Democrats Assail, and Tap, 'Special Interests'
The New York Times
January 31, 2004
By GLEN JUSTICE and JOHN TIERNEY
CHARLESTON, S.C., Jan. 30 - The Democratic presidential hopefuls
have been crossing the country this week promising to drive "special
interests" and "influence peddlers" out of the White House.
But campaign finance reports show some contenders benefit significantly
from the lobbyists and special interests that they attack.
While Senator John Kerry regularly promises to stand up to
"big corporations," his campaign has taken money from executives on Wall Street and
those representing the telecommunications industry, which is under
his purview in Congress. Mr. Kerry denounces President Bush for catering to
the rich, but he has depended more heavily on affluent donors than the
other leading Democrats except for another populist, Senator John
Edwards. Mr. Kerry's spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, said the
contributions had no effect on his votes.
"Anybody who thought they were buying influence with John Kerry
can look at his votes and know they're not getting their money's worth," Ms.
Cutter said.
Mr. Edwards tells audiences, "I've never taken a dime from
a Washington lobbyist and I never will." That might be literally true - not many
lobbyists give dimes these days - but Mr. Edwards has accepted
at least a few contributions from current and former lobbyists, and his campaign
manager was a registered Washington lobbyist in 2002. Mr. Edwards
has also accepted millions of dollars from lawyers, including members of the
Association of Trial Lawyers of America, a trade group that wields
enormous influence on tort reform. An ex-president of the group, Fred Baron, is
a financial co-chairman for Mr. Edwards's campaign. The new president
of the group and all four executive officers, have each given $2,000.
Mr. Edwards's spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said that the campaign's
policy was not to take money from anyone registered at the time as a
Washington lobbyist, but that it had taken money from people who
formerly or subsequently worked as lobbyists. Ms. Palmieri also pointed to Mr.
Edwards's proposals to limit lobbyists' gifts and activities. "John Edwards
supports the strongest proposal on the table for campaign-finance reform,"
she said.
To be sure, none of the Democrats have collected donations on the
scale of President Bush's campaign, and they generally avoid donations from
political action committees. But the Democrats are hardly naifs when
it comes to enlisting support from special interests in Washington and
elsewhere, from corporate leaders and from unions in the public and private sectors.
"Special interests are the Darth Vader of contemporary politics," Darrell West,
a professor of political science at Brown University, said. "Everybody
loves to hate them. But politicians can't live without them, because
they need money to get their message out. It's very much a love-hate
relationship."
According to studies by campaign finance watchdog groups, Howard Dean
and Gen. Wesley K. Clark on affluent donors are less dependent than Mr.
Kerry and Mr. Edwards, but they also collect money from corporate executives
and rely for guidance on the Washington insiders they criticize.
General Clark, who had been lobbying for the Acxiom Corporation
of Little Rock, Ark., on domestic security, was a registered lobbyist himself when
he began his quest for the presidency. When Roy Neel was put in charge
of Dr. Dean's campaign on Wednesday, he was not the first lobbyist to
work on behalf of the campaign.
In his victory speech on Tuesday night in New Hampshire, Mr. Kerry
sounded a familiar theme when he declared, "I have a message for the
influence peddlers, for the polluters, the H.M.O.'s, the big drug companies
that get in the way, the big oil and the special interests who now call
the White House their home. `We're coming, you're going, and don't
let the door hit you on the way out!' "
Mr. Kerry is an experienced fund-raiser, having worked to raise
money while on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and for his own
campaigns. In his campaign for the nomination, he has collected more
than $1 million from employees of securities and investment businesses. He
took in $70,000 from employees of Citigroup and $62,500 from workers
at Goldman Sachs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a
nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance trends.
Mr. Kerry's top career donor is the law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn,
Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo, according to a study by Chuck Lewis,
executive director of another campaign-finance group, the
Center for Public Integrity. Mr. Kerry
received $231,000 over the course of his career from lawyers in the
firm, where his brother, Cameron F. Kerry, is a telecommunications lawyer.
The firm has represented clients like the Cellular Telecommunications
and Internet Association and AT&T Wireless Services, whose industry falls
under the jurisdiction of a Senate subcommittee that includes
Mr. Kerry, the report said.
"You can't raise millions of dollars for politics without being entangled
with lobbyists and special interests," Mr. Lewis said.
Mr. Kerry has criticized the current "creed of greed" and faulted
Mr. Bush letting "the privileged ride high and reap the rewards." But his typical
donors share at least one similarity with the president's, an ability
to give $2,000, the legal maximum.
Fifty-five percent of Mr. Kerry's money has come from donors giving
$2,000. For Mr. Bush, the comparable figure is 73 percent, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.
The center's analysis shows that small donors, those giving $200
or less, have provided 12 percent of Mr. Kerry's campaign money, the same
percentage they provided for Mr. Bush.
Mr. Edwards collected even less, 3 percent, of his campaign money
from contributions of $200 or less, the analysis showed. In his stump speech
about "the two Americas," Mr. Edwards promises to protect ordinary
citizens against the wealthy and the powerful. But 65 percent of the money in
his campaign has come from Americans who are able to donate $2,000
or more, chiefly lawyers, according to the research group.
Mr. Edwards, a former trial lawyer, received $7.5 million from members
of the legal profession through September 2003, the analysis by the Center
for Responsive Politics shows. That was half the money he had raised to that point.
Mr. Edwards routinely inveighs against the influence of lobbyists and
the exploitation of consumers by big corporations, predatory lenders and
hidden fees of credit-card companies. But his own campaign
is managed by Nick Baldick, who has worked for concerns
that have lobbied on behalf
of AT&T, Mastercard International and Visa USA.
Mr. Baldick was a registered lobbyist as late as 2002,
but is no longer, lobbying records show.
Ms. Palmieri, spokeswoman for Mr. Edwards, said Mr. Baldick
had not done any lobbying personally while at the firm and had been erroneously
registered as a lobbyist by his partner. She also said the campaign
returned any contribution that it learned was from a currently registered
lobbyist. One lobbyist independently confirmed in an interview that
his contribution had been returned after the campaign realized his occupation.
But the policy allowed the campaign to accept contributions from
Washington insiders like John Podesta, a prominent aide to President Bill Clinton
who went on to work as a lobbyist. He was out of the business last year,
when he made a $500 donation to Mr. Edwards's campaign. But today he is
once again a registered lobbyist.
"This was not the plank in his platform that caused me to give him money,"
Mr. Podesta said of Mr. Edwards's policy. "In my mind, this is a
gimmick. But it's a gimmick that points out something important,
the flow of special interest to the Bush campaign and the special favors they
receive. Edwards has found a gimmick to highlight that."
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