A thoughtful letter to the editor from Heidi Jon Schmidt this week questions the Independent’s coverage of First Lady Jill Biden’s coming to town to raise money for the president’s reelection campaign. What particularly bothered her was the front page headline’s reference to Provincetown’s “political donor class.” The story’s focus on the wealthy people who made the event a resounding success — reportedly raising half a million dollars — obscures the fact that anyone can become a member of the “donor class,” Schmidt argues, by sending a monthly check for $50 to the Biden campaign, as she does, or even $5.
She is right in pointing out that small donations to a cause you believe in are important. And she’s also right, of course, in arguing that we must all pay urgent attention to the next election for president and Congress. The prospect of a second Trump administration and a Republican majority on Capitol Hill is mind-boggling in so many ways — among them that the former president is openly campaigning on a plan to do away with independent government agencies and the civil service and create what amounts to a dictatorship with absolute power sitting in the Oval Office.
At the same time, we cannot ignore the role of wealth in politics, or the privileges it buys. Our point was not to dismiss the $25 and $150 tickets for the Biden event here, nor to criticize those who paid $20,000, but instead to highlight one way that our political system has failed us all. Like it or not, when access to power is carefully controlled and modulated by wealth, that is a class system.
Those $5 donations matter, and they have changed presidential campaigns. Yet the $5 donors are not the ones who change systems and policies. That happens in Congress and at the Supreme Court, both of which have been severely corrupted by the influence of extreme wealth. As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse recently remarked, “I think the billionaire influence over the Supreme Court is right now greater than the legal influence.”
Schmidt’s letter says that we are lucky to live in a small town “that has the clout to draw major political figures.” But what does that “clout” really amount to?
The Outer Cape is blessed with a network of strong arts and nonprofit organizations, many of which cannot find people to work for them. Provincetown recently hosted the state secretary of health and human services at a roundtable — at which a wide range of health-care providers said they couldn’t fulfill their missions without housing for staff.
We can have “clout” and still have a long waitlist for home health aides, a shortage of psychiatrists, and no homeless shelter closer than Hyannis.
Status can bring visibility and attention to our problems, but status can’t always solve them. To borrow Schmidt’s argument, both large donors and small donors are important — and the Outer Cape is becoming an object lesson that both large earners and small earners are important, too.
