Give politicians the power to decide who gets a government contract, and people will naturally want to get on their good side. After all, the power to hand out something valuable is itself something valuable.

Consider the recent ProPublica investigation involving Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Martin Kao, the former head of a Hawaii defense contractor called Navatek, told the FBI that his donations to the Republican senator’s campaign and an allied super PAC were part of a deal for help winning federal funding and contracts for his company.

That money padded Navatek’s bottom line, but it was also pitched as an investment in Maine: well-paying jobs from Navy contracts, university research and a new facility on Portland’s harbor.

Trading campaign contributions for official acts, or concealing illegal donations through relatives and shell companies, violate existing law – and it is part of why Kao now sits behind bars. Whether Collins or her official staff knew of an alleged bargain remains a legitimate question the public deserves answered.

But as a scholar of American politics, I argue that the question of criminal corruption obscures a larger problem: The line between political favoritism and effective representation is remarkably thin.

Instead, I wonder why a Hawaii defense contractor concluded that the surest route to federal money ran through a senator from Maine – and why his bet paid off.

Why is access to public money so dependent on the political influence of individual legislators?

Earmarks – spending directed by a lawmaker to a specific local project – account for only about 1% of discretionary federal spending, but they offer an unusually clear window into a much larger competition for public money.

Congress revived the practice in 2021, allowing lawmakers to request funding for particular projects in their states and districts. Navatek’s funding came through the Pentagon budget in 2019, when earmarks were banned. But legislative disclosures make it possible to see who asks for money, who gets it and which politicians are best at delivering.

According to Senate Appropriations Committee disclosures, senators submitted 8,071 requests worth US$26.9 billion for fiscal year 2022. By 2026, that grew to 13,997 requests totaling $50.4 billion.

As these requests have grown, however, the share receiving such funding has fallen.

I matched nearly 55,000 Senate requests from fiscal years 2022 through 2026 against the projects Congress ultimately funded. For every senator, I calculated how many projects they requested independently and how many received funding.

Two things stand out.

The first is the seat: About 30 senators serve on the Appropriations Committee, which writes the bills funding federal agencies. They requested about one-third of the money but secured nearly half of the dollars approved and allocated. A dollar requested by an appropriator was almost twice as likely to become law.

The advantage isn’t partisan: Near the top of the chart, alongside Collins, sit a Vermont Democrat, Patrick Leahy, and a Kansas Republican, Jerry Moran. Leahy retired in 2023, while Moran is still on the panel.

The second is skill: Volume usually costs success – the more a senator asks for, the less of it lands. The median senator won 41% of the money they requested. But Collins is the exception. She requested 496 projects on her own over those five years and won 92% of them – the highest sustained rate in the Senate.

When Republicans regained the Senate majority in 2024, the rate only improved. In fiscal year 2026, her first year as chair, Congress funded 95% of her solo requests, while the median senator’s rate fell to 35%.

When Collins calls her chairmanship a “once in a century” opportunity, she has the evidence. The last Mainer to lead the appropriations committee was GOP Sen. Frederick Hale, who held the chair for four months in the 1930s.

Collins’ chairmanship explains her most recent advantage, but not her entire record. Even before taking the gavel, she secured funding at nearly twice the Senate median. Even in Washington, 30 years of showing up and working across the aisle still gets results.

Now, put yourself in the position of a hospital, a business or a town seeking those dollars. Whose political career would you want to support?

In that respect, Collins is doing what senators are elected to do, and she’s doing it exceptionally well. When access to public resources depends on political influence, those who benefit have reasons to support the politicians most capable of delivering.

Voters call it delivering for Maine. It is why it is a core message of her reelection campaign. You cannot turn on a television in Maine without hearing about some project “Susan” delivered. It has helped get her reelected four times, because people support candidates who promise results; candidates then run on having delivered on that promise.

The same kind of political exchange happens when businesses contribute to super PACs supporting politicians who deliver. It happens when unions organize turnout for candidates promising favorable policies or when nonprofits support politicians who might fund their programs. These are all different forms of political exchange.

Political scientists call this “rent-seeking”: getting ahead by winning government favors rather than creating something of value. And the more government decides who gets what, the harder it becomes to distinguish representation from favoritism.

The Supreme Court confronted this problem in McCormick v. United States, a 1991 case involving campaign contributions and extortion. To violate the law, the court said, payment had to be made in return for explicit, official action.

Otherwise, the court recognized, ordinary campaign finance would become nearly impossible to distinguish from criminal conduct.

The same relationships that make effective representation possible also make political favoritism difficult to distinguish from legitimate government. A company wins a contract after supporting a senator. A nonprofit receives a grant after helping elect an ally.

The problem is systemic.

Even if every senator were ethical, conscientious and committed to the public good, the incentives would remain the same. A senator who refused to compete wouldn’t make their state’s sewers less leaky. They would leave them unfunded while other states secured the money. The problem doesn’t require bad people.

Nor can it be resolved by declaring one set of political interests more virtuous than another.

Collins’ Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, for example, says he isn’t backed by corporate PACs or billionaire donors but by working people. Such a claim implies a distinction between self-interested corporate influence and supposedly public-spirited political support that motivates his donor base – even if that donor base includes a multimillion-dollar “dark money” super PAC.

But when a union invests substantial resources to elect politicians who promise favorable labor legislation, or if a nonprofit mobilizes its members to elect someone who promises to expand grants for its programs, the same client-patron relationship persists.

Corporate entities have particular interests; so do noncorporate entities. Both can expect benefits from government. Patronage exists even when the profits don’t go to shareholders.

To call one form of influence corrupt and the other well intentioned is to paper over the business model of reelection: Have they delivered? Will they continue to deliver? Changing the source of campaign support doesn’t change the powers the winner will exercise.

Restricting earmarks didn’t eliminate the underlying incentives. Nor can campaign finance laws, however necessary, eliminate the value of having a powerful political friend.

If Americans want less rent-seeking, it requires reducing how much government spending depends on discretionary political decisions in the first place. General funding rules, established in advance and responsive to differing local needs, offer one alternative. Such rules wouldn’t remove politics from public spending. But they could shift the political contest away from who gets a particular favor and toward the rules under which everyone receives funding.

Until then, voters face a choice between two kinds of political patrons. Each is asking to hold the pen and write checks. Neither is offering to put it down.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Nicholas Jacobs, Colby College; Institute for Humane Studies

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Nicholas Jacobs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.