Campaign finance research in action: In Pennsylvania, movement researchers help build a movement to challenge the billionaire remaking their state’s political landscape

Researchers and activists in Pennsylvania have been focused on one powerful individual in recent years – billionaire Jeffrey Yass. As a co-founder and managing director of private equity and trading firm, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Yass is now worth an estimated $30 billion. While Yass’s trading firm is powerful in its own right, owning hundreds of billions of shares in some of the world’s largest companies, Yass exerts his power most as an individual donor to right wing politicians and causes. 

Although Yass prefers to be out of the spotlight, research on his campaign contributions and political connections can shine light on how this billionaire uses his wealth to promote his own personal libertarian agenda: avoiding taxes and destroying public schools. Through campaign finance research on Yass and the various PACs that he funnels his money through, researchers have been able to connect him to extreme right wing organizations in Pennsylvania, to Republicans that supported the insurrection on January 6th, and to anti-public school PACs running ads targeting Democratic politicians. 

Yass’s immense wealth and connections give him the power to drive his own policy agenda on a state, national, and international scale. However, researchers and organizers working together have been working to hold him accountable for the damage he has caused to democracy. Rallies and press conferences have been held outside of his office, his Philly area home, and lawmakers and candidates have increasingly been speaking out against him in the public realm. Understanding his connections and sources of wealth help the movement to hold him accountable begin to break down his sources of power and take back power for people rather than billionaires.