AUSTIN, Texas -- I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks Sunday morning.
There was Karl Rove (a.k.a. "Bush's Brain") on television, chatting with the
Sabbath gasbags about how the real champion of
campaign finance reform is ... George W. Bush.
This was funny enough, but Rove went on to say solemnly that John McCain
has taken money from lobbyists and
special-interest groups! Of course, by then I was on the floor.
And then Rove said: "He (McCain) is the only candidate to accept a $2
million contribution. He took $2 million raised for a Senate campaign and
transferred it over to his presidential campaign. He benefits from the
current sort of insider way that we handle campaign finance laws in America,
and he sees nothing wrong with that." By then I was in hysterics.
Let's take a look at the record.
George W. Bush has raised the unheard-of sum of $70 million for his
presidential campaign. He has collected so much money that he can afford to
ignore the caps on campaign spending that accompany federal matching funds.
Those caps are part of the system of public campaign financing for
presidential races that was instituted after the Watergate scandals. The
system has been undermined since the 1988 campaign by the growth of soft
money given in unlimited amounts to political parties, rather than directly
to candidates. In a presidential year, most soft money goes into the
presidential campaign.
Bush started collecting money a year before he announced, flying big
Republican donors into Austin in smallish groups to have lunch at the
Governor's Mansion. He has 150 "Pioneers," who are each committed to raising
$100,000 for his campaign. That's $15 million right there. Each of these 150
Pioneers has to go out and find 99 other people willing to donate $1,000
each. Where do they find them? Mostly from among their employees, and those
contributions are, of course, entirely voluntary.
The Pioneers are CEOs or other top executives of large corporations, name
partners in law firms, lobbyists, lobbyists disguised as law firms, and
corporate lobbyists usually with some title like "vice president for
government relations." And on behalf of the women's movement, you will be
proud to learn that a huge number of these entirely voluntary contributions
solicited from employees by their bosses are combined with equally voluntary
contributions from the wives of said employees. And sometimes from their
children and grandchildren, who are all voluntary troopers, too.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the third quarter of
last year (latest figures available), "bundling" increased sharply: The
presidential candidates received 38 bundles of contributions of $50,000 or
more from executives and families connected with 33 different organizations.
All but two came from business groups.
Bush got 25 of those bundles, or 75 percent of the total for the quarter.
Al Gore got eight, and Bill Bradley got seven. McCain: zip. Seventy-seven
percent of Bush's campaign dollars come from $1,000 donors, 48 percent of
McCain's.
The center notes: "Many of the campaigns have played up the notion that
most of their donors give small contributions. What they have not emphasized
is that, in raw dollar terms, the big donations are vastly more important to
the campaigns' bottom lines."
(The center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization; you can
follow the money for yourself at www.opensecrets.org.)
According to a recent issue of Newsweek: "Many Washington lobbying groups,
whose clients will have large stakes in any Bush administration, have jumped
on the bandwagon. The heads of two dozen powerful trade associations --
representing steel, chemical, electric power, oil and other industries --
have been holding regular conference calls about how to help Bush and have
been pushing their members to contribute. The campaign has assigned
'tracking code' numbers to these trade-association heads. Staffers call that
a bookkeeping device, but the Bush campaign and the lobbyists use the
numbers as a kind of scorecard."
Newsweek got an internal memo in which Edison Electric chief Tom Kuhn, a
Bush classmate at Yale, reminded power company executives to include the
industry's tracking code at the bottom of their checks for a Bush
fund-raiser.
"It does insure that our industry is credited, and that your progress is
listed among the other business/industry sectors." The magazine went on to
report that "various groups have been competing for the biggest war chest."
As for the claim that Bush is actually a campaign-finance reformer, Rove,
incredibly, based that whopper on the following contention: "Gov. Bush
favors campaign-finance reform of a more extensive nature than Sen. McCain
does. Sen. McCain, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Bill Bradley would limit
contributions from corporations and contributions from labor unions to
political parties. Gov. Bush supports those two steps, but he would go
further. He would require unions to get the permission of their members
before spending mandatory union dues on political activity."
In other words, he hates the whole idea and is out to kill any legislation.
Requiring permission from union members is the biggest deal-breaker since
death. It is completely impossible to pass campaign finance reform with that
addendum because that is unilateral disarmament for the unions.
Bush's initial position on campaign finance reform was, characteristically,
to say nothing at all. But when he was cornered by reporters last April, he
announced that he favors raising the limits on individual contributions --
no indication how high. In Texas, where there are no limits, 50 contributors
to Bush's 1998 gubernatorial campaign gave more than $50,000 each.
Bush does favor banning corporate and union soft-money contributions, but
he does not favor any limit on individual soft money contributions. Since
the bulk of individual soft money contributions come from very rich
individuals, this measure would actually aggravate the inequality of
influence now corrupting our entire system.
The Bush campaign is also raising money through a "victory fund" with state
Republican parties. The average donation was $13,000, and some wealthy
families gave between $50,000 and $100,000.
According to The Boston Globe, "The fund takes advantage of an obscure
feature of federal law that allows presidential campaigns to raise money in
conjunction with state parties. It permits Bush's contributors to make a
$25,000 yearly donation for 1999 after they have hit the $1,000 limit on
direct gifts to Bush." No other candidate has such a fund.
As for Rove's hilarious accusation that McCain takes rides on corporate
jets, try Bush's record. More than three dozens lifts so far, many on jets
belonging to companies regulated by the state of Texas. "Thou hypocrite,
cast out first the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly
to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye."
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out
more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2000 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
