[EL] McDonnell Case Shows Virginia is Not Above Corruption

Wed Aug 13 19:26:55 PDT 2014

There's another way to look  at the McDonnell trial, spelled out in this op-ed I had published last Friday in The Virginian-Pilot. Jonnie  Williams used a series of gifts and loans to purchase access to the McDonnells and secure their help for his company. In Virginia and elsewhere where political money flows freely, other big political investors can and do use campaign contributions,  gifts to superPACs and non-profits to purchase similar access to  other elected officials. .
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Eisman: Big money is a big help in political marketplace

By Dale Eisman

(c) August 8, 2014
Former Gov.. Bob McDonnell and his wife are the named defendants, but public officials from the courthouse to the statehouse and the nation's capital - along with the big money that elected and sustains them - are now on trial in Richmond.

Press attention in the case has focused on Maureen McDonnell's love life and the whole family's lust for luxury. Did the McDonnells really believe that the "gifts" showered on them by Williams - the Ferrari convertible and the vacation house they borrowed free of charge, the $6,000 Rolex that Williams bought for the governor and the $120,000 he loaned to Bob McDonnell's struggling real estate business - had no strings attached?

What's being missed is how similar what Williams and McDonnell did is to what's done every day in Washington and in state capitals and courthouses across the country.

Thanks to a string of court decisions, including the infamous Citizens United ruling, a river of cash is flowing every day from big-dollar donors to elected officials and candidates. That money doesn't go into the officials' pockets or bank accounts. Instead, it's laundered through campaign treasuries, national parties, political action committees and nonprofit front groups that put it to work getting officials elected and keeping them in power.

In return for their money, the donors get access to power, a sympathetic ear and a helping hand.

The players in this game understand how it works. Phil Cox, a former McDonnell aide who now directs the Republican Governors Association, testified on Monday that he figured Williams had an ulterior motive and warned the governor about it. "A lot of donors are looking for something," Cox explained.

In court last week, Williams said that he let McDonnell use his corporate jet in 2009 because "[i]f you're a Virginia company, you want to make sure you have access to these people."

He loaned the McDonnells $120,000 to bail out their real estate investments to make sure the governor's door stayed open, Williams said.

"I loaned the money and I got the meetings," Williams testified. He and McDonnell had plenty of face time, riding on Williams' plane, golfing, and meeting repeatedly in the governor's office and the Executive Mansion.

McDonnell's defense argues that there was no corrupt payback for the businessman's generosity. The meetings McDonnell arranged for Williams with other state officials, the personal plugs the governor and his wife delivered for Star Scientific's products, were akin to the help McDonnell happily provided to any Virginia business that needed it, they contend.

Any business? Really?

Try this. The next time you hire a plumber or electrician, the next time you speak to your insurance agent or have dinner at a neighborhood restaurant or deal with anyone who runs a small or medium business, ask if they've ever had a private sit-down with the governor, or one of their senators, their congressman or state legislator to discuss how the state or federal government might assist in building their business.

There's a chance - a slim one but a chance nonetheless - that you'll hear about a letter the congressman wrote or a phone call the governor's staff placed to solve some small problem the business was having with government. That sort of constituent service is routine.

But the big-time help Williams received - a product launch at the governor's mansion, personal appearances and testimonials from the governor and first lady, appointments with state officials who can validate the effectiveness of your product - is something else.

To get it, you need to enter the political marketplace and pay for it. Democrat, Republican or independent, tea party or old lefty, if you want special help from government in building or protecting your business, you'd better be prepared to write a check, and then another one, and another after that.

That's the system. Bob McDonnell and Jonnie Williams were just part of it.

Dale Eisman, a former Washington correspondent for The Virginian-Pilot, is acting director of communications at Common Cause in Washington.

-----------------------------------------------
Dale Eisman
Acting Director of Communications
Common Cause
Holding Power Accountable
202 736-5788 (o)
703 459-6885 (c)

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Smith, Brad
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:49 PM
To: Sean Parnell; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] McDonnell Case Shows Virginia is Not Above Corruption

Beyond the points Sean makes below about McGehee's straw man, it is interesting that McGehee doesn't cite any examples of corruption in Virginia related to campaign finance. McGehee's indictment is here:

"The trial is a daily display of a politician and his wife keenly interested in using the highest office in the state to "live large" - a world of Rolexes, Ferraris, vacation homes and private jets.  While McDonnell claims in his defense that accepting these gifts from Jonnie Williams did not include any reciprocal "official acts," there is no dispute that he and his wife accepted the gifts, just whether or not they traded official acts for the gifts."

There are always people who enter office with corrupt intentions, and probably more who succumb to temptation. And note McGehee's bait and switch: opponents of restrictions on the role of money in politics have held out the state of Virginia to legitimize their opposition to campaign finance reform.  A state with few restrictions on money in campaigns, not much disclosure, and few ethics laws, ..."

"Campaign finance reform," "money in campaigns," "not much disclosure" [sic], and then, almost as an afterthought, "few ethics laws." But if the McDonnell scandal represent a failure of the law (it's not clear that they do - McDonnell is being prosecuted), it is those "ethics laws" that are relevant, not the much broader category of campaign finance that McGehee leads with and mentions three times. This collapse of "ethics" and "campaign finance reform" has been very detrimental to serious discussions of policy in either area of law.

The political activists and lobbyists promoting campaign finance regulation have long tended to sell the product a bit like a 19th century patent medicine - "it's good for what ails ya." At times it seems that campaign finance reform is offered up as the cure for any real or perceived scandal, any failure of policy, or any thing people don't like about government or politics. Reform legend "Granny D" even offered up campaign finance reform as a prevention for future 9/11 type events. Honestly. http://www.nancho.net/newchau/granD911.html

At the same time, government corruption in states that have aggressive regulatory regimes is never seen as an indictment of those heavy regulatory regimes, even when scandal stems directly from the regulatory regime, such as misuse and corruption in the use of public (i.e. government provided) campaign funds (see http://www.campaignfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2013-08-05_Issue-Review_Swanson_Clean-Elections-Scandal-Case-Studies-From-Maine-Arizona-And-New-York-City.pdf).

This is a rigged game, but our credulous media falls for it again and again, and no doubt will this time around, too. And the public will grow more cynical as the reform community turns a corrupt pair like the McDonnells into a poster boy for all the good and honest public officials out there.

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Sean Parnell [sean at impactpolicymanagement.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 10:01 AM
To: 'Rick Hasen'; law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: [EL] McDonnell Case Shows Virginia is Not Above Corruption
The commentary by Meredith McGehee begins with the following paragraph:

"For many years, opponents of restrictions on the role of money in politics have held out the state of Virginia to legitimize their opposition to campaign finance reform.  A state with few restrictions on money in campaigns, not much disclosure, and few ethics laws, Virginia has been heralded by reform opponents as showing what politics at the national level could look like if the federal campaign finance laws were repealed.  The picture they painted was of patrician politicians above it all, incorruptible by plebian concerns of money, legislating for the Commonwealth on purely ideological grounds."

I would be very interested in finding out which "opponents of restrictions on the role of money in politics" have ever characterized Virginia politics this way. I recall myself and several others noticing that Virginia's (and Utah's as well) First Amendment-friendly campaign finance system didn't seem to have made the state any worse off compared to other states, and that in some governance measures (Pew's rankings of effective governance, for example) both Virginia and Utah seemed to be doing quite well. That is a far cry from how Ms. McGehee characterizes our views on Virginia's campaign finance laws.

I can tell you that at CCP, we were well aware that corruption existed in Virginia. Here, for example, is a policy briefing we did in 2009 comparing public corruption prosecutions with contribution limits: http://www.campaignfreedom.org/doclib/20090122_issueanalysis5.pdf The more observant will see that Virginia is grouped in the "medium corruption" states category - and rather towards the high end of the medium group. An updated version of this released in 2013 shows Virginia moving up (or down, take your pick) to the 'high corruption' category, albeit at the low-end of that range: http://www.campaignfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2013-08-01_Issue-Analysis-5_Do-Lower-Contribution-Limits-Decrease-Public-Corruption1.pdf. Hard to believe we viewed a state as filled with nothing but "patrician politicians above it all, incorruptible by plebian concerns of money, legislating for the Commonwealth on purely ideological grounds" while simultaneously slotting the state into first the 'medium corruption' and then the 'high corruption' categories in our research.

Somewhere out there I suppose there may be the First Amendment advocate/campaign finance regulation skeptic who touts Virginia as having a pure and clean form of politics, untainted by corruption. But I have not ran across such a person before, perhaps because I don't spend much time at the unicorn stables.

Best,

Sean Parnell
President
Impact Policy Management, LLC
6411 Caleb Court
Alexandria, VA  22315
571-289-1374 (c)
sean at impactpolicymanagement.com<mailto:sean at impactpolicymanagement.com>

Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>
"McDonnell Case Shows Virginia is Not Above Corruption"<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=64238>
Posted on August 12, 2014 11:58 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=64238> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Meredith McGehee blogs<http://www.clcblog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=571:mcdonnell-case-shows-virginia-is-not-above-corruption>.
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