Campaign contributions that U.S. House members make to one another are legal, common and publicly reportable, but they have received relatively little attention compared with donations from political action committees and individual donors. The study, published through The Conversation and reported by United Press International on June 10, treated member-to-member contributions as a network, mapping who gave to whom across seven election cycles using Federal Election Commission data. It found that these transfers are far from random.
“The contributions are politically meaningful even if they do not dominate the overall money race,” Kejriwal wrote. “More than a financial act, a contribution from one representative to another serves as a signal about who matters and who is vulnerable.”
The study examined contributions among members in formal leadership roles — including speaker, party leaders, whips, caucus or conference chairs, and committee chairs or ranking members. Across the 2009-2022 period, about 79% of Democratic leaders and 71% of Republican leaders gave to at least one fellow member, compared with 65% of non-leader Democrats and 58% of non-leader Republicans.
Leadership giving reached large scale in the 2021-22 cycle, the data showed. Democrat Hakeem Jeffries gave to 76 fellow members; former Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave to 61; Republican Steve Scalise gave to 192; and Republican Jason Smith gave to 100. Separately, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Majority Committee PAC contributed about $4 million to select House Republicans in difficult reelection races during that cycle, according to public reporting cited in the study.
Seniority played a particularly strong role among Democrats. Longer-serving Democratic members were more likely to give and less likely to receive, suggesting that experienced members channel money toward colleagues with greater electoral need, the study found.
The two parties organized their internal giving differently. Democratic networks remained relatively stable over time, with money flowing repeatedly through a smaller set of members — a pattern the study described as more centralized and hierarchical. Republican networks changed more over the same period. Early in the study, Republican money flows were also centralized, but over time contributions became less focused on a small core of recipients and more likely to occur within smaller connected groups.
“While Democrats do seem to rely more on a stable central structure, and Republicans appear to have moved toward a more dispersed system, it should not be taken to mean that one party is orderly and the other is chaotic,” Kejriwal wrote. “Both approaches offer their own advantages.”
The study also examined the role of super PACs, which can spend unlimited sums independently to support or oppose candidates. Across both parties, members targeted by more super PAC activity were more likely to receive contributions from fellow party members and less likely to contribute to others themselves. In the 2020 cycle, outside spending reached about $8.4 million in Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia race and about $7.36 million in Republican Rep. David Valadao’s California race, according to the data.
“At a time when the role of money in politics remains deeply contested, such patterns remind Americans that campaign finance is not just a story about donors and interest groups,” Kejriwal wrote. “It is also about how politicians finance one another from the inside.”