Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110053
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They would never, never, try to buy a lawmaker's votes with financial contributions.
If they pour thousands of dollars into a legislative candidate's campaign, all they expect in return, should said candidate be elected, is``access.'' Or they may pony up thousands simply as a thank-you - a Hallmark card would be too trite - to an incumbent who has been generous with access in the past.
But wait. Some of these people - the banks, utilities, hospitals, insurance companies, law firms, etc., poor things - are buying a pig in a poke. The money they designate for good ol' Delegate X, chairman of the House Committee for Ready Access, may end up in the pockets of unknown Candidates Y and Z who, if elected, may not even recognize to whom access is due.
It's like buying a ticket to see ``The Power and the Glory'' and the cinema shows ``Dumb and Dumber.''
This sad situation was brought to light recently by a news report on how several Republican incumbents, facing no challenge for re-election, have continued to raise campaign funds under their own names - only to pass the money along to other GOP candidates for whom the gifts were not intended.
Illegal? Of course not. Under Virginia's campaign-finance laws, loopy with loopholes, almost anything goes.
It's not as if Republicans were the only ones recycling cash contributions. Democrats, long in the majority in the General Assembly, have done it for years, helping consolidate their power in the doing. Some Democrats say they plan to help their buddies in similar fashion this year.
No, it just happens that Republicans this year have more candidates than Democrats; in the Senate at least, more Republicans are running unopposed. They can afford to share their good fortunes with GOP colleagues, incumbents and first-timers, who are in tough races.
And this year's elections, it has been well noted, are more of a statewide referendum than legislative races of the past. Should Republicans gain control of either or both chambers, those who helped grease the wheels for the takeover presumably would welcome a show of gratitude in terms of support for power positions they've coveted.
Truly, is it not more blessed to give than to receive?
To hear the spluttering of corporate lobbyists, one might forget this. They're mad at the system, saying it's not fair that gifts to an incumbent they know to be faithfully accessible can be channeled to someone trying to defeat an accessible other - someone, perhaps, they don't even know or like.
Says Kate Webb, a lobbyist for the Virginia Hospital Association: ``We have a limited number of dollars, and we have to target those dollars very carefully. Now, once we give that money over to someone, we don't know where the heck it's going.'' (The Virginia Hospital Association's political-action committee, incidentally, is among the 10 most generous PACs supporting this year's legislative candidates, and all of its largess thus far has gone to incumbents.)
Well, tsk-tsk. If the high-rollers don't like the system, why don't they use some of their expensive access to promote campaign-finance reform in Virginia? Until we see them joining those who have pushed unsuccessfully for reforms for almost as many years as the PACs have dollars, they'll get little sympathy from these quarters.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB