Campaign Finance Article In DN
The Deseret News has produced a great set of campaign finance articles this year. The latest one came from Lee Davidson and Bob Bernick today.
Remember that in Utah campaign cash can be converted to personal use with simple accounting. When a legislator accepts large contributions to his campaign account and doesn’t need them to campaign, he can take the money for his own consumption. That practice was forbidden on the federal level after 1992 because Congress noticed that it was tantamount to bribery.
I am astonished again that it takes only $26,050 to put you on the list of top 20 contributors in Utah. Corporate welfare collecting industries regularly filch millions from taxpayers with the cheerful help of our legislature. The return on investment for greasing the palms of Utah legislators must be astronomical.
I don’t agree with the definition of “special interests” as anyone except an individual inside a lawmaker’s district. I contribute to lots of campaigns outside my district for purely idealistic reasons. Most of the donations listed in the article today were from corporations and professional lobbyists who are certainly special interests.
If Curtis is thinking of a U.S. House seat, he’ll be mighty disappointed. National elections have strict rules against taking corporate contributions and that means state campaign funds can’t be mixed into
federal campaigns. Not one penny of Curtis’ $265,000 could be — legally — spent on a race for Congress.
That will be a problem for most Utah Republicans running for Congress. Very often they have to dip into their own bank accounts because they’re so unfamiliar with asking people for money. Corporate lobbyists just hand them checks or funnel more money to them through the state Republican party. Later on the corporate lobbyist gets paid back with millions of your tax dollars in corporate giveaways. It’s a cozy system and it has almost completely replaced traditional fundraising in Utah.
