"The rich get elected and the re-elected get rich:" An Interview with Political Journalist Matt Lewis
Estimated reading time: 11.5 minutes (2,300 words)
The influence of money in politics is one of the few issues that seems to cross the partisan divide. From insider trading, to murky book deals, to family members on campaign payrolls, something stinks in Washington, and it's not the Potomac.
“Filthy Rich Politicians: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling-Class Elites Cashing in on America” is a new book by Matt Lewis that tackles this issue head-on. Matt is a columnist at The Daily Beast, podcast host, and campaign veteran. His book not only examines the problem on both sides of the aisle, but proposes solutions as well.
Below, Matt talks about his background, his reform ideas, and his pick for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Tell me about yourself. When did you get into the political journalism business? Why politics? And why political journalism specifically?
I always loved politics. One of my first memories was my dad taking me to the polls, when he voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and explaining to me why this is important.
I come from a really conservative background. My dad was a prison guard for about 30 years in Hagerstown, Maryland. I grew up really kind of loving politics, but having no idea how one could get paid to be in politics or write about politics. It seemed very far removed from my experience, and the idea of getting paid to write about politics would have honestly seemed as outlandish as becoming a movie star or something like that.
I went to a small liberal arts college in West Virginia. I ended up a political science major because it was the only way I could get a degree. I originally was an education major, then I was a history major. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, you could graduate with a political science degree without a foreign language. I kept failing Spanish so I switched to political science, partly because it was the only way I could graduate.
I graduated from college with a political science degree having never interned in politics and having never even volunteered on a political campaign. The only job I could get was working as a manager in training to work at a fast food restaurant in Frederick, Maryland. I hit rock bottom and ultimately had this epiphany, like, “you should volunteer on a political campaign.”
At this point I was in my mid 20s. I'd never worked on a campaign and never volunteered on a campaign. I did not write for the college newspaper. I was not in Young Republicans or College Republicans. I did nothing; I played in a rock band. I had zero extracurricular activities. I decided to volunteer to work on a really exciting state senate race in 1998. Believe it or not, it was very exciting. And that ultimately changed my life.
What's your book about?
It's about how the rich get elected and the re-elected get rich.
I think both parts of that equation are interesting. It is obviously true that rich people are more likely to run for office and when. Right now something like the average member of Congress is approximately 12 times richer than the rest of us. That gap has widened in the last three or four decades dramatically.
There is a sense that our politicians are a little bit out of touch, and do not represent the people, but that's really not the most important part of the equation. The more concerning part is the fact that once people get elected, they almost always get richer. I think that's the part that really erodes trust in elected officials and institutions like Congress and trust in our lawmakers.
There is a sense that the game is rigged and that politicians use their positions to enrich themselves.
Why did you focus on this issue? What made this issue big enough for you to write a whole book about it?
The truth is that a book agent approached me and had an idea to write about the 100 richest politicians in America. That was the original idea and that was going to be the original title, “The 100 Richest Politicians in America.”
The idea was that each politician would be a chapter, so it would be 100 chapters and we would focus on how they made their money. It really wouldn't have an editorial stance. I signed on to that project, partly because I really didn't know that much about politicians and their wealth, even though I've been covering politics for a long time. It really hadn't been something that I had developed an expertise on.
Then something really cool happened. Once we sold the book to our publisher, Hachette, they said, “you know, we like the idea, but we want it to be a little more substantive.” I would say the book idea evolved over time. It's something that I'm way more proud of, and I think it’s way more meaningful.
It's being embraced by people on a wide spectrum of political beliefs. I've been on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, I've been on Will Cain's Fox News podcast. But I recorded something with the Young Turks, something with David Pakman, who's a left of center YouTuber, Morning Joe and Jake Tapper’s CNN show, and Tom Fitton, who's a conservative activist, tweeted positively about the book.
So it's been the kind of thing where it really is resonating with a lot of people on the left and the right and the center. Everyone knows this is a problem, and that's one thing we can agree on.
My book came out on a Tuesday, and the very next day, Senators Josh Hawley and Kristen Kirsten Gillibrand, a Republican and a Democrat, announced that they were going to sponsor a bill that would ban stock trading for members of Congress and their families. That's literally a chapter in my book. So it's definitely something that I think appeals to a wide variety of political philosophies.
Let's take a step back for a second. You mentioned that this problem has really taken off in the last three or four decades. Can you unpack that a little bit? Has the wealth inequality between the elected and their constituents always been a flashpoint? When did it start diverging and why?
Obviously we've always had rich politicians and especially rich presidents. George Washington was basically the richest guy in America, but unlike today's filthy rich politicians, he pledged his life and his fortune to this country. He was willing to sacrifice for it, but he was a really rich guy. John F. Kennedy was rich, Franklin Roosevelt was rich, Theodore Roosevelt was rich. We've always had a lot of rich presidents. Members of the Senate, we kind of expect them to be rich, too.
But it's the House of Representatives where we've seen this dichotomy widen in the last three or four decades. As of about 2014, more than 50 percent of members of Congress were millionaires. Compare that to the average American citizen where it's something like 7 percent. There's a huge yawning chasm in terms of a politician's likelihood to be very rich and an average American's likelihood.
I'm a fan of Ronald Reagan, but I do think that the kind of economic conditions that started happening in the 1980s — whether you blame automation or globalization or emigration, or maybe it's just the post-World War Two era — the net wealth of your average member of Congress has approximately doubled. For the rest of us, adjusted for inflation, we're pretty much treading water or even going backwards.
I don't delve too much into why that happened, but it is a fairly new phenomenon. And I think the difference applies primarily to the relationship between an average member of the House of Representatives and a voter.
Tell me a little bit about your reform ideas. Ideally, how should these issues be addressed? What are your number one or two priority reforms?
Number one is definitely to ban stock trading for members of Congress and their families, and ideally, their staffers too. This is an incredibly important one, because there are, as I noted in the book, several very egregious examples where members of Congress and their families really seem to have cashed in and profited off of inside information.
It really doesn't matter that much to me whether what they did was using inside information or not. The fact is that it smells swampy and it looks like the game is rigged. That alone is problematic. That means that it's eroding trust in democracy and in elected officials.
I'm a conservative. I want to conserve liberal democracy. I think that is of paramount importance, especially right now, when it's very clear that a lot of Americans believe the game is rigged, which predates Donald Trump. In chapter one, I note a Pew Research Center survey from 2015 where three quarters of Americans said that they had a sense that their elected official was more interested in advancing their own self interest, and 72 percent of those surveyed described their politicians as “selfish.” I think in a way Trump benefited from some pre-existing conditions.
No one is entitled to a job as a congressman or a senator, so if you do decide to pursue that, I think there's a responsibility to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
In your interview with Hugh Hewitt, Hugh pushed back on some of your reform ideas for infringing on the First Amendment. He disagreed with banning politicians from writing books while in office, for example. How would you square that circle of respecting the First Amendment while also avoiding the appearance of impropriety?
I would say first of all, if you play for the Baltimore Orioles, they can say that you're not allowed to bet on baseball. There's a reason Pete Rose, the man who has the most hits in baseball ever, is not in the Hall of Fame, right?
You don't have to be in the major leagues, you don't have to play for the Orioles, and you don't have to be a professional ballplayer. But if you're going to do that, then they've got rules. And those rules say that you can't bet on baseball.
I would say the same thing. You can bet on the stock market if you want, but don't be a member of Congress. This is a taxpayer funded job. We're paying your salary. You have the public's trust. I don't think it's an infringement on your free speech to say that you can't bet on the stock market while you're serving.
My point is simply that when jobs are entrusted with certain responsibilities, the employer will put certain limits on your freedom, whether it's speech or some other free expression or behavior. I don't think that qualifies as censorship. I think that it's a privilege to serve as an elected official and you're getting paid by the taxpayers.
If you really want to make money on the stock market, you can do that. Just don't run for Congress.
What impact do you hope this book has? You mentioned that bipartisan bill introduced the day after this came out. What other impacts do you hope come out of this?
The book has several reform ideas, but the other two that I think are probably the most important would be banning politicians from hiring family members, whether that's for your official office or a campaign. You can still obviously volunteer on a campaign. But in the book, I cite examples where like Ilhan Omar, for example, directed millions of dollars to her husband's consulting firm and where Ron Paul hired maybe six different members of his family to work on his 2012 campaign.
It's a bad look because it looks like politicians are using other people's money to either pay off their family or take care of their family or in some cases, even launder the money back into their own household. We need to prohibit that.
I would also impose a 10 year moratorium on lobbying. After you leave Congress you can't jump into a lobbying job. You have [to wait] 10 years, which I think is appropriate.
The one reform that no one is interested in is the book deals. A lot of politicians make a lot of money from writing books. Ron DeSantis literally just became a millionaire in the last month because of a book. And Bernie Sanders, a socialist, even said, “you too can be a millionaire if you write a best-selling book,” like he did.
The worst part about it is not that they're trading off of their position or the fame that they've gotten from politics, but it's when there are bulk orders. For example, when a political committee will bulk purchase copies of a politician's book — and let's be honest, these books tend not to be Ernest Hemingway quality — and yet, somebody will buy 25,000 copies or 50,000 copies to try to put it on a bestseller list or or maybe funnel money to the candidate. That is something that I’m passionate about.
You're a political journalist. You keep your fingers on the pulse of things for the GOP nomination. Who's your horse in 2024, and why?
There are two candidates that I like right now. One is Tim Scott. I just really like his positivity and optimism and personality and his worldview. He’s just utterly likable. And then I'm really admiring Chris Christie's campaign so far, even though in the past he let us down. He is very brave, tough, and smart. I would be ecstatic if one of them were to pull off a miracle and somehow win the nomination.