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Obama's Line on Lobbyists Is Misleading
By Trudy Lieberman
Columbia Journalism Review
Friday 15 February 2008
A "more complicated truth" on campaign
contributions
Saturday night at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Virginia, Barack
Obama did it again. He said he hadn't taken money from lobbyists. The election,
he said, was boiling down to "a choice between debating John McCain about
lobbying reform with a nominee who's taken more money from lobbyists than he
has, [presumably Hillary Clinton] or doing it with a campaign that hasn't taken
a dime of their money because we've been funded by you the American people."
That he does not take money from lobbyists or from political action committees
(PACs) is a point Obama often makes on the campaign trail, and his no-dirty-money
rhetoric has positioned him as the candidate brave enough to shun business as
usual in Washington. In November in Iowa, he said corporate lobbyists "have
not funded my campaign." And in December he said in a New Hampshire Public
Radio program, "I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days
of setting the agenda in Washington are over, that they had not funded my campaigns
... " His message of financial purity is catching on. For just one recent
example, a student writing in The Daily Evergreen, the student newspaper at
Washington State University, told his readers last week that Obama has been
careful not to compromise himself, "rejecting campaign support from Political
Action Committees and lobbyists."
The word "lobbyist" seems to have a particular meaning in Obama's
campaign vocabulary. His stump speeches imply that he is not taking money from
people who want things from the government and push for them. The reality is
that he has.
To explain: Opensecrets.org, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics,
is the most authoritative source on campaign finances. Basing its reports on
data from the Federal Election Commission, the Center shows that Obama indeed
doesn't take much money from a sector the Center calls "lobbyists."
Through the end of December, Clinton received more than $800,000 and McCain
around $400,000 from this group, which the Center says includes people who work
for lobbying firms at the local, state, and federal level and their relatives
who are not otherwise employed, as well as those who are officially registered
as Washington lobbyists. Obama received contributions of about just $86,000
from this group. Obama's Web site says he doesn't take money from Washington
lobbyists or political action committees, and the Center says that if his campaign
finds that the money came from registered Washington lobbyists, it does get
returned.
How meaningful is this? "It's a politically smart position for him to
take. It sounds profound," says Massie Ritsch, communications director
for the Center for Responsive Politics. "But in fact neither PACs nor lobbyists
give a lot to presidential campaigns. He's not leaving a whole lot of money
on the table by eschewing PACs and lobbyists." PAC money represents only
about one percent of all the money in a presidential race because, Ritsch says,
so many people donate that their contributions dwarf PAC money.
Significantly, the Center's lobbyist sector excludes in-house lobbyists who
work solely for one company, union, trade association, or other group. These
people may lobby, but their contributions are grouped in the totals for the
various industries they represent, along with contributions from other employees
in the sector, their relatives, whatever PAC money has been raised, and donations
from trade and professional associations which, of course, carry lots of weight
in the horse trading that occurs when legislation is drafted. (Corporations
cannot contribute directly to candidates.)
Contributions made by the various industry sectors tell the real story in a
presidential race. And Opensecrets.org shows that Obama is picking up gobs of
money put on the table by these special interests - including those involved
in health care, which will surely have a lot riding on the outcome of the election
and will expect to be heard after the election is over.
Consider the sector called lawyers and law firms. Clearly, lawyers and law
firms lobby on behalf of their own interests - like fighting malpractice reform,
which could again surface as a thorny issue for the new administration. Clinton
and Obama have raised similar amounts from lawyers and law firms - $11.8 and
$9.5 million. McCain and Huckabee have taken far less. The health sector has
also given to Obama, Clinton, and McCain. In the pharmaceutical and health product
industries, contributions to Clinton total $349,000 and $338,000 to Obama. Again,
McCain trails in donations at about $98,000, an indication that the sector sees
the real action on the Democratic side of the ballot. Health professionals,
which include doctors, nurses, and dentists, have given Clinton some $2.3 million
and Obama $1.7 million.
Last August The Boston Globe, in a piece by Scott Helman, took a hard look
at Obama's contributions, noting that "behind Obama's campaign rhetoric
about taking on special interests lies a more complicated truth." That
truth revealed that as a state legislator in Illinois, a U.S. senator, and as
a presidential aspirant, Obama had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars
from lobbyists and PACs. Helman quoted an Obama campaign spokeswoman saying
that after he experienced firsthand the influence of Washington lobbyists, he
was taking a different approach to fundraising than he had in the past, and
that "his leadership position on this issue is an evolving process."
If Obama's leadership on campaign financing is indeed evolving, more news outlets
should be following the evolution.
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