WatchBlog: Campaign Finance Coming Into Focus
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The national issue of campaign finance is really hitting home here in West Virginia. Outside groups and shadowy state 501(c)4 groups are trying to corrupt the election process and confuse you. It’s like a scary Halloween story.
But like a lot of scary stories, there is more fluff and less substance.
One of the biggest controversies last week focused on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A story broken by ThinkProgress, the blog of the 501(c)4 non-profit Center for American Progress Action Fund, claims the Chamber uses foreign donations, dumped into their general fund, to fund ads against candidates. The Chamber is a 501(c)6:
A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding. And while the Chamber will likely assert it has internal controls, foreign money is fungible, permitting the Chamber to run its unprecedented attack campaign. According to legal experts consulted by ThinkProgress, the Chamber is likely skirting longstanding campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections.
The Chamber, along with the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, endorsed Gov. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for the special election for U.S. Senate. Should Manchin refuse the endorsement? The simple answer is no. After doing some fact-checking The New York Times published a story showing that the Chamber’s actions are not that unusual or unethical:
…A closer examination shows that there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.
In fact, the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce financing may say more about the Washington spin cycle — where an Internet blog posting can be quickly picked up by like-minded groups and become political fodder for the president himself — than it does about the vagaries of campaign finance.
Organizations from both ends of the political spectrum, from liberal ones like the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Sierra Club to conservative groups like the National Rifle Association, have international affiliations and get money from foreign entities while at the same time pushing political causes in the United States.
In addition, more than 160 political action committees active in campaigning have been set up by corporations that are based overseas, including military contractors like B.A.E. Systems and pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research service.
Read More: Topic of Foreign Money in U.S. Races Hits Hustings – NYTimes.com
As a point of disclosure, while Think Progress recently called West Virginia Watchdog a “phony news service,” we will not do the same to them. However, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision that allowed corporations to engage in electioneering, there has been a lot of crying wolf by both conservative and liberal groups in regards to who is spending what.
Congress has yet to pass the DISCLOSE Act, which would require corporations to disclose where donations are coming from, prevent federal contractors from electioneering, and put more control in place to prevent foreign money from making its way into the electoral process. The only problem with this bill is it provides exemptions for groups, such as unions and even the National Rifle Association, which also endorsed Manchin.
I’m not for corporations being treated as individuals, but I also have to put the issue in perspective; corporations ARE groups of like-minded individuals.
To make a comparison, many businesses, companies and unions have Political Action Committees. These PACs donate thousands of dollars to candidates on both sides of the aisles, and have done so even before the Citizen’s United ruling. We recently chronicled which candidate are receiving the most coal industry donations. Some of the donations are made via PAC money. These didn’t just crop up, but have always been around.
Corporations, on the other hand, are not always businesses. Some corporations, such as Citizen’s United, formed specifically for political reasons. For example, the Random House Dictionary defines a corporation as “an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.”
We also need to decide which is worse: a candidate who receives this special interest money, or a candidate who self-finances. While candidates that self-fund help raise the cost of running a campaign, hurting average people who may wish to run, candidates that rely on special interest money could hurt themselves by looking like they’re in someone’s pocket.
The point is the whole issue is complicated. It also doesn’t help when corporations put out controversial ads, such as the recent ad by the West Virginia Conservative Foundation which seemed to attack Rep. Nick Rahall for being a friend of President Obama and for being an Arab American. That ad buy cost them over $200,000 and who knows whether the individual donors would have approved of that ad had they been given a choice.
Luckily the free market can play a roll in keep such groups under control. A group that puts out a misleading ad could see a drop in donations to the group from people who disapprove. That goes for businesses and unions who choose to engage in misinformation and propaganda. The NRA could see membership dues decrease, people might not shop at the businesses in question, or unions could see a drop in numbers as workers choose to not support their political agenda.
Another way to provide a check-and-balance on special interest campaign donations is by keeping track of who donates to candidates. We try to do a little bit of that here at West Virginia Watchdog. Republican or Democrat, they ALL accept donations that they shouldn’t. Whether it’s Rahall taking donations from Native American tribes whom he oversees on the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito taking donations from the banking industry while sitting on the House Financial Resources Committee, Rep. Alan Mollohan getting donations from non-profits and defense firms he funnels earmarks to, or Republican David McKinley not properly disclosing his donations, they all need watching. Transparency doesn’t always please the elected, but it’s necessary.
Until a more even-handed disclosure bill makes its way through Congress it’s up to the press and the people to keep an eye on campaign donations and keep our leaders, or wannabe leaders, honest.
One of the best debates Citizen’s United ruling occurred on Bill Moyer’s Journal. Watch below:
Related articles
- New DNC Ad Accuses Karl Rove And Ed Gillespie Of ‘Stealing Our Democracy’ (mediaite.com)
- Axelrod: U.S. Chamber Using Foreign Cash To Fund GOP Campaigns (blogs.wsj.com)
Posted under Audio, Blog, Campaign Finance, Elections, Ethics, Legislation, Politics, Transparency, West Virginia.
9:35 pm on October 13th, 2010
I don’t remember this kind of brouhaha when Obama broke his promise to rely on public financing in the general election, or when his campaign then raised a record $750 million that exceeded what all presidential candidates combined had raised in the previous presidential election. We still don’t know where a lot of that came from, and we never will.
It seems to me all this talk is just a red herring. The Dems are just changing the subject because they don’t want to talk about the issues that are important to the American people, like the economy, JOBS, and the absolutely breathtaking decline of America in less than two years.