New Allies for Campaign Reform?
Money in politics is like water: it will seep through any crack or hole it can find. Plug one, and it will work on another. If you believe there is too much money flowing into elections (can you argue otherwise?), that means we must be diligent in plugging the holes that allow huge sums of unregulated/unaccountable money into the system.
Bessie Ford at BusinessAlabama.net has a good article this month on the PAC-to-PAC transfers that hide the sources of huge sums of campaign contributions. The whole article is worthwhile, but she offers this interesting nugget near the end (emphasis added):
PAC operations have found favor in the Legislature. Attempts to outlaw PAC-to-PAC transfers have been voted down repeatedly. A few reform-minded legislators have fought that battle against the odds.
Insiders say those who have backed changes in the PAC-to-PAC operations could receive help from unexpected sources in the future. That may come about, they say, because several veteran legislators are experiencing firsthand the agony of not knowing the sources of their opposition’s financial backing.
May we assume that Gerald Dial would sponsor the legislation if he could?
My reading of the only way PAC reform legislation will be passed is that it will have to be done by the voters, rather than the legislature, because even if some legislators decide to join the few who have attempted reform in the past, they will still be outnumbered, and both houses are controlled by just a few members and their special interest backers, anyway.
Sufficient pressure by constituents on a majority of legislators to pass reforms is not likely because most voters just throw up their hands saying there’s nothing they can do about it, and now that’s true.
But, if those voters would pressure legislators to pass Initiative and Referendum legislation, once it has been approved by voters they would have the tool they need to initiate reform legislation (in any area) that could bypass the legislature and the governor and be put on the ballot and approved by those same voters.
Comment by Don — June 28, 2006 @ 8:25 am
Don, I totally agree with you! We have got to push to get PAC TO PAC transfers abolished. I don’t care which party they benefit, it’s not right when the general public (who does not have time to investigate pac transfers) does not have the benefit of knowing who these candidates are owing allegiance to. It sickens me to keep delving into these pacs and see just how controlled politics are by the major players such as AEA, etc…
Comment by Debbie Murphree — June 28, 2006 @ 7:47 pm
Debbie, PACs are not the only issue that needs to be addressed with reform legislation, but so many legislators benefit from them that they will never legislate real reforms unless one of two things happens.
[1] It gets passed as a result of tremendous pressure from voters on their legislators to pass it or [2] voters initiate the legislation through Initiative and Referendum (I&R) when we get it.
My theory is that rather than having to get voters to apply the necessary pressure on each individual issue, the better route is for everyone who is concerned about any reform issue to unite and concentrate on obtaining I&R first, and the other issues can then be more easily addressed by “we, the people”.
I urge everyone who agrees with me to visit my I&R website @ www.doctoriq.com and join with me and others in that struggle, and to urge all of their Alabama friends and acquaintances to do the same.
Comment by Don — June 29, 2006 @ 7:22 am