Voters Lose in Pay-to-Play Politics

By Damon Circosta
Published: Jan. 12, 2009

RALEIGH - In recent weeks, the nation has learned to pronounce the name of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who has been linked to a “pay-to-play” scandal. Unfortunately, he is far from the first.

Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s vacated seat in the U.S. Senate to the highest bidder, earning him the dishonor of being the first Illinois governor arrested while in office and the first to be impeached. That’s no small feat when you consider that three Illinois governors have gone to prison in the past 35 years, including Blagojevich’s predecessor, George Ryan, who is serving a six-year sentence on corruption charges.

The case against Blagojevich is still undecided, but there is a troubling recent history of governors finding themselves in legal hot water -- and not only in the Land of Lincoln.

In 2004, Connecticut’s John Rowland pleaded guilty to depriving the public of honest service and ended up serving a year in prison. Other disgraced governors include Alabama’s Guy Hunt, Arkansas’ Jim Guy Tucker, Arizona’s Fife Symington, Louisiana’s Edwin Edwards, Rhode Island’s Edward DiPrete and West Virginia’s Arch Moore. And those are just the cases since 1990.

It must be said that the vast majority of governors are free from the corruption displayed by those unfortunate examples. But even governors who avoid impropriety still face an election system that places more and more emphasis on the almighty dollar.

Indeed, any political consultant worth his salt will tell you that campaign contributions are the be-all and end-all of gubernatorial politics. No one should pity those who cross the line of corruption, but when millions of dollars are at stake it’s no wonder that politicians are getting caught up in campaign finance scandals.

Let’s face it: the problem with money and politics isn’t just a few wayward souls. It is a rooted, endemic problem. We have, over time, created an election system that rewards those who chase big campaign contributions and are willing to skirt the edge of legality to purchase a slew of 30-second television attack ads. This system rewards big-money campaigns and all but ignores those who don’t have a few thousand dollars to give to their favorite candidate.

Here in North Carolina, our recent gubernatorial campaign cost tens of millions of dollars. Both the Republican and Democratic nominees tried to make reform of the system a central tenet of their campaigns. Now that the election season’s dust has settled, it’s time to take a hard look at how these races are conducted.

To be certain, there will always be wayward politicians, but no one says our electoral system should reward bad behavior. There are changes we can make that will diminish the influence of money and empower more people to cast an informed ballot. Campaign finance reform and updating our registration procedures are just a few fixes that would go a long way to improving democracy.

To her credit, North Carolina’s newly inaugurated Gov. Bev Perdue has championed an alternative system of financing gubernatorial elections. A lot of details need to be worked out, and time will tell if she is willing to put political capital behind reform, but the governor seems serious about finding innovative ways to return democracy to the people.

Whether you voted for Perdue or voted for someone else, the good news is that the Tar Heel State is about to engage in a serious discussion on improving the democratic process. Fixing the election system will not happen overnight, but as we watch from afar the scandals being played out in other states, reform could not come a moment too soon.