Who Are Langley’s Favorite Candidates?
ZIP code 22101 is home to a lot of very powerful people. For one, it encompasses Langley, Virginia, home to the CIA’s headquarters. But it’s not just the CIA. The ZIP code also includes the nearby community of McLean, Virginia, home to many diplomatic residences and military contractors, such as Booz Allen Hamilton, former employer of Edward Snowden.Â
So it’s fair to say that many of the people of 22101 care a lot about U.S. national security policy. One of the ways they, like all Americans, can express themselves is by donating to political campaigns. And as with all Americans, they’re required to disclose these donations along with their name, address, and occupation to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which posts them online. Although the privacy and free speech implications of requiring that kind of disclosure are not great, the FEC filings for 2023–2024 make for interesting reading.
Again, not everyone who lives in Langley and McLean works for the CIA, and not everyone who works for the intelligence agency lives in the same ZIP code. But because the local economy is so tied to the deep state and the military-industrial complex, the flow of campaign donations says something about the tendencies of America’s national security elite.
The top five recipients of donations from 22101 were all Democratic: the Harris Victory Fund, the Democratic National Committee, Kamala Harris for President, the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, and the Democratic political action committee ActBlue. (In sixth place was The Lincoln Project, the ex-Republican movement that raked in $630,109 from donors in 22101.) That shouldn’t be much of a surprise, considering that President Joe Biden won Fairfax County by more than 2-to-1 in 2020.
Similarly, Democratic incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine far outraised his Republican challenger, Hung Cao, in the 22101 ZIP code. So did Democratic incumbent Rep. Jennifer Wexton before she dropped out of the race for health reasons; her replacement, Suhas Subramanyam, has similarly managed to beat out Republican challenger Mike Clancy in 22101 since then.
Perhaps more interesting, however, is how residents of 22101 donate to candidates whom they can’t vote for and who won’t represent them. Outside of Virginia, the campaigns that received the most Langley-adjacent cash were hawkish Republicans and moderate Democrats. In other words, it’s exactly how someone who wants the military-industrial complex to continue being powerful would vote.
Sen. Jon Tester (D–Mont.), who faces a tough reelection bid, raked in the most money—$183,219—from 22101 residents. Over the past few years, he’s grown more hawkish. In 2015, he supported the U.S.-Iranian deal over nuclear issues and economic sanctions. Nearly a decade later, he’s taken much more aggressive stances, dismissing anti-war protesters as “10 or 12 of these kids that are ‘pro-Palestinian’ or ‘pro-Hamas’ or ‘antisemites’—I don’t know what the fuck they are” and proposing legislation to stop Chinese people from buying American farmland.
The next top recipients are all Republicans running for Senate: Larry Hogan of Maryland, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania. (Cruz, who ran for president in 2016, has made a name for himself as an ultra-hawk in Washington, especially on the Middle East.) Former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.), who resigned after he was ousted as Speaker of the House by his own party, came in fifth place.
Cruz and McCarthy are well known for their hawkish positions on foreign policy. McCormick has made his military service a centerpiece of his campaign, supported using the U.S. military against drug cartels in Mexico, and said that Iran is the “original sin” of the Middle East. Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, made his first foreign policy speech last month, vowing to fight “isolationists” and strengthen U.S. support of Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel.
Unsurprisingly, Sen. Tom Cotton
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