces at the exact same moment that Congress is making decisions worth an enormous sum to those industries.
So you have people like Chris Larson from Ripple, Mark Hendriessen, Ben Horowitz, tech venture capitalists who are giving to PACs that are, you know, laser focused on candidates who have been outspoken critics or supporters of those issues that matter most to them.
Yeah, that's a really good question.
And it is difficult to tell the impact that any one mega donor would have on a race.
I mean, one of the things that we can say is that big spending doesn't always guarantee the result that you're looking for.
You know, Florida's nineteenth district comes to mind where you have Jeff Yass, who donated to Protect Freedom Pack.
That PAC deployed about two point two million dollars to support a former Trump administration appointee.
And she ended up losing the race by about seven points.
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