To the Teacher
This two-part lesson consists of two readings on the prevalence of elected officials with significant wealth in the United States. The first reading discusses studies showing a lack of working-class representation in state and local governments, as well as the trend toward increasing wealth among Congresspeople in Washington, DC. The second reading analyzes the structural factors that favor wealthier politicians and examines some proposals to create more economically diverse legislatures. Questions for discussion follow each reading and a pre-reading activity is included in which background knowledge is activated through perspective-taking and sharing.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
Pre-Reading Activity: Perspective Spectrum
Open this lesson by explaining to students that will be participating in an activity where they will share their perspectives while listening to and respecting viewpoints that may differ from their own. Point out the “Agree” and “Disagree” signs you’ve posted on each side of the room.
Explain that you will read a statement and students will decide whether they agree or disagree. Then, they will move somewhere in between the two signs to reflect their opinion. If they are unsure or neutral, they should stand somewhere in the middle.
Before beginning this activity, explain that it will require us to share our perspectives openly and honestly while respectfully valuing the perspectives of others.
Invite the group to stand and move to the open area in the room. If this area needs to be created, have students help by moving chairs, desks, etc.
Read each of the statements, one at a time, below and then ask group members to move to a space along the perspective spectrum:
Rich people are treated better in the United States than poor people
Everyone has the opportunity to be wealthy if they work hard enough
The United States government does a good job of taking care of those in need
With money, comes power
Politicians represent the interests of the people they serve
Wealth inequality is related to gender and racial inequities
Then, ask them to notice where others are standing. Invite a few volunteers to share why they are standing where they are and explain more about their perspective. Tell students they may change their position if they are influenced by another students’ shared opinion, or they may choose to remain standing where they are.
Thank group members for sharing and listening to others’ perspectives.
Reading One — Many Lawmakers in the U.S. Are Wealthy. Does it Matter?
On average, elected officials in the United States are growing increasingly wealthy, and very few of them held working-class jobs prior to taking office. In an April 2024 opinion piece for The New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote:
Out of more than 7,300 state legislators in the country, 116 — or 1.6 percent of the total — currently work or last worked in manual labor, the service industry or clerical or union jobs, according to a recent study conducted by Nicholas Carnes and Eric Hansen, political scientists at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago. By contrast, about 50 percent of U.S. workers hold jobs in one of those fields.
This problem afflicts both parties. In the last legislative session, the study found, 1 percent of Republican lawmakers and 2 percent of Democratic lawmakers had working-class backgrounds. In 10 states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — not a single state lawmaker works or has recently worked in an occupation that researchers would define as working class. Three of those states, incidentally, are ones in which lawmakers recently loosened rules on child labor.
A parallel trend can be found at the federal level, where the wealth of elected representatives in Congress has grown to historic proportions. More than a decade ago the New York Times reported that for the first time in the country’s history more than half of the members of the United States Congress were millionaires. Those figures have held since. A 2020 analysis of lawmakers’ personal finances by the watchdog group Open Secrets found that more than half of the legislators in the U.S. Congress were millionaires. As Karl Evers-Hillstrom wrote, “Congress is an exclusive club. It’s also a wealthy one.”
Some of the wealthiest members of Congress hold very influential positions. Writing in a February 2018 article for Roll Call, political journalist David Hawkings explained that “[as] in the past, the ranks of the congressional 50 richest are studded with some of the Hill’s most influential players…. And [10 of the 50 richest] sit on House Ways and Means or Senate Finance, the committees in charge of drafting the package of tax cuts and tax code changes that were enacted at the end of last year and targeted to benefit the richest Americans most of all.”
The impact is clear not only in Washington, DC, but also in state and local politics. State governments and city councils with fewer politicians in office who held a working class job have been estimated to spend millions of dollars less in their budgets on social welfare programs while taxing corporations at lower rates.
In a March 2024 article for Stateline, staff writer Robbie Sequeira reported on how state legislatures with little working-class representation can overlook some of the issues that hit home for their constituents. Sequeira writes:
After a 32-year career as an electrician, Democratic state Rep. Nate Roberts was part of a new wave of first-time Idaho lawmakers entering office in 2023.
Roberts knew that it wasn’t just his relative political inexperience that separated him from the rest of his colleagues.
He also was one of the only state lawmakers who had worked a union job. And during his first few weeks in office, he was shocked by how rarely issues such as wage theft, low pay and housing affordability had been talked about in committee meetings.
“That’s when I realized that the only person that’s going to advocate for working-class people is a working-class person,” he told Stateline….
Roberts said his experience as a laborer in his younger years has emboldened him to speak out against legislation such as a Senate bill that would repeal limits on the number of hours and how late in the day a child under the age of 16 can work.
“I’m still shocked when I get pushback for going against these bills, particularly ones that I feel regress our child labor laws,” said Roberts.
As the net worth of our nation’s Congresspeople reaches higher levels, and as working-class representation at all levels of government languishes, the issues given greatest attention by lawmakers may reflect the priorities of smaller numbers of Americans—and leave many others unaddressed.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read? What personal connections, thoughts, or feelings did you have about what you read?
- According to the reading, what is the median wealth of members of Congress in the United States? What do you think of that number?
- According to the reading, what percentage of state legislators throughout the country held a working-class job before coming into office? What are some possible consequences of having little working-class representation in state and local government?
- In the reading, Idaho legislator Nate Roberts argues that “the only person that’s going to advocate for working-class people is a working-class person.” Roberts points to a lack of attention being given to issues such as wage theft and housing affordability in his state. Do you agree or disagree with Robert’s viewpoint? Explain your position.
Reading Two — Creating More Working-Class Representation in Government
There are several reasons why lawmakers with significant wealth are favored in seeking office. At the state and local level, serving as an elected official may be considered a part-time job and elected officials may not receive large salaries. As a result, most state legislators rely on additional sources of income to earn a living, a system that favors politicians with passive incomes, such as renting out properties or receiving interest on investments, and disadvantages politicians with less access to wealth or job flexibility.
Another issue is the cost of running a political campaign. Campaign expenditures have skyrocketed in recent decades. In 2022, the average U.S. Representative spent $1.8 million in their campaign to win office, according to Open Secrets. These conditions benefit people with access to wealthy social networks they can fundraise from—as well as candidates who are themselves rich and can self-finance large portions of their campaigns.
Public funding for elections, where candidates’ campaigns are at least partly funded by the government, is one proposed solution to limit the influence of money on elections. Such campaign finance reforms have been shown to encourage more people to run for office, while letting those candidates spend less time on fundraising. Writing for the online news outlet Observer in November 2022, senior business editor Oliver Staley reported on some of the promise that public financing for elections holds, especially at the local level. Staley wrote:
Laura Supica was first elected to the Bangor, Maine, city council in 2017 while she was working as a bartender at Nocturnem Draft Haus, a popular downtown bar where she got to know her future constituents. “I do believe that is why I got elected,” she said….
Supica said she was able to run in part because Maine provides public financing for state house candidates, one of just five states that do.
Candidates in Maine, Arizona and Connecticut are eligible for public funding once they raise a certain number of small donations to prove their viability (in Maine, House candidates need at least 60 donations of $5). Once they enter the public financing program, they cannot raise additional funds. In Hawaii and Minnesota, candidates can receive matching funds provided they agree to a set spending limit.
While public financing hasn’t increased the number of low-income legislators, supporters say it is one of the steps, along with adequate legislative pay, that could help diversify state houses.
Candidates hoping to run an effective campaign also benefit greatly from the support of political professionals and organizations with experience coordinating runs for office, another area where wealthier candidates experience an advantage. In an October 2018 article for The Guardian, political scientist Nicholas Carnes wrote:
[The] party and interest group leaders who help people launch political careers often pass over workers in favor of more familiar white-collar candidates. In a 2013 survey of the leaders of county-level political parties, most were quite open about their preference for white-collar candidates. More than 30% said workers are worse at campaigning, more than half said that workers were harder to recruit and two-thirds of local party leaders worried that workers would make bad fundraisers… Qualified working-class Americans almost never appear on your ballot in part because powerful people are less likely to encourage or support them….
From a reform standpoint, that is actually good news… People who work in and around government just need to devote more attention and resources to qualified working-class candidates.
Political parties and activist organizations already know how to do exactly that. Just a generation ago, women made up around 2% of Congress – today that number is closer to 20%. What changed? Party leaders and interest groups began devoting time and resources to female candidates, working to identify talented women, and helping them overcome the obstacles that prevented them from running.
When pro-worker organizations have attempted similar interventions targeting working-class candidates, the results have been extremely promising. In New Jersey, for instance, the state affiliate of the AFL-CIO runs a well-established “labor candidates school” that has trained working-class candidates for more than 700 state and local elections. Graduates of this pioneering program have won 75% of the elections in which they have run and have gone on to have long and effective careers in public office. Organizations that understand the challenges facing workers and that invest in overcoming them seem to have found the key to helping the working-class break through America’s cash ceiling.
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/oct/04/few-us-politicians-working-class]
Creating more economically diverse governing bodies in the United States will require a shift in how politics are done in this country. Public financing of electoral campaigns and recruitment efforts targeting working-class candidates are two steps that may help in achieving this end and in limiting the influence of money over our political system.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read? What personal connections, thoughts, or feelings did you have about what you read?
- According to the reading, what are some of the advantages that candidates with access to greater wealth experience when running for office?
- What are some of the possible steps presented in the reading that could help create more economically diverse legislatures? What do you think of these ideas?
- In the reading, Oliver Staley notes that raising the pay of state and local legislators could help to encourage less-wealthy candidates to run. Do you think this proposal would be effective? Why or why not?
- Do you think it is important to increase working-class representation in political bodies at the local, state, and federal levels? How do you think this might change the ways in which our nation is governed?
–Research assistance provided by Sean Welch.