Many people will exclaim, "only $9M!?" It's probably true that this amount is underestimated. But it's also true that incumbent politicians are very cheap. For

Many people will exclaim, "only $9M!?" It's probably true that this amount is underestimated. But it's also true that incumbent politicians are very cheap. For example, a $10,000 donation obscures that the lobbying group might also have threatened to donate millions to a competitor in the next election. Most incumbents stay in office not by advancing any particular policy, but by not making themselves an enemy of interests that could mount a campaign to replace them.