Big money & US polls

As back home, so in the United States big money plays a big role in elections even if the dynamics of the process are different in the world’s largest and most powerful democracies. In the first place, in America there is nothing like the bogus ceiling on a candidate’s election expenses that no one in India respects or can possibly respect. An American candidate can spend as much of his or her money (in the mid-term elections in November 2010, a woman contesting for governor’s office spent $180 million of her own) plus whatever can be collected from other people as donations under the federal laws.

Collection of election funds — which a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, “Tip” O’Neill, famously described as the only thing comparable to “mother’s milk” — has therefore become a heavily flourishing industry most dexterously run.
There has always been a limit on the contribution an individual or institution can make to a candidate directly. In the primaries, now raging in full blast, it is $2,500. But there is no limit whatsoever on the money that organisations other than the political parties supporting one or more candidates can collect and spend. The only constraint on them is that there should be “no direct dealings” between them and the candidates they campaign for. Consequently, a whole lot of political activist committees have sprung up in support of one candidate or a group of them. These are better known as “Super PACs”.
In 2010, these PACs got a bonanza. A Supreme Court judgment on a petition filed by “Citizens United” authorised them to collect limitless donations and freely spend them in support of favoured candidates. The judgment prescribed, however, that every PAC must periodically disclose its sources of funds, the underlying assumptions being that such disclosures would enable the voters to judge whether the candidates were in the “pockets of money interests”. But corporations, unions and even wealthy individuals often hide their identities behind “shell entities”. This makes a “mockery” of the law. The main activity of the Super PACs is to produce hugely expensive TV ads against their candidates’ opponents that are almost always negative and often in bad taste.
It is noteworthy that as soon as the Supreme Court had delivered its judgment two years ago President Barack Obama had “regretted” that the judges should have allowed “special interests” to spend “without limit” on election campaigns. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.” Yet, in the first week of February, he changed his position 180 degrees, and gave in to the Citizen United verdict that he had denounced as “a threat to our democracy”. His Super PAC, named “Priorities USA Action” is briskly in business. Earlier, the Republicans were the sole defenders of PACs. Now they and the Democrats are in the same boat, impervious to what many concerned Americans and the media are denouncing as the “pollution of our political system”. The critics point out that tycoons and unions and even wealthy individuals or couples have not only favoured candidates but also favourite causes. For instance, the insurance industry that contributed $86 million through the US Chamber of Commerce makes no secret of its demand that Mr Obama’s healthcare reform be repealed. The potential for corrupting the system is thus obvious.
Here is just a glimpse of how “rarefied billionaires and multi-millionaires act as kingmakers”. For instance, Harold C. Simmons, described by the media as a “corporate raider”, gave $100,000 to one of the Super PACs backing Mitt Romney and $5 million to another also “stacked with Romney confidants”. Then he gave $500,000 to Newt Gingrich and an equal amount to yet another aspirant to presidency — a textbook example of hedging all one’s bets.
To say this is not to suggest that there were no shenanigans and worse in the collection and disbursement of election funds before the PACs’ birth. Way back in 1996 when President Bill Clinton was seeking re-election a Chinese-American named Johnny Cheng instantly shot into prominence because of his declaration that has since become part of American folklore: “The White House is no different from a subway station; put the right amount of money in the turnstile and you are in.” He was referring, of course, to the fact that anyone could spend a night in Lincoln’s bedroom by contributing a certain amount to Mr Clinton’s election chest. The voters obviously paid little heed.
Twelve years later during the Democratic primaries for the choice of the presidential candidate, at a stage when Hillary Clinton thought she would worst Mr Obama, a power broker, also a Chinese-American whose name escapes me, presented her with a million dollars which he claimed had come from “small donors”. But it was soon established that the money was his. He had got thousands of people to write “small” cheques but had reimbursed each one of them. Mrs Clinton returned the money.
Currently, the leading light of a Florida PAC is being accused of doing roughly the same thing. The amounts he collects are very large. And then one or the other of his legal firms quietly compensates the donors.
Up to now, the 2010 mid-term poll was the costliest. But all estimates are that by the time it concludes in November the current election would set a new record. The expenditure on it is likely to be $6 billion, if not $8 billion, as against $2.9 billion in 2010 and $1.8 billion in 2006.
Finally, I must have discussed this subject with at least a dozen well-informed Americans, including some Old India Hands. One of them commented that while big money did pollute the democratic process both in the US and India, there was a difference. “Here all donations, however dubious, are made by cheque. There the cash comes in suitcases.”