THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 5, 1997 TAG: 9702050003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: By JULIE HOLT
LENGTH: 89 lines
While the call for real campaign-finance reform swirls around our nation's capitol, Virginia's politicians are trying their best to create the illusion of reform in an election year. Behind the illusion, unfortunately, is the truth - Virginia's campaign-finance laws are among the weakest in the nation. Virginia is one of the few states left in America that has no limits on campaign contributions. It also has no limits on the gifts or trips that elected officials and their families can receive from lobbyists. The commonwealth is indeed governed by today's Golden Rule of Politics: ``Them that has the gold, makes the rules.''
Campaign-finance and government-ethics laws aren't about whether we elect crooks and unethical officials. They are about whether government represents the public interest over special interests, whether we have affordable utility rates, laws that protect consumers when buying a used car, and laws that protect our drinking water. The kind of campaign-financing and ethics-in-government laws we have demonstrates whether we really believe in one person, one vote or one dollar, one vote.
It is, in fact, highly unlikely that most Virginia elected officials do anything illegal when it comes to campaign financing or accepting gifts. (Most real bribing of elected officials, like in South Carolina, Kentucky and Arizona, is not couched as campaign contributions or gifts - they are just bribes!) After all, these very politicians are the people who write the campaign-finance and lobbying laws that establish what is legal or illegal, and they are very careful to give themselves plenty of room. In Virginia's case, there are hardly any boundaries at all!
Most large campaign contributors aren't directly buying votes anyway. They are buying access. They are buying relationships. When an elected official or regulator holds a campaign breakfast for $100 or $500 or $1,000 a person, he is selling access that most citizens don't have. When a lobbyist pays for a trip to a convention at some resort for a legislator and his family, that lobbyist is buying access - access that most citizens don't have. When businesses contribute to the Jesse Helms Foundation, they are just ``letting the senator know they appreciate him.'' President Clinton is under attack for meeting with potential contributors in the White House. Governor Allen regularly does the same thing in the Governor's Mansion. When the president of Smithfield Foods has a private dinner in the Governor's Mansion and then gives the governor's PAC $100,000, it is certainly not illegal - but it does raise the eyebrows of most Virginians. While this money may not corrupt any given individual, it corrupts the process. What the huge amount of money in politics today does is skew our democracy away from the public interest toward monied interests - not exactly a Jeffersonian principle.
Even the politicians who won't actively support real reform find themselves admitting, maybe unintentionally, the corrosive effect of money on the legislative process. How else should we interpret bills like the one to prevent legislators from accepting campaign contributions during the legislative session? If the rationale is that money buys influence during the session, is it any less influential if it is given the day before the session or withheld until the day after the session, perhaps with the implication that a bad vote might reduce the size of the contribution? This kind of ``reform'' is a sham, and the people know it.
The biggest effort that so-called reformers hide behind to try to take the focus off the role money plays is their call for ``disclosure.'' Politicians and academics alike ride this bandwagon. The truth is that while disclosure might make some politicians more circumspect, the money would still flow. Remember, most wealthy special interests aren't buying votes, they are buying access and relationships. That's why they most often give to both sides, both candidates and both parties. The tobacco industry gives to Democrats as well as Republicans. Thus, disclosing the contributions provides little of value to voters looking for someone who will really represent them. Of course, greater disclosure won't hurt. It's like calling a double foul in basketball. Everybody knows who committed the fouls, but since both were equally guilty, the game goes on without either of the perpetrators being ejected.
There is a solution: public financing of elections. The people of Maine just passed a referendum creating a fund for democratic elections and eliminating all private campaign contributions. And while you may not be hearing much about it, one of Virginia's strongest political leaders, Del. Richard Cranwell, has introduced a proposal that attempts to do the same thing in Virginia. But with little visible effort on the part of Cranwell to garner support for this initiative, one has to wonder why this measure has been introduced in the 1997 session. Polls show that a majority of the public thinks it's a good idea - overwhelmingly better than the system of special interests financing elections that we have now. So why are our politicians not enacting such legislation?
If Virginians are really tired of taking a back seat to special interests, we will have to force our elected officials to pass real campaign reform. If not, we should not be surprised when politicians try to fool us with the illusion of reform. MEMO: Julie Holt is state director of Virginia Citizen Action, a
public-interest organization.