[EL] WARNING: SNARK AHEAD RE: Supreme Court and campaign finance

[Thomas J. Cares]

I think that's exactly (!!!) the point. IEs are not nearly as helpful or
critical to a campaign's success as direct contributions. Candidates do not
depend on them as much as campaign funds. And, dollar for dollar, they are
not appreciated nearly as much.

So, when a candidate is "supported" by massive IE spending (rather than a
giant check to a campaign they completely control), they will not feel as
dependent on the donor, or as appreciative.

You can't bite the hand that feeds you. But maybe you can bite the hand
that puts out supportive messages that are wasteful, counter your own, or
backfire by being over the top or annoying. And what the 'bite the hand'
metaphor amounts to is "independence." Once elected, how can you be
expected to be impartial towards (and not dependent on) a special
interested who gave you the funds to pay all your campaign staffers, put
together your campaign events, put out your own meticulously crafted
messages, etc, etc.

And, if it sometimes happens that a legislator might vote a certain a way
on obscure legislation, because it's just not worth losing an 8k campaign
contribution over - because it's obscure, it seems misguided to start
experimenting with $80k or $800k.

...Let the special interests' IEs make fools of their candidates*.


-Thomas Cares

*(They're more than happy to make fools of their candidates' opponents if
they can be successful in doing so).


On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> The issue would come down to independent expenditures, which I believe to
> be the most distorting and corrupting influence in the electoral process.
> As a campaign consultant I always tense up when I know someone is about to
> hire another consultant to spend heavily in support of my candidate. I know
> much of the money will be wasted; some of it will be used to make messages
> that counter, or at least don’t support the messages of our campaign; and
> frequently the IE committee will do things for which my candidate will be
> held responsible – like over-the-top attacks on the opposition, posting of
> signs on public parkways and buildings, etc. For every IE that has served
> to help elect a candidate there probably are 10 examples of IEs that turned
> out either useless or counter-productive. So, once again, I would rather
> see the money go directly to the candidate, be reported and let the voters
> make the judgment.
>
> Thanks,
> Larry
>
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