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Jul. 30, 2001

Costly Campaigns Become the Business of the Rich

By J. Barlow Herget

RALEIGH - "He who pays the piper calls the tune" is a worn proverb, but its wisdom remains as current as today’s political campaign contribution. And our political pipers increasingly depend on the few and the rich for their music sheets.

That complaint is not limited to wooly thinking commentators and not-for-profit reformers. Listen to Warren Buffet, the billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., and a fellow who has made a payroll or two. He wrote in "The Washington Post" recently, "I have personal knowledge of several $1 million requests made in last year’s campaign in which the potential donor was promised that his name would never surface."

He was arguing against the secrecy that is legally permitted in the present system of campaign financing. His larger argument (remember this is the reputed second richest person in America) is that the costlier our campaigns become, the greater the influence of people like him. He put it this way: "For the wealthy, the more expensive the game, the better their result."

It was time, he concluded, to "end the financial arms race in which wealthy entities and individuals are otherwise destined to become superpowers" and adopt campaign finance reform.

Buffet’s timely epistle was aimed at Congress where House Speaker Dennis Hastert and his enforcers, Reps. Tom Delay and Dick Armey, both Texas Republicans, set aside the House version of campaign finance legislation. Buffet’s experience in national politics is played out on state political stages, too.

In an almost shocking (nothing actually shocks you anymore when you examine the entrails of campaign financing) article in "The Charlotte Observer", writer Jim Morrill reported that just 930 people accounted for half of the $7.7 million raised from individuals for gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Mike Easley and Republican Richard Vinroot. It gets worse. Only 300 families accounted for fully a third of the money spent in their Election 2000 campaigns. The data was compiled by Democracy South of Chapel Hill from campaign spending records.

The average amount given by the 930 individuals was $4,160 or about 13 percent of the typical salary of $31,702 for a North Carolina school teacher; or 22 percent of the average sales clerk’s $18,421 pay; or 11 percent of a bank loan officer’s average $37,393 salary; or 6 percent of the average lawyer’s earnings of $68,707.

Those with money and special interests accept the fact that to be a player in today’s politics, they must pay money to the politicians. As Warren Buffet acknowledges, our current "market system" of campaign financing "will deliver to purchasers what they want." It’s just business.

And it’s a business in which very, very few of us participate. Many cannot afford it; others simply believe they shouldn’t have to pay, and they don’t. Nationwide, less than .01% of eligible voters gave $250 or more to federal campaigns in the 2000 Election.

These figures do not portend a happy democracy. With fewer and fewer of richer and richer citizens paying the costs of elections, the result is disgust and cynicism from the rest of the voters for the system.

Chris Heagarty, executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education in Raleigh sees such sentiments behind the decline in voter participation. The Center noted after the 2000 Election that only 2,942,062 of the 5.1 million registered North Carolina voters went to the polls. That’s only 56.7 percent of the registered electorate in contrast with 76.4 percent who voted in the 1968 election.

In the June 2001 issue of "South Now" published by the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at Chapel Hill, Director Ferrel Guillory and Editor Thad Beyle looked at voter turnout percentages between 1960-2000. Calculating turnout based not on registered voters but on all those eligible to vote (a greater number) Guillory and Beyle found that voter turnout in the country declined fitfully over the past 40 years, from 66.1 percent in 1960 to a miserable 51.6 percent last year.

These are the numbers of a democracy that’s off-key.

Barlow Herget is a businessman, writer and served two terms on the Raleigh City Council.