Authors: Hedrick Smith
Secondly, the NGSA tried to broaden its political appeal by setting up an innocuously named coalition, the Alliance for Energy Security, but reporters could not find its home office—except at NGSA headquarters. Although the coalition listed thirty-five business groups and natural gas users, its operations were funded by $1 million from NGSA. This change-the-name ploy boomeranged in Congress. Representative Philip Sharp, an Indiana Democrat, accused NGSA of a “deliberate attempt to mislead citizens about the sponsors of this effort and a lack of integrity about defining clearly the funding and interests of the sponsors.” Bush replied that NGSA had put out a press release announcing the coalition and its funding, but the damage had been done, and the gas producers failed to win decontrol. Bush contended, however, that the other side did not get full re control of natural gas prices.
“We moderated the hysteria against us, and we laid seeds for the future,” Bush claimed.
This case points up the risks of grass-roots lobbying by mail. Clearly, orchestrated mailings and prefabricated postcards are more likely to succeed, as they did for the banks, when they reflect genuine public opinion. If there is real emotion out in the country, the movement picks up popular momentum. When a lobby-by-mail effort is ill timed or too contrived, it can even anger its own supporters. For example, the gas producers angered some prodecontrol members of Congress, such as Mike Synar of Oklahoma, who resented the heavy pressure.
More broadly, mass mail campaigns have become such an industry that they engender political cynicism. At least three Washington commercial firms sell computer tapes matching lists of members of Congress (broken down by subcommittees and issue specialties) with lists of voters (broken down by congressional districts, ZIP codes, and interest groups)—all for easy targeting. Some trade associations, poised for battle, collect advance proxies from their members and have their names computerized, ready for generating instant mass mail. The National Education Association, a teachers group with 1.8 million members, has about 250,000 authorized proxies on issues such as defending Social Security or federal aid to education. NEA officials say they adopted this technique because otherwise their “turnaround time” on mail was not fast enough to match the computer-generated mail of right-wing groups.
Senators and House members rail against “synthetic” mail, asserting that they pay no attention to mass mail campaigns where the same text crops up over thousands of different signatures. “It’s ridiculous to have our computers answering their computers,” Senator David Duren-burger complained to me. But of course, members of Congress take care with individual letters, especially handwritten ones. Their problem is that mail technology is getting so sophisticated that sometimes it’s hard to tell the personalized letter from the mass-produced. Case in point: Life insurance industry lobbying kits used in 1985 included pretyped letters addressed from their supporters to individual members of Congress, using varied texts, with laser-printed personalized letterheads, on different colors of stationery—all to avoid the appearance of mass production.
No one expects members of Congress to read all their mail. The conventional wisdom is they weigh it, put the names in their computer banks, and disregard it. But that is too cavalier. Even when members of Congress suspect that their mail is a synthetic, computer-generated
groundswell, many will cite mail figures—if the mail favors their side of an issue. Or if it is running against them, they sometimes generate a counter campaign. Victor Kamber, a lobbyist with ties to organized labor, recalled the battle in 1978 over the labor-law reform bill. According to Kamber, Senator Harrison Williams, a New Jersey Democrat who sponsored the bill, publicly scoffed at the huge mail generated against the bill by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers. But he ordered Kamber to “match it.”
“We literally matched the opposition tactic for tactic.” Kamber recalled. “They had an economic study showing the damage the bill would do. We had an economic study on our side. They did an opinion poll. We did a poll. They had a list of editorials backing them. We had a list of editorials backing us. They had a mass mailing. We had our mass mailing. We did it not to change their positions but to neutralize the opposition’s efforts.” Overall, he ruefully noted, the two sides together generated about 8.5 million pieces of mail on an issue that “less than one half of one percent of the public had ever heard of.”
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Even when mail lobbying fails to swing votes, it has deterrent force. As Kamber observed, a lobby group or trade association risks losing out—unless it gets into the grass-roots-lobbying game. Some members of Congress, especially those from marginal districts or junior members, are afraid to risk alienating large constituencies. They dare not ignore any major pressure group, even if its pressure looks contrived. For mass mail usually shows organizational force, and that threatens to touch the politician’s lifeline of survival and reelection. Any group that can mobilize masses of people to sign letters—or get their proxies—can mobilize those people to vote, or so the logic goes. Hence, the veiled connection between mass mail and Roger Stone’s “gun behind the door.”
PAC-Man: Raising Big Money
The big gun of lobbying, the political weapon of choice, is money. It looms over the political landscape like the Matterhorn. It is the principal common denominator between the old lobbying game and the new lobbying game, except that the dimensions of the game—the staggering sums involved, and the sheer constant crazy circus of fund-raising—have made money a more visible force than ever before. Legislators are not so readily bought nowadays as during the Yazoo land frauds of the 1790s; nor are they owned outright by a single patron, as in the time of Ulysses S. Grant. Nor does any legislator act quite so openly as agent for a company, as Senator Lyndon Johnson did, for Brown & Root. But
organized money oils the machinery of many a congressional subcommittee.
Our political system is literally awash with money, rising to new levels every presidential election. In 1984, a total of $595 million was spent on the presidential race and congressional races. In 1986, even without a presidential race, $450 million was spent on congressional elections. The Republicans have steadily been outstripping the Democrats. In 1986, for example, the Republican National Committee and its two congressional arms spent $254.2 million, compared to $62.7 million for the Democratic National Committee and its congressional arms.
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Paradoxically, the campaign finance reforms of 1974 granted legitimacy to organized fund-raising and gave a rocket thrust to the new giant of American politics—PAC-Man, the inside-the-beltway nickname of the ubiquitous political action committees. Nowadays, it is routine for a corporation, union, trade association, or interest group to have a PAC to raise funds from its members and then funnel cash to political candidates, in order to push the political agenda of its parent organization.
The reforms of 1974 were aimed at stopping individual fat cats and secret corporate slush funds from bankrolling pet legislators and covertly buying influence. To reduce risk of corruption, the reformers established contribution limits for individuals ($1,000), for political action committees ($5,000 per candidate per election), and for political parties (varied limits and formulas based the office and the size of the electorate). All candidates were forced to report funding sources. But that reform, like many others, had unintended consequences. Court decisions, interpreting the law, legalized PACs formed by government contractors; that opened the floodgates and made PACs more attractive to business. Suddenly, PACs became the major new money channel. In 1985-86, for example, the top political spenders were the National Congressional Club (Jesse Helms’s PAC): $15.8 million; the National Conservative PAC: $9.3 million; the National Committee to Preserve Social Security PAC: $6.2 million; the Realtors PAC: $6 million; the American Medical Association PAC: $5.4 million; and the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund: $4.7 million.
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PACs had their origin in the 1940s with the CIO, but really sprang to life in the 1970s. Their number shot up from 608 in 1974 to 4,157 in 1986; their contributions to congressional campaigns skyrocketed even more sharply, from $8.5 million in 1974 to $132.2 million in 1986.
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By far the steepest growth came among corporate PACs:
eighty-nine in 1974 up to 1,902 in 1986 (compared to 418 for organized labor). More important, the legal limits on PAC giving are full of loopholes. PACs have learned how to “bundle” and “target” their bankrolls to gain a tremendous wallop, making a mockery of the ceilings.
“PAC money is destroying the electoral process,” Barry Goldwater protested in a public hearing. “It feeds the growth of special interest groups created solely to channel money into political campaigns. It creates an impression that every candidate is bought and owned by the biggest givers.”
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“Money has changed the character of this town,” lamented Kenneth Schlossberg, a former congressional aide turned lobbyist. In a
New York Times
opinion piece, he wrote what many echo:
The proliferation of PACs ignited a fund-raising explosion that has led to an unhealthy relationship between those who seek office and those who seek influence. The most common defense is that because everybody is buying influence, nobody is buying influence. That’s true when major interests are evenly matched against each other. But usually one side has more money than the other, and that side wins. The truth is that money has replaced brains and hard work as the way for a lobbyist to get something done for his client. Washington’s atmosphere is reminiscent of what city halls must have been like in the days of Boss Tweed—only now the bagmen have fancy college degrees, $500 suits, big cars, and the best tables.
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“The change has been monumental,” fumed Fred Wertheimer, the head of Common Cause. “You look at the amount of money spent to hire lobbyists, the amount of money spent on campaign contributions, the amount of money spent on speaking fees to members of Congress, the amount of money spent to stimulate direct mail and grass-roots lobbying campaigns, the amount of money spent on institutional advertising, the amount of money spent to influence the process here on television—no one has any idea what that adds up to. It’s a very subtle system. There are no smoking guns. It’s designed so there are no smoking guns. There’s a $5,000 limit on PAC campaign donations, but the players in the game do not see that as a limit. They see that as a license.”
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Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel for President Carter, was more direct. “It’s one step away from bribery. PACs contribute because they count on you to vote with them. You’ve got to take the money from PACs to survive, and then you’re under obligation to them.”
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This view is prevalent, but not every one agrees. Such academic experts as Michael Malbin of the American Enterprise Institute contend that it is hard to prove that PAC money buys votes, or that the situation is worse than before the 1974 reforms. In an excellent book on campaign funding, Malbin wrote, “What emerges from the sordid record of the 1972 campaign is a picture of semi-coercive fund raising, under-the-table cash contributions, and financial dominance by a handful of large givers most of whom had an interest ax to grind.… It takes a large set of blinders to miss the fact that the emergence of PACs represents an improvement over what went before.”
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Lobbyists such as Charls Walker, an ardently probusiness tax lawyer, and Tom Korologos, another Republican veteran with large corporate clients, contend that PACs are being made scapegoats unfairly. They argue that the system is far better now than in the “old days,” because there are thousands of competing PACs raising money, with the entire process subject to public scrutiny. Walker reminded me that in 1956, the late Senator Francis P. Case of South Dakota revealed indignantly to the Senate that an anonymous donor interested in decontrol of natural gas had left an envelope containing $2,500 in cash with his receptionist. The decontrol bill passed but President Eisenhower vetoed the bill because of the taint of corruption. “We’ve got rid of the little black bags filled with cash,” Walker emphasized. “We have a dispersal of power. That’s why I say things are a hell of a lot better from an ethics standpoint than they were twenty-five years ago.”
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But the view is widely disputed. As Mark Green, Democratic candidate for Senate in New York in 1986, pointed out, only well-heeled political forces have PACs—not the poor, the unemployed, the minorities, or even most consumers.
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Moreover, a $2,500 payoff is small potatoes these days. In recent years members of Congress have legally raised campaign money from PACs or private individuals and kept what was left over for personal use. Year in and year out, strong incumbents who faced no opposition, or only token opposition, accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. After the 1986 elections, for example, twenty House members had net cash on hand of $400,000 or more, and all but three had either no opposition or only token opposition. With such safe seats, they had built up huge personal treasuries; at the top of the list, David Dreiler, a California Republican, with $943,371 in the bank left over from campaigns; Steven Solarz, a Brooklyn Democrat, with $793,864; and Ronnie Flippo, an Alabama Democrat, with $594,680
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; the practice was so dubious that Congress passed a law in 1979 forbidding new members from building up personal
funds this way; but those already in Congress were allowed to keep piling up personal fortunes.
Many lobbyists who decry the current system take part in it. Anne Wexler, a former Carter White House official turned lobbyist, feels the spiraling money game has gotten out of control. “But you have to give,” she told me. “It’s part of how you do business here. And you want to help out the people you like and respect in Congress.”
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In 1986, Wexler gave about $25,000 of her personal money to candidates, a tiny fraction of what she was asked for. Invitations to political fund-raisers come to her by the bushel—probably two thousand in one campaign year, seeking a total of several hundred thousand dollars. “Our firm gets as many as ten a day,” Wexler said. “We could go to literally two or three every night.”