If anyone wants to ban corporate and union donations, that's fine with me. A corporation or a union is not a human being, and doesn't have the First Amendment rights that the U.S. Supreme Court has ridiculously said gives actual people the right to spend all the money they please to influence our votes.
But there's a big difference between those donations and the Rich donations, in at least four ways.
** First, while some incumbents receive the bulk of their funding from corporate interests, it's rare that any one business is responsible for more than a sliver of a candidate's total donations; few evade the $1,000 donation limit. Moreover, there's a balancing function inherent in the hedge-your-bets approach of most corporations: A donation from AT&T, for instance, might be counterbalanced by one from rival Time Warner Cable.
And in those instances when a candidate is bankrolled by a single interest -- say trial lawyers -- that usually becomes a campaign issue. As it should. The Rich lackeys are clearly perturbed that his donations are an issue.
** Second, unlike Mr. Rich, who practically brags during his famous Katon Dawson interview that he has no financial, business or personal interests in our state, those other out-of-state interests do: They employ thousands of South Carolinians, pay S.C. income, sales and property taxes, run their businesses under the rules our Legislature passes.
I don't think they should have as much say as voters (and certainly not a greater say), but they do have a legitimate interest in how our state is governed, which cannot be said of Mr. Rich.
** Third, although Mr. Rich makes the point that he is obeying our laws, he goes to greater lengths than anyone I've seen to get around the intent of the law, by hiding his donations until it's too late for the information to do voters any good.
Donations that candidates receive during the final 20 days before an election don't have to be reported until the following quarter. That makes it pretty easy for donors to hide their involvement until after the voting. (It also means voters have no idea who's bankrolling a runoff campaign, since all runoff donations come in during this blackout period, but we can't really blame the candidates or the donors for that.)
According to blogger Ross Shealy (scbarbecue.blogspot.com), who has been scouring legislative candidates' campaign disclosure reports for Mr. Rich's fingerprints, 10 of the 37 recipients of Rich et al funding in last month's primaries didn't receive any of that money until the blackout period.
In some cases, this penchant for secrecy is almost comical. In Greenville's House District 22, Wendy Nanney took $18,000, 45 percent of her donations, from the Rich gang to unseat Rep. Gloria Haskins -- a fellow voucher supporter. Yet even with no threat of an attack on that issue, Mr. Rich still delayed all but $3,000 of the donations until after the final pre-election disclosure reports were due, so voters couldn't learn of them until after they voted.
** Finally, what makes the Howie Rich machine so different is the sheer volume of money he throws at candidates.
The Associated Press' Jim Davenport identified $577,000 in last month's primaries: $357,000 from Mr. Rich and 21 of his companies; $49,000 from other companies that share his Manhattan address; and another $171,000 from a handful of individuals and organizations affiliated with him.
That wouldn't be quite so bad -- though it's more than the big corporations that employ South Carolinians tend to give -- if it were equally distributed among the 35 recipients Mr. Davenport wrote about, or the 37 Mr. Shealy identified. It is not.
Mr. Shealy, who is as fixated on unmasking Mr. Rich as Mr. Rich is on imposing his vision on our state, tells me that 13 of the candidates received more than half their total donations from Mr. Rich and company; one received 97 percent. It wasn't uncommon for House candidates to receive $20,000 or more; one Senate candidate received $740,000.
And what did Mr. Rich get for his investments? Twenty-one of his candidates lost, including three incumbents. One dropped out. One was unopposed. And 14 won, but that included five incumbents who were shoe-ins for re-election. Which shows that this kind of money can't buy you everything -- but it can buy something, particularly when no one knows you're doing the purchasing.
What makes Howie Rich 's donations so different
State, The (Columbia, SC) - July 29, 2008
And in the next day's edition, she continues her examination of Rich's influence by outlining in detail who collected Rich's contributions -- the ones that went directly to candidates' campaigns, and which don't include the funding of independent organizations like South Carolinians for Responsible Government.
I PROMISE you I'm more tired of writing about Howie Rich's campaign to buy our Legislature than you are of reading about it. But I figure if somebody's willing to put down more than half a million bucks in a single round of primary elections, just to make sure a Legislature in a state he has no ties to spends other people's tax dollars the way he sees fit, we owe him some ink.
Today we'll look at the candidates who took money from Mr. Rich, his 21 LLCs, other companies that share his Manhattan address and a handful of related people and organizations that tend to donate the same day he does.
My list is drawn from the research of blogger Ross Shealy (scbarbecue.blogspot.com), whose totals match the ones produced by The Associated Press. It shows how much each candidate received and how much of that came in during the 20-day blackout period before the primaries, when donations don't have to be reported until after the election. It doesn't include expenditures by third-party groups that receive their funding from Mr. Rich.
Some candidates face opposition in November, but here's the score so far: Three of the 11 incumbents Mr. Rich backed lost; two of his 14 challengers unseated incumbents; candidates he backed in open seats won seven of 12 races; and one of his candidates dropped out.
Rich incumbents re-elected:
** Sen. Mike Fair, Senate District 6, $6,000, all of it during the blackout period.
** Sen. Greg Ryberg, S.24, $7,000, all of it during the blackout period.
** Sen. Robert Ford, S.42, $8,000, half of it before the blackout period but none reported until July.
** Rep. Thad Viers, House District 68, $13,000, none of it reported until after the election.
** Rep. Kit Spires, H.96, $3,000 -- $2,000 of it during the blackout period.
** Rep. Curtis Brantley, H.122, $28,000 -- 65 percent of his donations -- all during the blackout period.
** Rep. Richard Chalk, H.123, $3,000, all during the blackout period.
Rich incumbents defeated:
** Rep. Bob Leach, H.21, $5,000.
** Rep. Ralph Davenport, H.37, $7,000. His disclosure report shows all his donations were made before the blackout period, but he did not report them as required by law until July.
** Rep. Heyward Hutson, H.94, $7,000 -- $3,000 of it during the blackout period.
Incumbent slayers:
** Wendy Nanney, H.22, $18,000 -- 45 percent of her donations --all but $3,000 during the blackout period. She beat fellow voucher supporter Gloria Haskins.
** Joey Millwood , H.38, $32,000 -- 65 percent of his donations. All but $3,000 was given on May 24 -- three days into the blackout period. He defeated House Education Chairman Bob Walker.
Rich open-seat winners:
** Dee Compton, S.10, $33,000, all during the blackout period.
** Lee Bright, S.12, $50,000, all during the blackout period.
** Deborah Long, H.45, $12,000 -- 40 percent of her donations. All but $3,000 of that came during the blackout period.
** Tim Scott, H.117, $16,000, all but $2,000 during the blackout period.
** Tommy Stringer, H.18, $10,000, all but $3,000 during the blackout period.
** Daniel Hamilton, H.20, $5,000. He was unopposed.
Rich challengers defeated:
** Katrina Shealy, S.23, $74,000 -- 51 percent of her donations -- all but $5,000 during the blackout period.
** Levone Graves, S.30, $5,000, all but $1,000 during the blackout period, which covered the runoff.
** Raymond Russell, H.31, $21,000 -- 76 percent of his donations -- all on a single day, during the blackout period.
** Ken Roach, H.34, $16,000 -- 69 percent of his donations. All of it was given on a single day, during the blackout period.
** Roger Nutt, H.35, $20,000, all but $2,000 during the blackout period.
** Annie McDaniel, H.41, $21,000 -- 85 percent of her donations -- all during the blackout period, on the day of the primary.
** Ed Rumsey, H.2, $17,000 -- 65 percent of his donations -- $14,000 during the blackout period.
** Trey Whitehurst, H.3, $18,000, all but $2,000 during the blackout period.
** Kyle Boyd, H.48, $2,000.
** Ennis Bryant, H.50, $4,000 -- 74 percent of his donations -- all during the blackout period.
** Naim Salahudeen, H.54, $5,000 -- 61 percent of his donations -- none reported before the election.
** Zina Manning, H.55, $8,000 -- 96 percent of her donations -- all during the blackout period. (If she had defeated Rep. Jackie Hayes, this would have made a great trivia question: What candidate was swept into office by the video poker barons because the incumbent opposed them and then out by the voucher barons because he opposed them?)
** Priscilla Robinson, H.66, $14,000, all but $2,000 on the first day of the blackout period. She received another $4,000 from donors with a New York address that Mr. Shealy considered suspicious but whose affiliations he has not confirmed.
** Sheri Few, H.79, $26,000 -- 51 percent of her donations. Half of it came in during the blackout period.
** Scott Singer, H.81, $21,000, all during the blackout period. (The Aiken Standard reports that he returned all but $3,000 after the election.)
** James Whitehead, H.83, $11,000 -- 98 percent of his donations -- all on a single day, during the blackout period.
** Wendell Gilliard, H.111, $5,000, all of it during the blackout period, on the day after the primary.
** Joseph Bustos, H.112, $27,000 -- 55 percent of his donations -- all but $3,000 during the blackout period.
Finally, Rep. Joe Mahaffey, H.36, received $4,000 on Feb. 29 and dropped his re-election bid that same day, making way for voucher backer and former Rep. Rita Allison to take back her seat.
The Who's Who list of Howie Rich friends and foes
State, The (Columbia, SC) - July 30, 2008
Counting up the number of House and Senate races that Howie Rich sought to influence, it's 37 out of the South Carolina General Assembly's 170 total seats. If he'd been completely successful, Rich would hold sway over nearly one-quarter of a state's legislature -- a state where he can't cast a single vote.
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