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"It's just distressing where you see these figures and I just feel like it makes people think that their democracy really isn't for them anymore," says Jay Young, who leads Common Cause Illinois — a nonpartisan government watchdog group — has been tracking the Pritzker-Rauner money fight. Young says Illinois seems to be setting up a perpetual cycle in future elections; that it's going to take another independently wealthy candidate to take on incumbents who are already rich. "I'm hoping that it doesn't end up that the only field that we see from now going forward is billionaires, but sadly that's the way we've been trending."

It is not uncommon for well-known U.S. senators to build large fundraising bases and transfer some of the money to help their party locally, according to Stephen Spaulding, chief of strategy at the election watchdog group Common Cause in Washington, D.C. "That's a big part of fundraising," he said. "It is to build up power and influence, both within their own elected bodies ... but also within their home states."

But while the voting records of Congressional Progressive Caucus members are better on democracy reform issues compared with those outside the caucus, that might be setting the bar too low. Aaron Scherb, the legislative affairs director for the watchdog group Common Cause, told The Intercept that 17 of the 28 members of Congress who earned perfect scores on his organization’s “Democracy Scorecard“ are in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But there are 78 representatives in the caucus, meaning that nearly 4 in 5 caucus members actually failed to earn a perfect score.

"If you can get certain policies to succeed in Wisconsin — such as voter suppression, voter ID laws, extreme partisan gerrymandering, the destruction of the public employee unions, the right-to-work — then you can do it in almost any state in the country," Jay Heck, executive director of public interest advocacy group Common Cause in Wisconsin, said. "So I think that's one of the reasons why you see so much money pouring into Wisconsin and into Walker's campaign."

“Zooming out to 30,000 feet, I doubt the new broader donor disclosure standard will have any impact on big independent spenders,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a group that advocates for greater disclosure in campaign finance. “There’s an easy end run around these new broader disclosure requirements, and big spenders will undoubtedly take advantage in order to lawfully evade donor disclosure.”

An annual assessment by the Center for Political Accountability shows many S&P 500 companies are spending less on direct donations to political races and election-related causes than in recent years. Additionally, those S&P 500 companies that are still making political donations are moving toward more transparency. Changing political winds and growing publicity risks have created a climate in which major corporations are finding it’s safer to cut direct political ties. Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause points out that with valuable interests and influence to protect, corporations are still impacting political outcomes in other ways.