Stories about the pernicious influence of money in politics
are said to command the attention of about a dozen good-government types, six
editorial writers, a couple of columnists and John McCain. It’s unclear why
this has become a truism. It certainly can’t be that Americans prefer not to talk
about the power of money in general. Anybody who has even a passing interest in
modern athletics can tell you that fans are positively obsessed with the
pernicious influence of money in professional (and even amateur) sports.
These days, in order to sound informed while chatting with
rabid radio talk-show hosts, fans must throw around terms like “salary caps”
and “appearance money” with the confidence and brio of political talking heads
discussing the intricacies of the McCain-Feingold bill. So, if Joe from Queens
can immerse himself in the details of big-league business, why must we assume
that he’s loath to spend any time or energy considering public campaign finance
or bans on soft money?
Well, politics ain’t baseball, that’s for sure. It’s one
thing to take perverse pleasure in bemoaning the unfairness of Rey Ordonez’s
$19 million deal with the Mets; it’s quite another to get excited about Hank Morris’ now-scuttled deal to work for free for Alan Hevesi’s
Mayoral campaign. In the end, it isn’t money that we find uninteresting,
but the larger subject. Inside baseball is fun when the subject is baseball;
inside baseball can bore you to tears when the subject is politics.
Still, that’s not a good enough reason to push aside talk
about the rotten way we finance political campaigns. The standard argument
against limits on campaign contributions is that it’s a violation of free
speech: If Joe from Queens decides he likes Peter Vallone, there should be few restraints on the way he shows
his support. He can volunteer for Mr. Vallone. He can decorate his front yard
with Mr. Vallone’s lawn signs. And he can send Mr. Vallone money. It’s all of a piece, all a part of our participatory
democracy.
That’s a fine argument,
but the specific scenario is no more relevant to modern politics than the
election-eve torchlight parade. It’s not Joe from Queens who is polluting the political process with the exercise of his First
Amendment rights. It’s the favor-seeking corporate interests, political-action
committees and power machers whose
bundles of money have nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with
business. Which is to say that the favor-seekers regard the money they spend on
politicians not as a celebration of democracy, but as a fee they’re required to
pay in order to qualify for government contracts and access to decision-makers.
This charming arrangement
is known in the trade as pay-to-play. Want to make widgets for the state
Department of Small-Time Scams? You would be well advised to make a hefty
contribution to those elected officials who administer the department: the
Governor for sure, and maybe a big-shot state
legislative leader. Does your investment house want a piece of a municipality’s
pension-fund action? Your competence may be measured by the size of your
contribution.
A classic case of pay-to-play is developing in New
Jersey, where state investigators are looking into a
$500 million auto-inspection contract awarded to the California-based Parsons
Infrastructure and Technology Group. The Star
Ledger recently reported that a
Parsons lobbyist told investigators that companies looking for government
contracts routinely give money to politicians who give out those contracts. The
Star Ledger report noted that the
lobbyist made this admission matter-of-factly; in his business, it seems fair
to say, giving money to politicians is just another expense, like paying the
electric company to keep the factory’s lights on. On the day Parsons won the
contract (the company, incidentally, subsequently botched the assignment), a
company executive suggested that colleagues buy $1,000 tickets to then-Governor
Christine Todd Whitman’s annual fund-raiser.
Reformers in New Jersey
have proposed a bill that would prohibit contractors from making campaign
contributions to candidates for governor and the state legislature. And
businesses whose executives gave more than $5,000 to state political candidates
in a given year would be prohibited from bidding on government contracts the
following year. New York has a
tepid version of these restrictions on bond underwriters, and Mayor Giuliani
has proposed some restrictions on firms that manage city pension funds.
Opponents of the reforms in New Jersey
have cited the usual complaints about trampling on the First Amendment rights
of good-hearted citizens who wish only to show their support for their favorite
political candidates. But that simply obscures the reality of modern campaign
finance, which some might dare call a form of legalized bribery.
So wish New Jersey’s reformers good luck, and hope that one day
their courage will embolden the hearts of New York’s elected officials.
