US Elections - Can they be saved?

Do you think anyone should be able to spend as much money as they'd iike to influence elections?

Do you think the Roberts Supreme Court was being activist in it bringing up Citizens United and throwing out years of legal case law on political funding.

Do you even remember who caused it all? Nixon and his dirty tricks slush fund.


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The newest wave of massive, secret campaign financing is increasingly being likened to the illegal corporate campaign contributions that were part of the Watergate scandal (see Jill Abramson of the New York Times and Bloomberg's Albert Hunt). The comparison is apt -- but the problem actually seems much worse today.

Secret contributions were the driving force behind the criminal activities in the Watergate scandal. They included million-dollar payoffs, bribery, and regular, organized extortion of companies and individuals, both American and foreign, by operatives for Richard Nixon.

One result of Watergate was the passage of new, tighter campaign finance laws in 1975. That's what Democratic Party Chairman Timothy Kaine was talking about when he charged on October 14 that there is "a concerted effort on the Republican side of the aisle to reverse what I think is a 30-year trend towards openness and transparency and to instead maximize the funding of campaigns through non-reportable entities where donors are not disclosed."

Kaine said that "this is a huge story." His words amounted to a plea for some watchdog reporting -- and they couldn't be more justified.

The campaign finance outrages were almost a non-issue in the Watergate scandal until they burst into view in the latter stages of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings. That's because the Nixon Justice Department successfully persuaded the initial Watergate prosecutors not to link them to the break-in.

The first discovery came early, when investigators traced $114,000 found in the Miami bank account of Bernard Barker, one of the burglars caught in the Democratic offices at the Watergate office building in June 1972. Eighty-nine thousand of it had been transferred from Mexico in the laundering of a secret contribution from a Texas firm, Gulf Resources.

The assistant U.S. attorneys handling Watergate knew about this money within five days of the arrests, but were told by higher-ups in the Justice Department not to investigate it, and they didn't. On June 22, the sixth day after the break-in, then-White House counsel John Dean, in a ruse, told acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray to keep the FBI away from the money, too, lest it expose a CIA operation in Mexico.

And on the following day, Richard Nixon instructed his aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman to have the CIA take part in this lie. The president's preparation of Haldeman later became one of three "smoking gun" tapes that, when made public, led directly to his resignation in August 1974.

What Nixon was trying to hide so desperately was his ongoing, massive, fraudulent fundraising. He succeeded initially, as the head of the CIA, Richard Helms, and his No. 2, Vernon Walters, went along with the plan. But FBI director Gray forced their hand by asking for a statement in writing, which they would not deliver.

In all, $22 million in secret contributions were uncovered. That figure, even in 2010 dollars, is peanuts compared to the secret contributions that are legal now. More important than the dollar amount was the perversion of democracy that took place -- and that almost certainly will be repeated in the future unless the laws are changed. Or, rather, it probably is already being repeated, and to some extent never really stopped. Without some hard reporting, we may never know.

Starting shortly after Richard Nixon took office, bad money began gushing into the Nixon coffers. It sometimes came to Washington in big bundles of cash. The Nixon impeachment charges included as supporting material references to payoffs from ITT and other large firms, and from special interests, including $2 million from milk producers, $200,000 from a criminal (Robert Vesco) to block legal action, and even $200,000 from McDonald's in return for permission to charge more for a quarter-pounder at a time when wage and price controls were in effect. Item after item cites criminal fraud and conspiracy, bribery and extortion.

Watergate was sometimes said to be politics as usual. That's probably true for the campaign contributions part of the scandal. Many big donors have always been investors, paying for a lot more than access. What made the Nixon effort unusual was how highly developed, mean-spirited and brazen it was.

But it was also small change compared to the $250 million or so in undisclosed funds expected to play a big role in the off-year 2010 elections.

Does Rupert Murdoch get more than access when he gives millions to Republicans? Do big insurers, telecoms, the defense industry and others expect only access, or actual payback? Does anyone doubt that Karl Rove knows how to strong-arm companies? If he doesn't, then possibly Fred Malek, who every now and then apologizes for his loathsome activities as an aide to Nixon, can offer guidance? Malek is one of the fundraisers active in obtaining secret money now.

On Oct. 18, Bloomberg's Albert Hunt predicted that "the U.S. is due for a huge scandal involving big money, bribery and politicians...think Watergate."

Hunt would be right except for one question: If corporations and other special interests fill a forest with money but no one reports the politicians picking it up, is that a scandal?

Crossposted from NiemanWatchdog.org. Sussman's Watergate book, "The Great Coverup," first published in 1974, will soon be reissued as an ebook.


Barry Sussman: A Watergate Lesson: Secret Money Means Payoffs, Bribes and Extortion

Corporate campaign ads haven't followed Supreme Court's prediction
Companies and unions have been able to avoid the transparency called for in the court's landmark ruling. Spending on next week's midterm election has been exorbitant.


By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau
October 27, 2010

Reporting from Washington â?? The Supreme Court sent a wave of corporate and union money flooding into campaign ads this year, but it did so with the promise that the public would know â?? almost instantly â?? who was paying for them.

"With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in January. "This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages."

But Kennedy and the high court majority were wrong. Because of loopholes in tax laws and a weak enforcement policy at the Federal Election Commission, corporations and wealthy donors have been able to spend huge sums on campaign ads, confident the public will not know who they are, election law experts say.


Corporate donors have been able to hide their contributions despite the opposition of shareholders and customers â?? the very groups cited by Kennedy.

By an overwhelming margin, shareholders say they don't want their companies devoting money to political ads. Customers are also easily angered by corporate political stands. In a recent case, Target Corp.'s chief executive was forced to apologize after it was revealed the company had donated $150,000 to the campaign of a Republican candidate in Minnesota who opposed gay rights. The retail chain faced a possible boycott led by gay rights activists.

"The biggest change this year is that it is no longer possible to identify the individuals who are responsible for funding election communications," said Karl J. Sandstrom, a former FEC commissioner who advises Democrats on election law.

He called Kennedy's opinion naive and said it reflected a "very uninformed view of how disclosure works."

The high court ruling also has helped fuel the rise of several nonprofit political action groups, such as Republican strategist Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, that have poured millions into an election season that is quickly reaching exorbitant spending levels.

Business groups, unions and interest groups had spent $266 million as of Tuesday, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, including at least $128 million by groups that are not required to publicly disclose their donors. Some have said outside spending by conservative groups alone could reach $400 million this year.

The Public Campaign Action Fund, a group that advocates for public financing of campaigns, issued a report Tuesday predicting that House candidates alone could spend as much as $1.5 billion by the end of the campaign.

This year's election marks the first time in 100 years that corporations and unions are free to spend their money on election ads. In the past, both companies and unions could encourage their employees or members to give money to political action committees, which in turn could pay for election ads.

But in January, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, struck down the legal ban on the use of corporate and union funds for direct election ads. In Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the justices said that corporations had the same right to free speech as individuals, and for that reason the government could not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.

In the same decision, however, an 8-1 majority upheld the disclosure laws as vital to democracy. That part of the ruling has gone largely ignored.

The reasons, said Tara Malloy, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, are "weaknesses in the tax law, radical under-enforcement by the FEC and the failure of Congress" to enact a new disclosure law.

Under the tax code, nonprofit groups can register as "social welfare" or other organizations, meaning they can spend money on campaign ads without having their name disclosed as long as their primary activity is not political. In a little-noticed opinion in August, a divided FEC took the view that big donors who fund ad campaigns need not be disclosed unless the donor gave the money for a "particular advertisement."

That is "an impossible-to-meet standard," said former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, counsel for Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, saying that almost any contributor can remain anonymous.

Of course, some donors are happy to take credit for their political spending. In recent weeks, union leaders and officials of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have boasted about how much they are spending.

But in many cases, anonymity is a way for donors to avoid backlash â?? and any unseemly appearances that they are trying to sway an election with big money.

Anonymity also provides protection to some corporate officials who might fear backing the wrong candidate. For example, if a company spent a large sum on ads urging the defeat of a powerful senator, it would have made an enemy if the senator won reelection.

Last week, Public Citizen and several other liberal advocacy groups complained to the FEC and accused the new political committees of evading the law.

The public needs "to know which corporations and billionaires are behind the attack ads now polluting our airwaves," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.

But Bradley A. Smith, another former FEC chairman and a leading conservative foe of many of the campaign finance laws, said such disclosure was unnecessary.

"Voters do know who is funding the ads â?? every single one of them," he said.

Smith said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce discloses its spending on election ads, as does Rove's group, even if they do not specifically disclose their donors.

"Is there anybody who doesn't know where the chamber is coming from?" he asked. "None of this troubles me in the least."

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Kim Geiger in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.