[EL] Small and Large Donors (and Recusal)

[Robert Wechsler]

*Mark*/:  However, if you had a large number of $200 donors in a 
community (and you should want to), then legislators might find 
themselves in the situation where they would have to recuse themselves 
quite frequently. /

*Larry: *///In my 44 years of campaign experience I would say the 
overwhelming majority of campaign contributions have gone from donors to 
candidates with whom they agree philosophically. No one is being bought.

/In my experience, with respect to small cities, towns, and counties, 
few people in the community make contributions over $200, and most of 
the contributions above that amount come from local government 
employees, contractors, developers, and grantees. And many, often most 
of these contributions come from outside the community, sometimes from 
outside the state. To prevent frequent recusal, candidates have the 
choice to return all or part of contributions from interested persons, 
or simply let it be known that they will do this.

In addition, at the local level, philosophical differences are usually 
much less than at the federal and state levels, except in some places 
with respect to development.

Further, the issue is less about elected officials /being/ bought (which 
we cannot know; it is something everyone says about themselves) than (1) 
about people reasonably believing elected officials are being bought, 
which has the same effect on public trust whether they're right or not; 
and (2) about pay to play, a form of institutional corruption that 
involves the misuse of office and greatly favors incumbents and their 
successors.

In larger jurisdictions, there are more large contributions, and the 
dollar figure for recusal should be higher.
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