Follow the Money: Who does Andy Barr represent?

In the introductory installment of this series, Follow The Money, I provided a brief overview of the research article Barber (2016). That article, which I see as one of the most important contributions to the political science literature in the last decade, shows that the voting behavior of US senators most closely reflects the preferences of their campaign donors, rather than the preferences of the voters in their state.

Because politicians represent their campaign donors, analyzing those contributions will give us critical insights into who politicians really represent.

For the first candidate profile of Follow The Money, I’m looking into the financial contributions that support Andy Barr’s political career.

Who is Andy Barr?

Garland “Andy” Hale Barr IV is a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, where he has “represented” the sixth district of Kentucky since 2013. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, he graduated from the University of Virginia in 1996 before attending law school at the University of Kentucky. While there, he was the president of the law school’s Federalist Society student chapter. Attorneys associated with this organization are typically very conservative, and the Supreme Court who have ties to the Federalist Society–currently 6 of the 9 justices on the Court–have voted to undermine or strike down campaign finance regulations over 90% of the time that campaign finance has been at issue before the Supreme Court (this particular finding is discussed in my PhD dissertation, available here.

Given that judges associated with the Federalist Society have been so adamant about letting economic elites use their wealth to influence elections, it should come as no surprise that a politician who was once the president of a Federalist Society student chapter has found close allies among economic elites.

Barr’s Path to Congress

After law school, Barr joined the firm Stites & Harbison, where his role with the liability defense service group and the business litigation service group meant that he cut his teeth as an attorney by helping protect economic elites and corporations from having to pay the people they harm.

Soon, he would find himself involved in politics as an attorney, as in 2003 he represented gubernatorial candidate Ernie Fletcher in his attempt to keep Hunter Bates as his running mate despite Bates not even meeting the residency requirements for the position of lieutenant governor. Ultimately, a judge ruled against Bates, who dropped out of the race. Bates, for what it’s worth, is an attorney at one of the largest lobbying firms in the United States–so even Barr’s first real foray into politics after law school was in support of the interests of economic elites.

Do you see a pattern?

Although Barr was not successful in keeping Bates on the Fletcher ticket, he was rewarded with a position as an attorney for the Fletcher administration after Fletcher won the election. How nice for him.

After Fletcher lost re-election in 2007, Barr returned to defending the rich and powerful through his work as an attorney at the firm Kinkead and Stilz. He also tried his hand as a lobbyist in Frankfort by attempting to convince the Kentucky state government to buy software from an out-of-state company called CC Intelligent Solutions Inc.

After serving as the vice president of the Fayette County Republican Party, he announced in November 2009 that he would run for Congress against the Democratic incumbent Ben Chandler, who “represented” Kentucky’s 6th congressional district. Barr quickly demonstrated an impressive ability to convince rich people to give his campaign money so that he could represent them. While the average candidate challenging a House incumbent in 2010 spent about $265,000, Barr was able to spend nearly 6 times as much as the average challenger–over $1,550,000.

Barr was the first serious (well-funded) opponent that Ben Chandler had faced since his election to the KY-6 seat 2004. And Chandler barely escaped with his seat in 2010, winning 50.08% to 49.81% despite being the incumbent.

Mr. Barr Goes to Washington

Although Barr must have been deeply disappointed in the outcome of the 2010 election, he had reason to be very optimistic about his future as a representative for economic elites. By creating name recognition among average voters in KY-6 and that he could raise large sums of money from the wealthy, he established himself as best-positioned Republican to unseat Chandler in 2012. And that is what he did.

Although Chandler was the incumbent and raised slightly more campaign funding than did Barr in the 2012 election, Barr had an edge due to the huge advantage he had in terms of outside spending–that is, spending that is not directly connected to a campaign but is meant to support or oppose a candidate. While about $500,000 was spent by liberal groups to undermine Barr, conservative groups spent about $1,500,000 to undermine Chandler. The fact that Barr was able to gather more total financial support in his second run against an incumbent than the incumbent did makes this much clear: elites quickly realized, before Barr had ever been elected to office, that he was their guy.

Once Barr arrived in Congress, he immediately set out to undermine the regulations that, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, had been created to reform Wall Street and protect consumers. Wall Street must have noticed Barr’s efforts to help out our poor and misunderstood bankers, as the investment and securities industry has become the largest source of his individual and PAC contributions in his political career: Barr has raised about 70% more money from the investment and securities industry than he has from any other. That’s not to say he only has support from that industry, mind you. He’s also received substantial backing from wealthy individuals in the real estate, insurance, and commercial banking industries.

Drawing from FEC data available on OpenSecrets, I’ve compiled summary data on the sources of Barr’s campaign funding for each of Barr’s re-elections. That data is presented below:

The column entitled “Small Donor %” indicates the percentage of Barr’s campaign funding in each election cycle that came from small donations of under $200. While perhaps not the perfect measure, this gives us a reasonable proxy for the amount of support he has from poor and middle class Americans. The values in this column range from 3.46% to 6.31%, meaning that the share of Barr’s campaign funding coming from average Amerians has never even approached 10%. That’s obscene.

The columns “Large Donor %” and “PAC%” indicate the percentage of his campaign funding that came in the form of individual donations of over $200 and the percentage of his funding that came from PAC contributions, respectively. These can both be treated as proxies for how much of his support comes from the wealthy, as the vast majority of people who donate over $200 are wealthy, and PAC funds also typically come from wealthy donors. In every re-election, these large donations and PAC contributions have accounted for at least 80% of his campaign funding–further evidence that he is a representative who works for elites, rather than average Kentuckians.

All told, in Barr’s average re-election, about 4.5% of his money came from average Americans, 46.3% came from the rich via large individual donations, and 41.5% came from the rich via PACs. In short, Barr received the vast majority of his campaign funding from the wealthy, and almost none of it from the working class.

While Barr has consistently relied on the wealthy to support his campaigns, exactly which wealthy people he’s relied on has changed over time. The column “In-State %” indicates the percentage of his funding that came from donors within Kentucky. While that number was well over 60% in 2014 and 2015, it has declined in every election since then. In his most recent re-election campaign of 2024, only 30% of his campaign funding came from in-state donations. What this means is that Andy Barr used to gain his support from rich Kentuckians, but now most of his funding comes from rich people all around the country.

This change is perhaps best illustrated by examining the list of corporations whose employees and executives contributed most to his campaigns over time. In his first few re-election campaigns, the top corporate sources of individual and PAC funding were mostly either Kentucky-based companies (like RJ Corman Railroad Group, Ball Homes, and Brown-Forman Corporation) or companies that, while not based in Kentucky, at least had substantial operations in Kentucky (like Alliance Coal).

By his third re-election campaign in 2018, his sources of funding had begun to transform. In that cycle, two of his top five corporate sources of campaign funding from individuals and PACs were Goldman Sachs and Quicken Loans–two powerful Fortune 500 companies that were not headquartered in Kentucky.

In each of the next two re-election campaigns, at least three of the top five corporate sources of contributions were major out-of-state companies. And in 2024, his most recent re-election to the House of Representatives, all five of his top five corporate sources of contributions were major out-of-state companies or interest groups: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Banc of California, Apollo Global Management, Wells Fargo, and Blackstone Group.

Because we know that legislators’ voting behavior suggests that they represent their donors instead of their voters, Barr’s history tells us that he fundamentally represents very wealthy people from out of state.

At the same time, it’s not quite fair to say that Barr only represents rich individuals from out-of-state. There are two Kentucky-based companies that are still among the top 10 corporate sources of funding for Barr in his career: Fortch Group of Kentucky and Mt. Brilliant Farm. Fortch Group of Kentucky’s largest business is Fortch Bank, which controls over $1 billion in assets, but Fortch Group of Kentucky also has major investments in broadcasting, insurance, financial services, and real estate. Mt. Brilliant Farm, a 1,300-acre horse farm in Lexington horse farm, is not only one of Barr’s top 10 sources of funding in his career, but also the only company in the state of Kentucky to make the top 10 list of Barr’s funders in his most recent re-election bid.

In addition to examining where Barr’s campaign funding comes from, it’s also important to note where his funding doesn’t come from. In his first re-election effort, employees of the University of Kentucky donated $13,200 to his campaign, making them the 10th-largest contributor to his source of funding despite being the largest employer in the district. But in his last five re-elections, the University of Kentucky has not been a top 10 source of funding for Barr even once.

Barr runs for Senate

Now that Barr is running for Senate, the Goodman family that owns Mt. Brilliant Farm is contributing even more to his campaign funding than they ever have before. In the first three months of 2025, FEC filings indicate that four members of that family have already contributed (at least) $28,000 to Andy Barr’s re-election campaign–more than they have during any past election. What do these horse farmers get out of putting so much money behind Andy Barr? Maybe they think he’s just a wonderful, morally upright person who deserves support. Or, perhaps, they know that he’s the co-chair of the Congressional Horse Caucus, a staunch advocate for legislation that benefits wealthy horse farmers, and has a long history of helping rich horse breeders like the Goodman family. Who’s to say?

Aside from the Goodman family, it appears that roughly 240 other individuals had given at least $1,000 to Barr’s campaign between January and March 2025. While employment information on some of these individuals is incomplete, they include at least 42 individuals who are CEOs, presidents, or corporate chairs. These are the types of people Andy Barr represents.

What does this mean for Kentucky?

With the upcoming retirement of the ghoulish Mitch McConnell, who has spent over 40 years serving elite interests in the Senate, Kentucky has a chance to discard the status quo and pick someone who actually represents average Kentuckians. But Andy Barr is not that guy. Nor can he be that guy as long as he supports our current system of campaign finance.

Nor is his top challenger, Daniel Cameron or, for that matter, or any other candidate who does not make campaign finance the linchpin of their entire policy agenda.

When Kentuckians vote in 2026, they need to understand that if they’re voting for someone who doesn’t support campaign finance reform, then they’re voting for someone who represents economic elites.