Corporate and Union Activity
Even though corporations and labor organizations may not make contributions or expenditures in connection with federal elections, they may establish Political Action Committees, or PACs. Corporate and labor PACs raise voluntary contributions from a restricted class of individuals. In the case of unions, this consists of union members and their families. For corporations, the restricted class consists of managerial employees and stockholders and their families. These funds may be used to support federal candidates and political committees, either through independent expenditures or through contributions to candidates. A PAC is limited to a maximum contribution of $5,000 to a candidate committee per election.Although prohibited from using their resources to "expressly advocate" the election or defeat of federal candidates, or to make contributions directly to candidates or parties, corporations and labor organizations may conduct a variety of activities related to federal elections, in addition to those conducted through a PAC. Though they may not use general treasury funds to pay for "electioneering communications" - broadcast ads referring to candidates for federal election without expressly advocating their election or defeat– in the 60 days prior to a general election, or 30 days prior to a primary election, they may advocate for political issues and mention federal candidates while doing so, if outside the 30/60 day time frame for "electioneering communications," or at any time through non-broadcast media. They may also engage in certain non-partisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns.
Additionally, over half the states allow some level of direct corporate contributions or spending in state and local races.
As you can see the deck has been very stacked in favor of trade organizations and unions who routinely collect dues along with contributions to their political action committees at the same time. However, corporations have been very handcuffed to a much smaller pool of contributors limited to managment and shareholders. So what effect has this had on PAC fund raising and which party has benefited from the current restrictions? I don't think the answer will surprise you based upon the uproar from the democrats however the magnitude of the difference may surprise you.
If you go to the "heavy hitters" on the web site Opensecrets.org and look at the top 100 political action committees of the past 20 years they are all corporate and union names. Heavy Hitters top 100 Of the largest 100 you have to get to number 87 before finding one that is solidly republican in their financial support. Of the top 20, 12 are solidly democrat and all are either associations of lawyers or unions. No question as to why there was no tort reform included in the health care bill now is there? Also becomes crystal clear why the unions got an exemption from the so called Cadillac tax on gold plated insurance plans. The lawyers and unions had already bought and paid for their exemptions. All of those PAC's are solidly democrat which means they give more than 90% of their money to democrat candidates.
So why is this such a big decision by the supreme court? It seems obvious that big special interest money has, as we are all aware, been flowing to candidates and campaigns already. What is most amusing is to watch the democrats get all up in arms about it and threaten to pass laws to stop it when they have already been the biggest beneficiaries of the current system of special interest money as evidenced by the list at opensecrets.org. Perhaps they are afraid the playing field may level in this game of special interest, They don't want "fair and balanced" support of parties and candidates and like the current system that has proven to be heavily weighted to their advantage.
While we have all become accustomed to the idea that special interest money buys politicians, there may be a change in the wind. The Massachusetts election gives one hope that the electorate after having been badly burned by not looking at the candidates history and listening to political spin in 2008, may now be ready to look to the candidates history, principals and values more than the overwhelming amount of money they spent on spin. In the 2008 presidential election Obama was able to spin out of the little bit of history he had and shout loud enough and with enough confidence and money that people ignored what he had proven to be in his brief political history. The overwhelming amount of money he spent on the election dwarfed his opposition by 2.5 times. Graph of total receipts and expenditures by candidate And when you look at the top 5 contributors to McCain and Obama it becomes obvious that someone thought an investment with Obama had a much higher likelihood of payoff. Probably because McCain had supported and authored campaign finance reform and has never taken one ear mark in his career.
Barack Obama
| University of California | $1,591,395 | ||||||
| Goldman Sachs | $994,795 | ||||||
| Harvard University | $854,747 | ||||||
| Microsoft Corp | $833,617 | ||||||
| Google Inc | $803,436 |
John McCain
| Merrill Lynch | $373,595 | ||
| Citigroup Inc | $322,051 | ||
| Morgan Stanley | $273,452 | ||
| Goldman Sachs | $230,095 | ||
| JPMorgan Chase & Co | $228,107 |
You can see that McCain's top 5 didn't even add up to Obama's top 1. So money did buy that election in spite of the populist spin put on it by the media. And as for the big corporate money going to the republican that doesn't appear to be the case here.
However, what a difference a year makes, when you look at the Massachusetts election as of December 31 Brown had raised and spent less than 25% of what Coakley had raised and spent.Massachusetts election spending It will be interesting to see what happened when the national parties realized what was happening there and decided to pour national money and support into the election. I am sure the amounts jumped dramatically in the final days but the momentum was built by Brown when he had a distinct financial disadvantage. Regardless of how the final numbers come out the power and money players who jumped on the band wagon at the end will take credit or place blame as if they were the deciding factors. However, I believe the Massachusetts electorate voted on the candidates and were not swayed by the special interest flurry at the end of the race. As such we have an increasingly independent electorate who are realizing they need to look at the candidate and not all the financed special interest spin they put in their message. Lets hope and pray that is the direction this country is taking. We need to all think like an independent whether we register as one or not. Vote on the candidate and his history, values and principals and quit voting for the R or the D as there is going to be more money flowing now than ever before.
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