(Image from Mitt RomneyCentral.com)
America’s shattered system of campaign finance regulation may be full of loopholes now, allowing the past two elections to attain records for money spent and setting 2012 up for the most expensive contest ever, but the influence of money in politics stands to become a crisis thanks to a movement afoot that would abolish all restrictions on political donations.
The looming 2012 presidential election stands to hit the startling pinnacle of a $6 billion campaign, with President Barack Obama’s reelection bid alone aiming for up to $1 billion raised and the conservative-leaning independent groups that emerged in 2010 after the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” ruling to at least double their financial impact.
But could it get worse? A number of political operatives, corporate lobbyists and their allies, including a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, are pushing for the total dismantling of the campaign finance regulatory system, opening the door for unlimited political contributions from individuals and corporations.
Politico talked with ex-FEC chair Michael Toner, who is also a former top official with the Republican National Committee, about his “ideal world” without any limitations on campaign contributions.
Toner calls campaign finance laws “perverse,” and says lifting restrictions would permit candidates to “have at it” with unlimited campaign riches. He notes the strong shift in the US Supreme Court away from support for even nominal fundraising regulation and towards a day when the conservative court could rule all limits on contributions to be unconstitutional.
The United States should take a cue from the Commonwealth of Virginia — or the Cayman Islands, for that matter — and simply do away with limits on campaign contributions, former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner says.
“In my ideal world, you’d lift the limits, have real-time disclosure and let these candidates have at it,” Toner, also a former chief counsel to the Republican National Committee, said during the third installment of POLITICO’s weeklong video series on money and politics. “People can take stock of the money that individuals or companies or trade associations give. They can determine how comfortable they are with that. There’s the disclosure side of it.”
The almost endless fundraising in which members of Congress today engage is one of the “perverse realities of contribution limits,” Toner said. If candidates could receive larger contributions, they’d spend less time and effort raising money and more time legislating and representing constituents.
Toner pointed to the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as a major tipping point in campaign finance law evolution. The court has subsequently embarked on a push toward campaign finance deregulation, and “we have one person to really thank for that, and that’s Justice [Samuel] Alito. He’s had a major impact in this area of the law.”
Ironically, it is Barack Obama that can be pointed to as the one individual that has had more to do with the decline of the idea of public financing for campaigns as well as the overall push for stricter campaign finance regulation.
Not only has Obama set new standards for money raised in a presidential campaign, and looks poised to do it again in 2012, his move to eschew public funding for his 2008 bid for the White House is to be considered a fatal blow to the goal of increasing public funding for campaigns and limits to private contributions.
The Obama campaign’s decision in 2008 to drop out of the taxpayer-financed system providing public money to presidential candidates and end up compiling $750 million in private contributions is, according to one former election official, the reason “we now don’t have a functioning presidential public financing system.”
Sen. John McCain felt like he was “mugged” by Barack Obama when the Democrat broke a promise to use public financing during the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a top McCain adviser.
Trevor Potter, who served as the lead lawyer for McCain’s Republican presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2008, suggested Obama’s move was unprincipled and effectively killed the Watergate-era public-financing program.
“What happened to [McCain] was, he — I think he feels he got mugged first by the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, who walked away from the public financing of the general election, and then by the press, who let Obama get away with it,” said Potter in an interview for POLITICO’s video series on money and politics that launched Tuesday.
According to Potter, McCain “felt the principle there wasn’t the political reality of who could raise more money. It was his belief in the importance of a public funding system, which he thought Obama shared, until he didn’t share it,” Potter said. “The result of all of that is that we now don’t have a functioning presidential public financing system. And that’s, I think, bad news for the country.”
Indeed, there are serious doubts about the viability of public financing for presidential campaigns. President Obama is almost certain to refuse public financing and turn to a private fundraising machine that could reach nearly a billion dollars for his reelection bid.
And lawmakers in Washington are hardly eager to boost the program, with House Republicans passing a bill in January that would have killed presidential public funding entirely. It never passed the Senate, but the future looks bleak for the idea of public money over billions in increasingly unbridled private dollars.
Of course, even without the ban on corporate contributions lifted or the existing restrictions on fundraising dismantled, the 2012 presidential campaign is shaping up to be one dominated by corporate and lobbyist influence.
Republican candidates seeking to counter Obama’s implacable edge in money are being buoyed by hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from lobbyists connected to major American and worldwide corporations.
Former Massachusetts Gov. and current Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney is the leading beneficiary of the infusion of lobbyist cash. The Washington Post reports that he has received $200,000 in direct contributions from at least 100 registered corporate lobbyists since launching his campaign. Other GOP presidential hopefuls are also being pumped with cash from some of Washington’s most well-connected lobbysists.
K Street is playing an increasingly central role in the 2012 presidential race, as hundreds of lobbyists representing some of the world’s largest corporations and trade groups pour money into Republican coffers.
The main beneficiary so far is Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and equity-fund executive, who is banking on strong support from the business community to propel his White House bid.
More than 100 registered lobbyists have contributed to Romney, giving nearly $200,000 in direct donations, according to a Washington Post analysis of donor and lobbying records. A team of lobbyist fundraisers has also bundled together nearly $1 million in contributions for Romney’s campaign, disclosure records show.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who entered the race in August, took in at least $72,000 in contributions from 42 lobbyists through September, plus $77,000 bundled by a bank executive. Dozens of Washington lobbyists have also given money to trailing candidates Jon Huntsman Jr., Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, the analysis shows.
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The lobbyists who have donated to GOP candidates so far represent a broad swath of corporate interests, including technology firms lobbying for a tax holiday on overseas profits and oil companies hoping to preserve lucrative tax breaks on energy.
On Wednesday morning, for example, Romney attended a breakfast fundraiser at the American Trucking Association sponsored by more than a dozen K Street heavy-hitters. Hosts included longtime GOP fundraiser Wayne Berman, who represents the American Petroleum Institute and many others; GOP lobbyist Mark Isakowitz, whose lengthy client list includes banks, oil companies and technology firms; and Alex Mistri of the Glover Park Group, which briefly represented Solyndra, the solar-energy firm that went bankrupt after getting a $530 million government loan guarantee.
The Obama reelection campaign consistently touts its promise to refuse direct donations from registered lobbyists. But the president enjoys a vast network of deep-pocketed bundlers representing all levels of Corporate America and other key interest groups, funneling up to half-a-million dollars into his campaign.
And the Obama team stirred controversy when it was announced this week that “veteran Democratic attorney” Broderick Johnson was named as a senior adviser to the president’s reelection campaign. Johnson is not only a “veteran” attorney, he is also a veteran lobbyist on Capitol Hill and at the White House.
He has lobbied lawmakers in recent years on behalf of a number of major corporations, including Microsoft, Ford, and TransCanada, the company behind the highly controversial oil sands pipeline set to be built from Canada through the American heartland. The Obama administration has been sharply criticized by environmentalists for their support for the project.
President Obama’s re-election team today appointed former corporate lobbyist and veteran Democratic attorney Broderick Johnson as a senior adviser for the 2012 campaign.
Johnson, who volunteered for Obama in 2008, has spent the past three years lobbying federal lawmakers on behalf of Microsoft, Comcast Corp., FedEx, Ford and TransCanada, among other corporate clients, according to public records.
His “revolving door profile” with the Center for Responsive Politics shows that before he worked as a lobbyist Johnson spent several years as counsel on congressional committees, and later as congressional liaison to the House during the last two years of the Clinton administration.
He joined the private sector in 2000 as an in-house lobbyist for AT&T and BellSouth before joining the law firm Bryan Cave in 2007.
Johnson’s appointment, in spite of Obama’s effort to cast himself as an enemy of corporate lobbyists and moneyed interests, immediately drew fire from environmental groups, which said Johnson’s ties to the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline violated the president’s pledge to remain free from lobbyists’ influence while in office.
The Obama administration is weighing approval of the deal, which is sought by TransCanada, a former Johnson client.
“President Obama ran for office in 2008 promising that the days of lobbyists setting the agenda in Washington were over, yet now he’s hired a top oil pipeline lobbyist into his campaign,” said Kim Huynh of Friends of the Earth, in a statement. “This is a deeply troubling development.”
When dealing with fire breathing dragons, such as Rove’s “Crossroads” and Perry’s “Make Us Greedy Again”, any sane political entity would realize the need to fight fire with fire ….. or become a S’more in the Napalm of Republican special interest money.
The Five “Conservative” Jesters of The Supreme Court decimated the campaign fund raising rule book that was in play when Obama uttered those words and The DNC would be dense not to play by the new rules of engagement. Burn On.
Oh, wow. Big surprise. Until lobbying is outlawed, and/or until we get some folks running for office without political affiliations (Democrat or Republican), this will continue. We are way past the need for real campaign reforms.
Convincing 51% of people to vote for you wins. Money is simply one way to do this. And maybe the most statistically likely one right now.
Does this mean we shouldn’t be working to change this?
I believe there are other ways to win that would not require large corporate contributions.
Mittens was born wealthy and has benefited from financial handouts his entire life.
The money he earned himself was at the expense of others’ misfortune. If you think banksters, hedge-hogs & Wall St are a problem now, imagine Mittens as President..
Glad Obama’s outraising the Republicans and he will need every penny because thanks to Citizens United, even with Obama’s money he will still be outspent 5-1 or more by these anonymous PAC’s and Corporations that will FLOOD the airwaves next year saying everything from Obama’s the antichrist to Hitler.