The
argument for restricting donations to candidate for these other positions not
only is for the most part intellectually lazy, but it also tramples free speech
rights. The case against donations because they buy influence is almost without
qualification rejected by political science research, although they do serve to
buy access. Still, with access easily obtainable this way by a multitude of
interests, and with independent-minded policy-makers out there who are expert
at playing off interests against each other constrained only by their constituents,
it’s clear that no one interest has any structural advantage over any other.
Better
supported as a point of concern is the notion that contributions may put a donor close to the head of
the line in terms of appointments to boards and commissions, although almost
all of these officers have little power and do not receive a salary, but as appointees
are expected (or at least anticipated) by appointers to follow that person’s
issue preferences, their decisions end up reflecting by and large the will of
the majority of the public who put the appointers into the offices where they
may appoint. Thus, there is no problem of democratic deficit or having certain
interests with outsized influence here, either.
But
perhaps the PSC is a different story, for two reasons. One is that its elective
positions are salaried, full-time jobs. This creates an additional, potentially
perverse incentive for allowing donors to exert more influence over an official
who must run for reelection periodically: the desire to keep paid employment. This
also is true of other statewide elected officials.
Yet
compounding the problem is that the narrowness of the PSC’s authority,
especially its regulatory power, magnifies the potential influence of donors.
Since it rules over a narrow scope of issues, those who do not have an interest
over that small subset of them tend to ignore the activities of these positions,
leaving the field of play to a much smaller group of interests. The same is a valid
critique of the five junior statewide elected positions: secretary of state,
attorney general, treasurer, insurance commissioner, and agriculture and
forestry commissioner. So perhaps this case is different, and thus more stringent
limits, including to zero (emulating the position on the gambling industry)
should be put in place.
However,
the simplistic idea of banning contributions from regulated industries by the
PSC questionably reduces free speech rights of some and illegitimately enhances
that of others. Such a ban would privilege interests advocating against legal
activities of regulated industries, for these still could make donations. Further,
it magnifies the influence of any interests not regulated; for example, current
PSC Commissioner Clyde
Holloway gets a large amount of his campaign cash haul from political
interests outside of the PSC from contacts he has built up over a lengthy political
career including a stay in Congress and runs for statewide offices.
And,
this seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Witness PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell, who
gets a good portion of his donations from industry despite the fact that he is
the most ardent foe of many of the industries being regulated, to the harm of
both taxpayers and consumers. Why should so many regulated entities give to him and not to his competitor,
or potential competitors who never ran because they saw industry support of
him, in his last 2008 reelection when they were so much more industry-friendly
if donations really give some kind of influence advantage to the donors?
In
short, any ban on regulated interests’ given not only serves no useful purpose,
it is unjustifiably punitive on those interests relative to others. So because this
collateral damage exists by reducing the free speech rights of some, the real
solution is to go back to first principles and rather than tackling the
symptoms, get rid of the disease: make PSC positions (and while at it make some
if not all of the junior statewide elective offices) appointive, not
elective.
That
way, money can play no role in decisions. And while this brings up the
criticism above of donors getting appointments, the current checks that exist
in terms of legislative concurrence in appointment – and the political reality that
an appointer can ill afford to have someone not capable of performing such a
relatively high-profile job in that position, risking unfavorable redounding of
bad decision-making by appointees to affect his job security – will maximize
the chances that these positions are not bought and sold on the basis of
donations.
Short
of this, establishment of term limits would prove somewhat helpful. With those in
place, officeholders may think more in terms of policy accomplishments and how
their performance will be judged in terms of future ambitions for other offices
and feel less pressure to follow donors’ requests, knowing donors’ resources
cannot help them stay in office forever.
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