THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 14, 1995 TAG: 9510140004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
In politics, incumbents receive larger campaign contributions than challengers. Everybody knows that.
Still, staff writer David Poole's report Tuesday on campaign contributions by the 10 biggest-contributing companies and business-related PACs for the General Assembly elections was an eye-opener.
Every dime of the Virginia Hospital Association's $35,860 in campaign contributions went to incumbents. All but one of the donors on the list made at least 95 percent of their contributions to incumbents. The challengers got chump change or nothing.
Naturally, campaign contributors want bang for their buck. An incumbent can help, and probably has helped, an organization; a challenger is useful only if elected - only after becoming an incumbent.
The 10 companies and business-related PACs contributed 61 percent of their campaign funds to Democrats, 39 percent to Republicans.
Do they like Democrats that much more than Republicans? Of course not. Liking has little to do with it.
Democrats hold 53 percent of the General Assembly seats; Republicans, 46 percent. Because Democrats are in the majority, they chair and control the committees and thus are the ones with whom campaign contributors seek to curry favor. For example, Del. George H. Heilig Jr., a Norfolk Democrat, is chairman of the House Corporations, Insurance and Banking Committee. Of the $62,485 that Heilig raised through August, more than 80 percent came from companies and business-related PACs that appear before his committee.
Relatively small contributions can lead to or be thanks for huge rewards. For example, the Virginia Manufactured Housing Association contributed $36,325 in the first nine months of this year, less than the price of a mobile home, in thanks for lawmakers who voted for a bill that restricts local governments from banning single-wide mobile homes in agriculturally zoned land. It's estimated the law will boost sales by 10 percent.
Meanwhile, Chesapeake City Councilman John M. de Triquet noted that the legislature's elimination of the city's say over mobile homes in rural parts of the city makes it tougher for Chesapeake to control galloping growth.
If Republicans held the majority and chaired the committees, as they well may after next month's election, Republicans would receive far more in campaign contributions than Democrats.
(At the national level, a Congressional Quarterly study found that the 10 business-related PACs most active since Republicans gained control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate have contributed 89 percent of their campaign money to Republicans. To the victors go the spoils.)
The company- and PAC-contribution story was summed up by Josh Goldstein, research director for the nonpartisan National Library on Money and Politics. ``It's not a question of Democrats vs. Republicans or conservatives vs. liberals,'' he said. ``It's all about incumbency and power. It tends to leave ordinary citizens on the sidelines.''
Both campaign donors and recipients insist there is no quid pro quo. At minimum, however, the money buys a legislator's ear. A legislator is more likely to listen to a campaign donor's story than yours, if you are merely a voter.
There is no hard push for campaign-finance reform because only incumbents could make the change, and the present system favors incumbents. (If the present system favored challengers, it would be changed in a heart beat.)
Still, as has been said in this space before, Virginia is a lobbyist's paradise, with no restrictions on the amount of money lobbyists may give or members of the legislature may accept.
With campaigns becoming ever more expensive, legislators will become more dependent, not less, on big donors.
While governor, L. Douglas Wilder appointed a bipartisan commission on election laws and ethics, chaired by a distinguished University of Virginia law professor. Its recommendations were met with hostility by legislators, in part because none of them were appointed to it.
One of the ignored recommendations was for campaign-contribution caps. Apparently Virginia will await a major scandal before proposing some prudent cap, say $2,000 per legislator from each donor.
It is one thing for money to talk, but in Virginia it is allowed to shout. by CNB