Follow the money. That’s one of journalism’s most fundamental maxims.
So what does it mean for voters who try to follow Jesus’ teachings in their civic lives that the Republican Party has poured $122 million into advertising on behalf of its U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Texas?
Think of it: $122 million for ads to try to persuade Texas voters to support a man so corrupt he’s been indicted or impeached multiple times. A man whose wife is divorcing him for “biblical reasons.” A man so low he stole a $1,000 fountain pen left behind in a security bin by a fellow lawyer.
Cynthia Astle
Think of it: $122 million for ads in a state that ranks near the bottom of every possible social gauge: health care, public education and more.
Think of it: $122 million for ads that vilify Paxton’s opponent, James Talarico, not for his political performance, but for his religion and his cultural status as a “real Texan.”
It’s not just in Texas, either. Republican super PACs have suspended campaign ad spending in North Carolina, where they already have spent $30 million on the governor’s race, to funnel millions into the Kansas Senate race. That’s where United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton, running as a Democrat, is marginally ahead of the incumbent GOP senator Roger Marshall, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat in a century.
What could your church do with such millions?
Could you fix your sanctuary, like many congregations facing closure because of increased building maintenance costs on a dwindling budget resulting from membership decline? Could you pay your pastor and staff a genuine living wage?
Or could you turn that money outward into all kinds of missions? What does your community need desperately that your church could provide with $122 million? Child care, which has skyrocketed beyond the means of many working families? Elder care, an increasing need as the population ages?
What about paying off medical debt, a mission that some churches have accomplished to the benefit of both families and communities?
Do the math. About 17 million people could be relieved of the financial burden of medical debt for an estimated $44 million — about a third of what the GOP is spending to put Ken Paxton into office.
If the Bible shows us anything, it shows the consistent perfidious nature of human beings down millennia. Serious followers of Jesus, steeped in his teachings about money, greed and power, need not quote chapter and verse to recognize the obscene wrong of squandering such amounts on an election to gain earthly power.
The opportunity looms in this election to put compassion, morality and common sense back into government at all levels. Take journalism’s cardinal rule to heart when stepping into the voting booth this fall: Follow the money.
Cynthia B. Astle is founder and editor emerita of United Methodist Insight, an online journal covering The United Methodist Church and a content collaborator with BNG.