Gerrymandering And Bribery Defining The Decline Of Representative Democracy

Ric Keller shed some major pounds-- and a GOP registration edge

Over the course of the last month, DWT has had an underlying theme running through it about how democracy doesn't thrive when big corporate entities flood the airwaves with billions of dollars to create "conventional wisdom" that the corporate candidate-- whether a Republican or a nominal Democrat from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- is "solid," "moderate," "trustworthy," "independent," or whatever they want to tag the bribe-takers who serve their special interests. And "billions" is not an exaggeration. Since 1990 here is a list of some of the industries that have bought off federal elected official. Next to each industry is the amount and the percentage that went to Republican candidates:

Commercial banks- $202,277,227 (60%)
Insurance- $295,786,177 (63%)
Big Oil & Gas- $220,438,183 (75%)
Pharmaceuticals- $156,914,005 (65%)
Real Estate- $548,872,745 (53%)
Telecoms- $112,197,677 (56%)
Automotive- $129,123,535 (75%)
Accounting- $104,391,210 (59%)
Gambling- $80,443,289 (46%)
Lobbyists- $141,823,142 (48%)
Health Professionals- $414,596,937 (57%)
Securities & Investment- $576,374,966 (50%)
Retail Sales- $124,338,201 (61%)
Crop Production- $101,769,909 (59%)
Air Transport- $114,112,051 (60%)
Beer, Wine & Liquor- $90,584,648 (56%)
Defense Aerospace- $63,932,281 (57%)
Tobacco- $60,567,666 (74%)

That's far from complete but that's already billions. And that money, as we've been pointing out, is going directly into enhancing the careers of politicians in return for votes of the special interests of the industries giving out the loot. And this is just the legal bribes. Not counted in this are unknowable sums that have been paid to overtly corrupt politicians like Ted Stevens (R-AK), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Duke Cunningham (R-CA), John McCain (R-AZ), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Bob Ney (R-OH), William Jefferson (D-LA), Gary Miller (R-CA), John Doolittle (R-CA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Don Young (R-AK), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Rick Renzi (R-AZ)...

You getting the picture? Without real-- not fake McCain style-- campaign finance reform, so anathema to Republicans and to Blue Dogs, Big Business will just continue to buy off Congress and our taxes will continue to be misappropriated and spent to enrich ambitious crooks-- inside and outside of government.

And there's another side to this systemic corruption as well, one covered-- at least from a Florida perspective-- in today's Orlando Sentinel by Scott Maxwell: Politicians Get To Pick Their Own Constituents. And Florida may be is one of the worst, but is certainly not unique. Short story: state legislators of whichever party controls the legislature get together once a decade (unless you're in Texas) and redraw, very specifically, legislative and congressional districts that virtually guarantee your party's-- or in really corrupt cases, like Tom Feeney's and the Diaz-Balart Brothers'-- your own slam dunk electoral victories. It's why almost no incumbent ever loses an election.

Maxwell tells the story of Republican rubber stamp hack John Mica whose bizarrely shaped district snakes through half a dozen counties looking for wealthy suburbs and avoiding people of color to create a safe Republican seat.

Not that Mica's complaining. His district may be long and unwieldy. But it's also solidly Republican -- which is precisely how it was designed.

In fact, the lines were crafted so precisely that five of these six Central Florida congressional districts favor Republicans-- even though collectively they contain more Democrats.

Welcome to politics in Florida-- where the deck's stacked before you even get to the polls.

Redistricting has long been a slimy game. Back when the Democrats were in charge in Tallahassee, they drew lines to suit their fancy. And Republicans cried foul... until they got in control and decided to do the same.

That leaves us with the mess we have today-- with districts that look like they were drawn by a drunken cartographer, splitting cities in half and following few logical geographic boundaries.

The other side of the black magic map making that created Mica's 7th district, also created the 3rd district, occupied by Corrine Brown, also twisting and turning this way and that, a district that Republicans created to dump as many Democrats in as possible, guaranteeing a seat to Corrine, but keeping lots of Democrats where they could do the least "harm" in the 5 other Central Florida districts. Her bizarrely drawn district has a PVI of D+16! Republicans don't bother to run there. But they know they will take the other 5 neighboring districts which have been sucked clean of Democrats. The result: 5 entrenched, extremely mediocre, Republican backbench rubber stamps with districts that have virtually guaranteed that-- between the corrupt campaign financing system and the advanced political-demographics of district drawing-- they will serve forever-- Ginny Brown-Waite (best known for threatening to dig up the bodies of Americans who died in France during the World Wars because France wouldn't attack Iraq), Cliff Stearns, the aforementioned Mica, the more-mediocre-than-Brown-Waite Ric Keller, and Florida's most corrupt politician, Tom Feeney.

This year it looks like Brown-Waite and Stearns are home free, Mica and Feeney will have spirited challenges, and Ric Keller will probably lose his seat, due at least in part to a vastly superior opponent (Alan Grayson) and a fortuitous and significant Democratic shift in registration. And Corrine? She's safer than anyone, of course. Republicans, points out Maxwell, "crammed so many Democrats into Corrine Brown's serpentine district, which snakes its way through nine counties from Orlando to Jacksonville, that there were enough Republicans left over to make the rest of the districts GOP-friendly." And, like I said, Florida is bad, but by no means alone. Certainly Texas and California are just as bad. Florida, at least, may address this corruption with a state constitutional amendment that takes the power for redrawing districts out of the hands of politicians. There are innovative proposals to address this problem around the country. And, who knows, one day voters may even realize politicians should not get to define what is-- and what isn't-- bribery.