Generally no.

It's such a ridiculous anti-capitalist trope to think that the billionaires and other financial "elites" just rig everything in their favor and politically fuck the rest of us.

• aier.org/article/the-obsession-with-funders/
• https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-only-question-that-matters-is-it-correct/

The empirics of this have always been troubled by the third-variable problem: charismatic/successful/enticing candidates get lots of votes and raise/attract a lot of money. It's not that the MONEY BUYS VOTES, it's that the candidate attracts both

When Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire (albeit briefly), many people objected. They argued that no one should have that much money when others have so much less. As Musk leveraged that fortune in an attempt to shape electoral outcomes, some despaired. Tuesday’s results indicate that was a poor investment, but it’s his half a billion to waste.

Ah yes, waste. Also, his half a billion "wasted" first, went to producing/making things that were somewhat socially valuable (also, others -- marketers, delivery peeps, workers, network ads etc --got income from that shite, so it's not a complete waste). Second, the waste is NOT WHERE YOU THINK IT IS:

An increasingly popular argument made by critics of economic inequality focuses on political power rather than consumption. The problem isn’t that the rich can buy a mansion but that they can buy elections. And this does seem worrisome.

Our pal Freiman, whom I mentioned to Scoresby in his election post (#1607930), is out here doing some Monday-morning-quarterbacking/rebuttal of leftist stupidities. (Redundant, I know).

He invokes Mancur Olsen's concentrated benefits idea. And because of that asymmetric concentration of incentives/political capture,

"Equalizing wealth doesn’t eliminate the problem because organization is a major source of political power."

Running a competitive campaign takes money. But this is a different claim than saying that “money buys elections.” Campaign Finance Institute researchers Michael Malbin and Brendan Glavin write, “Money is never a sufficient condition for winning. If the voters do not like what they are hearing, telling them more of the same will not change their opinion.” Indeed, economist Steven Levitt studied repeat candidates for the US House and found that “campaign spending has an extremely small impact on election outcomes, regardless of who does the spending.”

• Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary in Michigan despite a nearly 10-to-1 advertising disadvantage.
• A couple of weeks later in Florida, Angie Nixon won the Democratic primary even though her opponent, Alex Vindman, outraised her 16-to-1.

While there is a correlation between spending and winning elections, this often reflects that money flows toward stronger candidates who are already more likely to win. That is, money tends to follow winners rather than cause them. Plus, to the extent money does influence elections, it produces greater returns for challengers than incumbents, because the latter are already well-established and well-known.

So, if anything, money is a BALANCING MECHANISM.

And ultimately, it's a matter of free speech and free expression, just like buying pamphlets or putting up a retarded sign in your yard:

government officials shouldn’t prevent people from freely disposing of their own property to support their candidate, even if the exercise of some people’s property rights is more politically impactful than that of others.