Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

A lesson from Tim Cahill on our screwed-up campaign finance laws

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Tim Cahill has a knack for keeping himself in the news, though not always in a good way.  Today, he offers us a way to reflect on how badly screwed up the priorities of our campaign finance laws are.  Consider Treasurer Tim’s two recent missteps:

  1. As State Treasurer, Cahill raised tens of thousands of dollars from out-of-state people who apparently don’t even know who he is, but who sent him contributions at the request of one Michael Ruane, who, it turns out, manages millions of dollars of the state’s pension fund.  Over $40,000 of these donations arrived on the day before Ruane’s firm was given an additional $100 million to invest.

  2. Cahill’s campaign sent fundraising emails to state lawmakers at their State House email address.  Apparently, no donations resulted.

Which of these is illegal?  Which of these should be illegal?  Which of these practices represents the greater threat to democratic values?

To me, practice #1 is clearly the greater threat.  It verges on (if it doesn’t actually constitute) classic pay-to-play.  It appears to leverage the enormous state pension fund as a means of filling up campaign coffers; it results in pressure being applied both to Ruane (from Cahill’s office, with whom Ruane does business) and to Ruane’s out-of-state contacts (from Ruane, with whom they do business); it’s the classic toxic mix of money and politics; it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes people cynical about government.

Practice #2 is a technical misstep.  Someone sent the wrong mass email to the wrong set of email addresses.  Big whoop – the same individuals could have received the exact same solicitation at a different email address, or at their homes via telephone or regular mail.  No doubt most of the recipients simply deleted the email without giving it another thought.

And yet, as we know, practice #2 is illegal and has already resulted in a request for an OCPF investigation, while practice #1 is legal (unless there’s more to the story than has emerged so far).

The campaign finance rules, it seems to me, are very good at punishing slobs who aren’t careful about paperwork and database management.  What they are not good at is averting threats to democracy.  Perhaps some rethinking might be in order.

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Comments

  1. Not to be outdone, Mr. Mihos has been paying his campaign bills using his personal and corporate credit cards. Both are bozo no-nos, although candidates can give unlimited funds to their own campaign.

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    State campaign finance law prohibits candidates from using personal funds to pay for political expenses. All payments must be made from a candidate’s campaign. Mihos, a wealthy convenience store owner who is mostly self-financing his second race for governor, acknowledged that he used his credit card to pay the convention fee but said his campaign committee will pay him back for the expense.

    “The campaign is reimbursing my personal credit card,” he said in an e-mail.

    Campaign finance regulators say that even if candidates plan to get reimbursed by their campaign, they cannot pay for a campaign expense with personal funds. The penalty for violating that section of the law carries a jail term of not more than six months or a fine of not more than $500.

  2. We need comprehensive election and campaign finance reform in Massachusetts.  Unfortunately, we know we won’t get that via the legislative process but we certainly could make it a bi-partisan effort via the initiative petition process.  It would be great to actually make use of a nifty new invention in state government.  It’s called the “internet” and it would allow real time transparency of things like campaign contributions, among other things.  (What?  You think our statutes and regulations actually recognize the existence of the internet??  Guess again!)  Anyone want to reach across the aisle on this one?

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