Ralph Northam’s Plan to Empower Virginia’s Political Class
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11 responses to “Ralph Northam’s Plan to Empower Virginia’s Political Class”
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I wonder if it it will take for Bacon to vote for Gillespie is if he promises to force UVA to lower it’s tuition!
Of course if Northam promised that – Jim would claim it was bogus and you could not trust him, eh?
😉
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If business donations are barred, so should donations from labor unions and interest groups such as the Sierra Club, as well as PACs. Allow donations from individuals only, and those cannot be bundled.
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Agree.
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TMT – I agree with you but the Sierra Club money is 1-100 or 1-1000 of the corporate… and labor is on the scale of 1-10…
take a look:
http://www.vpap.org/money/donors-sector/and here is the Sierra Club:
Sierra Club – DC Chapter (Washington, DC): $500
Sierra Club – Va Chapter (Richmond): $569,617
Sierra Club PAC (San Francisco, CA): $659,700$1,487,282 Public Employees
$1,302,526 Organized Labornow look at the rest:
Amount Donor
$13,153,700 Political
$9,046,138 Real Estate/Construction
$6,070,179 Health Care
$5,743,928 Law
$5,494,285 Retail, Services
$5,405,769 Financial Services
$4,498,540 Energy, Natural Resources
$3,915,210 Technology, Communication
$2,193,418 Transportationthat’s 55 million corporate to 3 million labor to 1.5 million Sierra Club
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For how many years have I been making this point on this blog.
Northam is right. But Jim misses two points. First, I believe a big chunk of Perriello’s money came from Soros. A Euro fat cat meddling in American politics? Kind of contrary to the liberal narrative of the Russians stealing the presidential election from Hillary. Second, Northam can voluntarily give back the money over the caps and still have more money than Perriello.I disagree with Jim’s point about reducing the money reducing the competitiveness of Virginia elections. Other than the one-term governor the big money goes to incumbents anyway. And … for the governor’s race – the off year BS means that virtually nobody votes in the primary. Hell, the Republiclowns frequently don’t waste their time with primaries preferring truly bizarre conventions instead. Either way – people don’t vote in the Governor’s primary because they saw some expensive TV commercial. They vote because they are heavily politicized. As for the general election – by then Ole’ Tricky Dick Saslaw will be drenching his candidate with as much of his accumulated money as possible. No Libertarian (or Green Party or whatever) candidate stands a chance.
Northam is right – get the money out of politics and limit what the candidate himself can contribute to his or her own campaign.
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I also agree strongly that the candidate’s ability to self-fund should be limited. A candidate should be able to put more of his/her money in the campaign beyond what is allowed for contributions, but the Mark Warners of this world should be capped.
And I’d go further if permitted by the Constitution (some of these will need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution), no donations across state lines. Virginia election for Virginians only. Etc. If we really wanted to clip influence we’d limit contributions to residents of the candidate’s district. Only candidates for U.S. Senate and statewide constitutional offices should be permitted to get contributions from anywhere in the state.
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re: Soros.. true… but how much on the GOP side will come from Koch – and a slew of anonymous dark money donors who launder through the PACs and through 3rd party advertising for the candidates?
here’s Open Secrets tally of 2015-2016 political money in Virginia:
Total Itemized Contributions ** $196,927,739 6
Total to Candidates and Parties $163,490,597 N/A
Total to Democrats $66,240,029 8
Total to Republicans $93,011,265 6
Individual donations ($200+)* $131,228,535 7
Soft money donations $40,199,503 7
PAC donations $69,936,676 1-
This isn’t Democrat vs Republican. It’s Democrat vs Democrat. The Koch Brothers are irrelevant in the Democratic primary. However, the narrative of foreigners meddling in US politics is relevant. It’s one of the major charges leveled at Trump by the Dems. And now … Perriello is taking large sums of money from a Hungarian.
This is a very smart move by Northam. He may be more apt than I thought.
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Yes.
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Darn that pesky First Amendment.
I think you can prohibit or limit corporate dollars legally, but as has been recently pointed out much of the business activity in his country is conducted by sole proprietors or something other than a C-Corp, so that’s hardly fair unless it is across the board. If you place a limit on each business entity or individual, the number of donations will proliferate as family members or multiple entities owned by the same individual chip in. Union cash is indeed far less than corporate cash, but it is rare to see CEOs on a phone bank – the unions provide a lot of donated labor to campaigns. Does cash corrupt but volunteer time does not? Frankly I think the time is harder to ignore than the cash when the chips are cashed in after the election.
I have always believed that the solution is sunshine, transparency, including full reporting by the “dark money” entities that both parties publicly berate but privately love. In recent years I have become open to limits, because a small group have abused the system and tainted the reputations of everybody. But everybody who gives money wants something, every individual, every union, every association, and every major corporation. They will all call the recipient and say, please vote for this! The $100 donor can be more blatant and insistent than the big donor. And, as noted, the campaign volunteer.
Money is like water and will find a way to flow around the rocks any way you arrange them.
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still not convinced that standing on a soapbox and blathering your view is the same as spending a ton of money on media advertising … but I’ll go along with Steve about disclosure… and I wonder how many folks realize that what’s on VPAP is not automatically and easily available as soon as the money moves.
and I still point out that PACs and other critters essentially launder money .. so that the original donor is effectively hidden.
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