I was not up on my case law regarding Buckley v. Valeo, but I do remember now after having looked it up. Unfortunately, I don't have the legal backbone to discuss case law proper. I was trying to discuss more akin to philosopher language.
After having slept on why money in politics bothers me, I think I can better explain why it does.
Normally, a vote from me counts as the same as a vote from any resident in Indiana. And I can extrapolate that to show that my vote is pretty much equal to any citizen in the US. When we add money, it changes that "1 person, 1 vote" to "1 rich person, lots of votes: 1 poor person, 1 vote"
When we distill that down, we are saying that a rich person is much more important than an average income person, or even that homeless indigent voters are worthless. That doesn't sit right with me.