Sorry, It Isn't Only Slimy Republicans Who Sell Their Votes To Corporate PACs

Bankster by Nancy Ohanian

I admit, I was one of the people complaining that Congressional Progressive Caucus members didn't spend enough time and energy raising money-- which had a lot to do with why Pelosi didn't take them seriously and wound up helping the New Dems take over the caucus. Now DCCC recruitment ignores progressives and stocks the House Democratic caucus up with Blue Dogs and New Dems. I may have pushed them too much. Now some of them are turning into corporate whores.

One top CPC staffer reminded me that CPC members "didn't raise money and didn't pay dues" and that that was why none of them ever got beyond DCCC regional vice chair.

Things have changed according to a story that Ryan Grim did this week for The Intercept that a pissed off member of the CPC sent me.

In April, the Congressional Progressive Caucus announced that it was going to be drawing a line: Its political action committee would no longer accept corporate campaign donations.

“If we are going to end the influence of corporations and special interests in government, we have to start by not relying on their support,” said caucus co-chair Mark Pocan (D-WI). “Only by being fully independent of their financial influence can we prioritize people over corporations.”

The development was largely ignored by the press, but for those who heard about it, the move raised an immediate question: Wait, the Congressional Progressive Caucus was taking corporate money?

Yes, it was. And not only did the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC accept corporate contributions until recently, but also, almost all of its 78 members-- including Pocan-- still take corporate money individually, even as their caucus shuns it. Just four caucus members who will be returning to the House next session have pledged to decline corporate funds: Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA); Ro Khanna (D-CA); Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI); and David Cicilline (D-RI).

That number, however, is about to balloon to as many as 40 or more, as a wave of successful progressive insurgents-- including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jahana Hayes, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar-- are poised to join the House of Representatives.

The new push to go cold turkey on corporate cash is creating tension within the caucus, as progressive members take offense at the implication that their votes might be influenced by big money. “People feel like you’re saying that they are bought and sold-- and some are, but many aren’t,” Jayapal told The Intercept. “It’s not like everybody who takes corporate PAC money is bad or only does what the corporations want... But that’s not what this is about. It’s about re-establishing trust with voters, changing the system, working from multiple angles.”

But while the voting records of Congressional Progressive Caucus members are better on democracy reform issues compared with those outside the caucus, that might be setting the bar too low. Aaron Scherb, the legislative affairs director for the watchdog group Common Cause, told The Intercept that 17 of the 28 members of Congress who earned perfect scores on his organization’s “Democracy Scorecard“ are in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But there are 78 representatives in the caucus, meaning that nearly 4 in 5 caucus members actually failed to earn a perfect score.

“So,” Jayapal explained, “I try to say to people, ‘Look, this is the system that we’ve had, it just doesn’t need to be the system that we always have. So it’s not bad that you’re doing it, because that is what has been the case.’ [I] try to not make it about shaming and blaming, but about, ‘Okay, we’re trying to fix this.’”

While Jayapal is trying to coax her colleagues with carrots, the ballot box is acting as a stick. In September, Rep. Michael Capuano, a longtime progressive from Massachusetts, was bested in a primary contest by his opponent, Ayanna Pressley, who made Capuano’s acceptance of corporate money a key campaign issue.

An analysis by The Intercept of the 2017-18 campaign cycle reveals that the vast majority of CPC members are similarly vulnerable, taking not just money from union and advocacy group PACs, but significant sums of corporate PAC cash as well. Not coincidentally, given the reliance on big money, hardly any members of the CPC rely on small individual donors.

Grim wrote that "the movement to get money out of politics has fueled a massive, rapid, and poorly understood sea change-- one that’s come to a head in the 2018 cycle. According to End Citizens United, a campaign finance reform political action committee, 208 candidates took the “no corporate PACs” pledge this cycle. Of those candidates, 124 won their primaries, including big names like Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Democrat challenging Ted Cruz’s Senate seat, and Ocasio-Cortez, the insurgent candidate from New York City who ousted Joe Crowley, one of the top Democrats in Congress. (End Citizens United endorsed Crowley in the primary, despite his long record of taking corporate contributions, not expecting him to face a real challenge.)"

First of all, Grim should be aware that End Citizens United doesn't have a long record doing anything, other than tricking grassroots contributors into giving them money for DCCC and DSCC candidates. They are just another DCCC/DSCC cutout group, manned by ex-staffers from both those organizations. They don't do anything except that. And of course they endorsed Crowley. It would be a political earthquake if they ever under any circumstances didn't support an establishment crook like him. Their DNA would explode.

Second, there are plenty of candidates who took the "no PAC money" because they knew they wouldn't get any anyway. We'll see how long they stick to that once they get into Congress. One who did-- and who was a major part of Grim's piece-- has been financed by local developers, even worse than PACs. Many Democrats take monet indirectly from the sleaziest PACs of all as long as it's cleaned and laundered through the worst scumbags in Congress. Rationale: I'm not really taking PAC money if I get it from Steny Hoyer (see no evil... etc) or, worse, if I get money from payday lenders, sugar barons or private prisons through Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Want to see how that workers to destroy the Democratic Party innards. This is from 2008, when Wasserman Schultz flew out of her sewer to destroy Obama's opening to Cuba, first a little background:

When Democrats gained control of Congress, in 2006, hopes were high that Cuba travel and trade restrictions would be eased by a party historically opposed to a so-called hard line on Cuba. But the Democratic-led House turned out to be as tough on Cuba as the Republicans has been when they ran the joint. 66 House Democrats-- including 20 members of the freshman class-- voted against a farm bill amendment offered by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) that would have made it easier for U.S. farmers to sell agricultural goods to Cuba.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, working with the GOP, was instrumental in winning Democratic votes against the Rangel amendment. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) told the Miami Herald that Wasserman Schultz was "a tiger" on the Rangel vote, while Antonio Zamora of the U.S.-Cuba Legal Forum described her as a key party in building Democratic opposition.

"I was about as active as you could be," said Wasserman Schultz, a deputy chief whip for Democrats. Wasserman Schultz’s position on Cuba put her at odds with some Democratic leaders, but she said she had no worries that this might affect her if she seeks a higher leadership position in the future. Hoyer and Clyburn voted against the amendment as well. 52 of the 66 Democrats who voted against Rangel’s amendment had received one or more contributions from the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC since the beginning of the 2007-2008 cycle. It has given $56,000 to 22 Democratic freshmen in 2008, and 17 of those freshmen voted against Rangel’s amendment. The votes of the freshmen was a concern to those who believe the current U.S. policy on Cuba is ineffective.

Wasserman Schultz's PAC had laundered nearly a quarter million dollars from sleazy special interests for Democrats running for re-election and election in the House. Between the US-Cuba Democracy PAC and her own shady Democrats Win Seats PAC this is how much loot Wasserman Schultz was able to direct to Democratic freshmen willing to sell her their votes, even from congressmen representing agricultural districts where this amendment would have had widespread support. The first amount comes from the US-Cuba Democracy PAC and the second came directly from the filthy Wasserman Schultz PAC:

• Jason Altmire (PA-04) $8,000 + $5,000
• Mike Arcuri (NY-24) $4,000 + $2,000
• Bruce Braley (IA-01) $5,000
• Chris Carney (PA-10) $7,000 + $7,500
• Kathy Castor (FL-11) $2,000
• Joe Donnelly (IN-02) $3,000 + $5,000
• Brad Ellsworth (IN-08) $3,000 + $3,000
• Gabby Giffords (AZ-08) $5,000 + $5,000
• Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20) $8,000 + $4,000
• Phil Hare (IL-17) $9,000 + $1,000
• Ron Klein (FL-22) $10,000 + $4,000
• Tim Mahoney (FL-16) $10,000 + $7,500
• Harry Mitchell (AZ-05) 0 + $4,000
• Patrick Murphy (PA-08) $6,000 + $4,000
• Joe Sestak (PA-07) $1,000 + $2,000
• Heath Shuler (NC-11) $7,000 + $5,000
• Albio Sires (NJ-13) $10,000
•Zach Space (OH-18) $7,000 +$4,000

That's how it's done; all of those members-- two of whom are now crooked Senators instead of crooked Reps-- can pss a lie detector test claiming they never sold their vote for corrupt cash from the sugar industry that wanted to kill the amendment. And they didn't; they took the money from their colleague Debby and had "no idea" who gave it to her. By the way, one of the Senate's worst Wall Street shills, Kirsten Gillibrand, who took corporate PAC money for her entire career (you can see she got $12,000 from Debbie for that vote) and has taken an astronomical $9,658,479 from Wall Street, is now hoping to get on a national ticket and says she is no longer going to take corporate PAC contributions-- "an easier decision," wrote Grim, "since corporate PACs aren’t likely to weigh in on presidential primaries anyway."

[W]hile elected officials-- especially self-identified progressive ones-- recognize the need to publicly back efforts to get money out of politics, incumbents will privately complain among themselves about the growing pressure to turn away long-standing donors, and big donors at that.

“Some of the most progressive members of the CPC will say their corporate contributions have never affected their votes, but they need to take trade association dollars or corporate PAC money because they represent poor districts that they don’t think has a donor base to make up for it,” said one Democratic House strategist.

“I’ve heard this particularly with folks of color,” said Jayapal, “that they have very minimal sources to get money from, and they traditionally haven’t been part of the overall [fundraising] system. But I think the beauty of getting corporate money out of politics is, it actually opens it up to everybody. In many ways, it’s a democratizing factor for traditionally marginalized communities.” Jayapal acknowledges that she thinks “it can take time to transition into that.”

This year’s primary upsets are beginning to change the political calculus, but longtime incumbents haven’t typically felt pressure to reject corporate PAC money. Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., came to Congress as an insurgent herself, beating a nine-term Democratic incumbent in 1992. Now, she says, she would “love to get to the point” where she doesn’t have to accept corporate money, but her energies have been largely focused on Puerto Rico. “Since I didn’t have a primary,” she added, “I am not paying attention to that.”

Without electoral pressure, incumbents like Velázquez have had little incentive to spend the energy to create a small-dollar fundraising base, or even one that can subsist on big money from individuals without corporate PACs. Privately, members of Congress also argue that it is unrealistic to expect all of them to be able to attract the kind of small-dollar support for which Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and O’Rourke are famous.

“The way I would put it is, there’s a consensus that candidates ought to be raising their money from small donors, but it’s also the case that only a subset of candidates really click with small donors,” said Mark Schmitt, a former congressional aide and current political reform director at New America. “There’s only one Beto, and he gets attacked because his money pours in from out of state. There’s just some candidates who that’s never going to happen for, and they could be perfectly good progressive candidates, but not the attractive, charismatic type that might fuel small-dollar backing.”

And even O’Rourke has acknowledged that some degree of his ability to raise money relies on the intense disdain for his opponent, Cruz-- a dynamic that also benefited Randy Bryce in his race against Paul Ryan. When Ryan retired, Bryce’s fundraising dropped significantly.

Some candidates who don’t share the superstar appeal of Sanders or O’Rourke argue that rejecting corporate cash could be tantamount to unilateral disarmament against Republicans in the general. “You would not want corporate PAC money used to destroy you in a general election, so it’s really going to depend on the landscape of each district,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) when asked if he would pledge not to take corporate PAC money.

Nasim Thompson, the communications director for Justice Democrats, has little patience for these types of excuses. “Those small-dollar donations are a reflection of grassroots support on the ground. And it’s not easy work, it’s very hard work, but it’s what we should expect of our electeds,” said Thompson. She adds that it’s the candidates who are not doing that hard work that are “compromising the entire system.”

Jayapal put it like this: “You don’t have to be an organizer; you don’t have to go out and make inspiring speeches. You just have to be authentic and show that you really care about the people that you represent and ordinary people, and that you want to take on the system of corruption in politics, and I think anybody can do that,” she said. “It is inspiring just to take the step.”

Although corporate PAC contributions have been the focus of the national political conversation, corporate PAC money, it turns out, amounts to a relative drop in the bucket of the large-dollar donations sloshing around American politics. “I sometimes ask people, ‘Well, how much do you get?’ And often, it’s a fairly small number,” said Jayapal.

In 2016, for example, just 6 percent of the $6.5 billion spent on the presidential election came from corporate PACs-- two-thirds of which went to Republicans. The vast majority of money flowing into elections comes from wealthy individual donors. Even Congressional Progressive Caucus members who have sworn off corporate PAC money, like Khanna and Jared Polis (who is currently running for Colorado governor), rely predominantly on individual donations from the rich. Gabbard, too, has a broad national base of donors, and gets a boost from wealthy American Hindus eager to support the first Hindu in office. Tlaib and Abdul El Sayed, both of whom took the pledge, similarly benefited from high-dollar donations from Muslim communities nationwide.

Corporate PACs are more likely to support incumbents than primary challengers, which is good news for insurgents, who can run on the politically popular message of opposing corporate PAC money while also recognizing that they were unlikely to be beneficiaries of those dollars to begin with.

Still, advocates for campaign finance reform say the level of upfront, personal sacrifice isn’t really the point, because candidates who pledge to take no money from corporate PACs are communicating a greater level of commitment to reform than their opponents. Pledges also make it harder for them to walk back their commitments later on, when, as incumbents, they’re more likely to feel pressure to draw a greater share of their funding from corporate PACs. Pressley, who fundraised from corporate PACs while she was a member of the Boston City Council, pledged in September to continue refusing corporate PAC money into the general election, and also once she’s in Congress.

“There’s no such thing as a pristine or incorruptible human being going into Congress, so part of our role is to continue that accountability for all members, including for Justice Democrats themselves,” said Thompson. “We need to make sure that drift doesn’t happen, and Justice Democrats aren’t immune to those pressures.”

...“If you’ve been in politics for more than five minutes, you get tangled up in the money-- everyone knows that,” [Maryland Rep. John] Sarbanes told The Intercept. “The real question is: What are we going to do about it? If we get back the gavel in November, we will want to move quickly on this reform agenda.”