In 2020, a Democratic primary candidate promising not to accept corporate PAC money is the new normal. Some live up to their word. Others, not so much.
North Carolina’s Democratic US Senate primary is shaping up to be a classic case study, illustrating how an ethically ‘lite’ candidate can have his cake and eat it too when it comes to corporate PAC cash.
Here in the Tar Heel State, corporate attorney J. Calvin Cunningham III (who goes by ‘Cal’ on the ballot) and his opponent, three term State Senator Erica D. Smith, have both sworn off corporate PAC money in their battle to become the Democratic Party’s nominee to unseat vulnerable Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. Cal Cunningham’s pledge is the very first thing you’ll see atop his campaign web site’s home page: “I’m not taking a penny from corporate PACs. Make a donation to join our people-powered campaign.” But you’ll have to scroll half-way down Erica Smith’s home page to find her own pledge.
Yet a new analysis of both candidates’ third-quarter FEC filings, just completed by EQV Analytics, finds that only one of the candidates — Smith — is living up to both the letter and the spirit of her pledge, while Cunningham is finessing his way into piles of corporate PAC dollars, fueling his dominating messaging via TV and direct mail.
Neither Cunningham nor Smith reported any direct corporate PAC donations in their third-quarter 2019 filings, but Cunningham reported $190,590 from other types of PACs, while Smith reported just $500 from “other committees.” In Cal Cunningham’s case those “other” PACs are overwhelmingly leadership PACs — a type of political action committee defined by the FEC as one controlled by an individual member of Congress or other federal elected official.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Cunningham reported 32 donations from 26 such leadership PACs through the third quarter of 2019, totaling $129,600. Looking at those leadership PACs’ own 2019 receipts, EQV’s analysis found that the majority of the dollars they took in last year (57%) were from corporate PACs — 190 corporate PACs, to be precise. Listed below are the top 10. The numbers in parentheses show these top-10 corporations’ total 2019 donations to leadership PACs that in turn donated to Cunningham (in italics), and Cunningham’s actual share of the loot received through Sept. 30th (in bold):
- Honeywell International ($85,500 / $2,727)
- Comcast ($58,000 / $1,612)
- General Dynamics ($56,000 / $1,628)
- Northrop Grumman ($48,000 / $1,228)
- Charter Communications ($43,500 / $1,254)
- Microsoft ($42,500 / $1,401)
- Union Pacific ($37,500 / $1,417)
- Lockheed Martin ($37,500 / $1,023)
- Google ($30,000 / $708)
- Amgen ($30,000 / $1,165)
- 180 additional corporate PACs ($1,366,400 / $115,437)
If Alice gives a dollar to Bob, and then Bob hands it to Cal, only a sophist of the highest order...or a corporate attorney...could argue, without blushing, that Cal has not just received a dollar from Alice.
On the other hand, a sophist of lesser stature might argue that the important issues here are those of knowledge and intent, and indeed we have no reason to believe that Comcast or Northrop Grumman or Microsoft intended to donate to Cal Cunningham...whom they’ve probably never heard of. That argument, however, just obfuscates the issue at hand: that Cunningham knowingly took 12,960,000 pennies from Alice, laundered free of corporate malodor through the good offices of Bob, yet intentionally claims otherwise. It’s not exactly a secret that corporate PACs are the primary donors to congressional leadership PACs. The numbers are there on the FEC’s web site for anyone to see.
Applying similar logic (but without the detailed receipts I’ve laid out here) Pulitzer prizewinning PolitiFact judges Cunningham’s “no corporate PAC money” claim “Mostly False.”
But what of the $500 Erica Smith’s campaign received from “other committees?” It came from the campaign committee of an early dropout in this race, who raised just under $2,000 in small-dollar donations via ActBlue. Nothing to see there.
BREAKING THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CORPORATOCRACY
Choose whichever existential threat to civilization you wish — from climate change or forever war to income inequality, resource depletion, displaced populations or mass extinctions...the list goes on and on. We can, and do, argue endlessly over the legislative tweaks and fiscal patches needed to address each one individually. Yet their crushing weight will remain on our shoulders until we recognize and tackle the single cause at the root of them all, corporatocracy: government of, by, and for profit-seekers, a form of social organization that is literally incompatible with human life.
Corporatocracy sustains itself by thrusting easy money — a deadly addictive drug — into pliable politicians’ hands.
The Cal Cunninghams of the political world would have us believe they’ll “fight for campaign finance reform” once they’re elected...with the help of sackfuls of corporate cash, tastefully screened from public view behind legal niceties like ‘leadership PACs.’
Like addicts everywhere and throughout all time, they’re going to quit tomorrow, for sure.
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We break the vicious circle of corporatocracy only by shouldering the citizen’s responsibility to individually support campaigns that are free of corporate cash today, not tomorrow. In North Carolina’s pivotal U.S. Senate race that campaign is Erica D. Smith’s, whom I’ve previously profiled here and here.