When people gnash their teeth over how the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United is bad for our democracy, I suspect most are thinking about big corporations dumping tons of money into the major campaigns for seats in Washington.
But what I fear even more than this is when small companies begin to take over local elections with even modest amounts of money so that they can install local officials that will look out for their interests.
Well, it looks like that's starting already... in Kentucky...
I ran across this column in yesterday's Courier Journal: Joseph Gerth | Supreme Court ruling impacts Pike County race.
The race is a magistrate's election in the rough and tumble world of Pike County Democratic politics and involves a company with ties to political king-maker Leonard Lawson, fresh off his acquittal on federal bid-rigging charges.
And it could forever change the way politics are played in this state and the country.
I don't think it's a "could". I think it's a "will" unless we get new legislation that will pass muster with the Supreme Court.
While it hasn't opened any floodgates, it has breeched the dam in Pike County, where at least $15,000 worth of corporate money has been spent to beat Pike County Magistrate Chris Harris' re-election efforts, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
The newspaper said Harris had the audacity to criticize cozy ties between the company, which operates the county's largest water system, and public officials.
So, funded by $15,000 from the Utility Management Group, which Lawson bankrolled and co-owns, and another $2,500 from the law firm of Democratic State Sen. Ray Jones, which does legal work for the company, a front group calling itself Citizens for Eastern Kentucky Government began airing television ads making spurious claims against Harris.
And of course those claims don't really have to be grounded in any truth. I can see this playing out all across the country in small towns and rural areas where someone has an axe to grind against incumbent public servants.
And who will do the fact-checking and provide some oversight to ensure some truth in advertising? In this case:
One television station pulled the ads off the air because the group couldn't prove its claims about Harris.
And I'm sure that all the other stations happily turned away the advertising dollars as well... right.
And we all know how good the media is at fact-checking in general. In these times, we know that small TV and radio stations and newspapers don't have the time and budget to do what will be needed when this advertising scales up. Even worse, just think about when it's someone that owns one of those media companies has the axe to grind.
Was this just a dry run for Lawson and does he intend to spend thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of dollars from his various businesses to campaign against the re-election of Gov. Steve Beshear, whose administration turned him into the feds?
I just can't find the words to describe the fear I have about the damage this will bring to the future of our country. We MUST put the pressure on congress to find a way to fix this mess.
[BTW - if you view the linked article in FireFox, you may have problems like I do when clicking the links to skip to the next page. For multi-page articles, I end up having to open the pages in IEtab's. So annoying.]