Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203010109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
The Suffolk Democrat had one major weapon available: money. With 20-plus years seniority, he easily could have raised $100,000 from business political action committees, legislators say. But Glasscock, once nicknamed the "conscience of the House," refused PAC contributions as he had throughout his career.
"That's just not the way I want to run," he said. "I did not want any special interests or anyone feeling like they had some inside track on some vote I had to make."
That stance, almost unheard of in the Virginia General Assembly, may have cost Glasscock his seat. Unlike many senior Democrats who raised six-figure war chests from lobbying groups and vastly outspent Republican challengers, Glasscock spent less than $40,000, about the same as GOP nominee Robert Nelms. Nelms won, using commercials charging Glasscock with being soft on crime and a pal of an unpopular governor.
Glasscock's loss shows why so few state lawmakers turn down PAC donations: They do so at their peril. A computer analysis of campaign contributions also suggests contributions are aimed at buying, as Glasscock puts it, the "inside track" at the legislature.
The analysis, which involved classifying more than 12,000 donations into 22 industry groups and logging them into a database, shows:
Major campaign contributions underlay many battles between business and consumer groups in the General Assembly. Usually the business groups won. But votes often didn't follow patterns of contributions.
Industries tended to target donations to members of key committees with influence over those industries' operations. Some big PAC donors, such as the "Committee for Responsible Government" run by employees of Virginia Power and its corporate parent, give broadly to scores of candidates, in amounts typically of several hundred dollars.
But others concentrate their money where they think it will do the most good. The beverage industry - including brewers, beer and soft-drink distributors and wine and liquor wholesalers - gave $33,068 to members of the House General Laws committee, which oversees liquor laws. That's an average of $1,600 per member and more than double the average beverage-industry contribution to delegates who don't serve on that committee.
Likewise, the auto industry donated $22,545 to campaigns of 20 members of the House Roads and Internal Navigation committee. That's an average of $1,100 per member - triple the $320 average the industry gave the rest of the House. The roads committee, by the way, voted for the second straight year to kill legislation that would have required safety warning stickers on minivans - a measure the industry fought vigorously.
Some of the biggest-spending lobbies also are perceived as highly effective by Capitol Hill insiders. Banks, utilities, the liquor industry and hospitals received the highest ratings in a survey last year of legislative effectiveness. All are major campaign contributors. The survey forms were filled out by legislators, lobbyists, state officials and statehouse reporters.
Campaign contributions were not immune to the recession. While overall contributions to the House of Delegates held steady from 1989, at $2.6 million, donations from hard-hit industries were off sharply. House contributions that could be identified from the building, development and real-estate industry plummeted from $325,000 in 1989 to $196,000 last year.
Do campaign contributions buy influence? "It's not always, it's not 100 percent, but there's a very strong connection between the money and voting," says Julie Lapham of the state chapter of Common Cause, a political watchdog group.
Political scientists disagree. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, who has written a book on PACs and their influence, contends that politicians respond less to big spenders than to blocs of votes. If contributions tip the legislative balance, it is on issues that don't attract any public attention, he says.
Del. Thomas Forehand, D-Chesapeake, one of the assembly's most prolific fund-raisers last year, received $23,000 from banks, other financial institutions, retailers and insurance companies - all of which opposed a measure that would have restricted telephone sales calls.
Forehand voted against the bill, but insists that what swayed him was not contributions but a foot-high stack of letters from employees of telemarketing firms, who said the measure would endanger their jobs. At the time of the vote he had not received a single letter in favor of the proposal, he said.
On the House floor, a bill sought by the banking industry to deregulate credit card operations passed with "yes" votes from 95 delegates who received a collective $181,000 in contributions from bankers. But one of the three opponents was House Speaker Thomas Moss, whose banker contributions total of $9,050 was among the highest in the House.
The credit card bill, which would allow banks to start charging interest on purchases immediately, was endorsed by the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, whose members received $36,900 in banking contributions. It passed in the Senate on Wednesday and is awaiting the signature of Gov. Douglas Wilder.
In the year's most publicized lobbying battle, Wilder's plan to tax medical providers was unceremoniously dumped in an unrecorded House of Delegates floor vote. Was money a factor? The 100 delegates received at least $76,000 from hospitals and other medical facilities, in addition to $192,687 from doctors and other medical professionals.
But lawmakers say Wilder's proposal never had much of a chance, not because it was opposed by major campaign donors, but because they are leery of taxes in any form.
Del. Paul Councill, D-Southampton, never had to think about whether PAC contributions would influence him because he never accepted them - before last fall. But then, in midsummer, he suddenly had an opponent for the first time in more than a decade. So he raised about $18,000, including what he called "token" PAC contributions. "It was at the last minute, and I had a large area to cover," he said. "The ballgame's a little different this time." Councill won.
Staff writers Dale Eisman, Rob Eure and Greg Schneider contributed to this report.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY POLITICS
by CNB