Like Democracy? Think your elected officials should have integrity? Believe in public financing of elections and full disclosure of campaign contributions? Hope your elected officials won't be swayed by who gives them money?
Then read this eye-opening article, first published in
Capital and Main, an investigative political blog, now going viral on Huffington Post, Alternet, Beyond Chron, Facebook and this blog.
Written by Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist
Gary Cohn.
Featuring our own Assemblymember, Marc Levine, who is being challenged by several others, including my client,
College of Marin Trustee, Diana Conti.
Read it and feel the absurdity, the hypocrisy, the shame. Read it and do something about it:
The following story was reported by Capital and Main as part of its California Exposé investigative series, and published here in collaboration with The Huffington Post.
Marin
County is one of California’s most liberal regions and, with its iconic
redwoods and stunning coastline, it is also a power center for
environmental activism. And so, when a bill to give the state Coastal
Commission authority to levy fines against shoreline despoilers came for
a vote in the state Assembly in 2013, it was taken for granted that
Marin’s new Assemblyman, Marc Levine, would vote for passage. That
didn’t happen. Instead, the San Rafael Democrat sat out the single most
important vote for his constituents that year – which helped doom the
measure.
But Levine was not finished. In Sacramento he would
abstain or skip votes on bills helping farm workers and creating a bill
of rights for domestic workers. He has also voted against legislation
requiring economic impact reports for big box stores and requiring more
rate-increase disclosure from Kaiser Permanente. That Levine keeps at
arm’s length the progressive values of the 10th Assembly District, which
includes much of equally liberal Sonoma County, should come as no
surprise. During his two Assembly campaigns he has received hundreds of
thousands of dollars from some of the state’s largest business
interests.
What is baffling is that Levine, who declined to
comment for this article, is neither a DINO (a conservative who is a
Democrat in name only) nor a farm belt centrist. He remains a committed
suburban liberal. One, that is, who happened to attend a local Mitt
Romney rally in 2012 and who felt at ease appearing at a Republican
Lincoln Dinner last year. Levine is also no aberration. Rather, he is
part of a new breed of Democrat, one exceedingly attentive to big
business while tone-deaf toward the Democratic Party’s traditional base,
which includes union workers, environmentalists and public school
advocates.
At the very moment that California’s Republican Party
is melting into electoral irrelevancy, Levine and other hybrid Democrats
are appearing in all corners of the state. Their ranks include Bill
Dodd, a Napa County Supervisor and former Republican who is running as a
Democrat for a wine country Assembly seat, and Palmdale Assemblyman
Steve Fox, another erstwhile Republican. Fox, who says he is proud to
have earned the California Chamber of Commerce’s highest approval rating
for a Democrat, tells Capital & Main that the Democratic Party’s
becoming friendlier to business is a positive development.
“We’re pulling the party to the center, towards being more business friendly,” Fox says.
Then
there’s Orinda city councilman Steve Glazer, a former top advisor to
Governor Jerry Brown, who recently worked as a consultant to the
California Chamber of Commerce and its Jobs Political Action Committee.
Glazer is currently running for an Alameda County Assembly seat and has
fiercely challenged the right of transit workers to strike.
“I am
trying to redefine what it means to be a Democrat,” Glazer told Capital
& Main. “I think you can be a financial conservative and be a strong
Democratic officeholder.”
The rise of what might be called the
Corporate Democrat can only be partly explained by shrinking GOP
delegations in Sacramento. It is also the product of redistricting and
effects of the “top-two primary,” by which members of the same political
party can win the top two primary positions and then face off in
November. These two structural changes were approved by voters in,
respectively, 2008 and 2010. Since then, powerful corporations,
agricultural associations and other political high rollers have been
turning away from their traditional Republican partners and placing more
and more of their chips on the Democratic end of the table –
specifically, on candidates like Marc Levine. These changes are only
now catching the attention of Democratic electeds and activists, who see
a coming fight for the soul of their party.
“Democrats, we are
just as guilty of getting sucked into the influence of money and power
about which we criticize Republicans,” state controller candidate Betty
Yee told Democrats at the party’s annual state convention last month.
Yee, who is a member of the State Board of Equalization, expanded on her
wake-up call in an interview.
“What’s different now is the
wholesale moderation of Democratic positions on issues we used to own –
education, income inequality and poverty,” Yee says.
Those issues
don’t rate high on the bucket lists of the corporations and millionaires
now backing friendly Democratic candidates. Campaign contribution
records maintained by California’s Secretary of State reveal a dense
constellation of wealthy backers of candidates such as Levine, Glazer,
Dodd and Fox. In the 2014 election cycle these benefactors form a Who’s
Who of developers, gaming concerns, Big Pharma and agribusiness – and
their largesse often overlaps across political races.
Both Levine
and Glazer, for example, have received top dollar from Los Angeles
billionaire Eli Broad, PG&E, Time Warner, Walmart, Safeway and such
pharmaceutical titans as Eli Lilly and Pfizer. Levine, Glazer and Dodd
count as patrons Walmart heiress Carrie Walton Penner, San Francisco
magnate Joseph O. Tobin II, the California Chamber of Commerce, public
pension reform advocate David Crane, Gap stores scion William S. Fisher
and Basic American Foods heir George Hume. Meanwhile, former Los Angeles
mayor Richard Riordan has contributed to both Levine and Dodd’s
campaigns, while PricewaterhouseCoopers, the California Real Estate PAC
and the California Forestry Association PAC are among those donating to
both Levine and Fox. And Levine, Glazer and Fox all receive funds from
AT&T’s political action committee.
This donor list represents
only a selection of contributors who have donated money through
mid-April of this year – the number of donors and the amount of campaign
spending will only increase as the June primary nears, and then
afterwards, leading up to the November runoffs.
“What business is
doing is coming to terms with the new structure of politics in
California,” says Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund
G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State
University, Los Angeles. “The top-two primary [system] really opens the
door to be able to support business-friendly Democrats.”
Fernando
Guerra, a political science professor and director of the Thomas and
Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount
University, agrees.
“This new environment,” says Guerra, “where
Democrats are very dominant, and with new electoral laws, allows for a
strategy for electing moderate Democrats in districts particularly
defined as liberal-leaning districts.”
Indeed, a recent
University of Southern California study
found that the electoral reforms in California are associated with an
ideological shift toward the center for Democrats (i.e., in a rightward
direction) in California’s state legislature — with no perceptible move
to the center from the Republican Party. Except, perhaps, from
Republicans who have simply switched parties. The legislative effects of
such defections have yet to be gauged.
“It’s something that may
look as though I switched my party so I could run for this seat,” admits
Bill Dodd, the former Republican who is running for the Fourth Assembly
District seat. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I fit
comfortably under the Democratic tent.” Still, when asked whether he has
a better chance of winning the Assembly seat by running as a Democrat,
Dodd doesn’t hesitate with his answer.
“Clearly,” he acknowledges.
“If you look at the registration in the district and the history of the
races, this district is a predominantly Democratic leaning district.”
Dodd is sitting on a campaign war chest of nearly $528,000, which
eclipses even Levine’s huge treasury. Dodd’s contributions come mainly
from wineries and other businesses — as they have since his first
supervisorial election in 2000. Then Dodd was a political novice and
“the Chamber of Commerce candidate,” as James Conaway described him in
The Far Side of Eden, Conaway’s book about development in the Napa
Valley. Yet Dodd also boasts deep funding from individuals who, like
David Crane, are influential advocates of cutting public employee pensions or, like
Greg and Carrie Penner, are wealthy supporters of school privatization – views that run counter to longstanding Democratic Party positions.
In
2012 the California Chamber of Commerce and other business groups
played a key role in targeting a pair of progressive, pro-labor
Democratic incumbents in two liberal districts. In Northern California,
Marc Levine narrowly defeated Michael Allen, while in the 50th Assembly
District, which includes Santa Monica, challenger Richard Bloom squeaked
by Betsy Butler. Levine and Bloom (who was then mayor of Santa Monica)
were widely considered friendlier to business than Allen and Butler.
“Those
are two shining examples of candidates that might not have been elected
pre-top two primary,” says Franklin Gilliam Jr., dean of the University
of California, Los Angeles’ Luskin School of Public Affairs. The USC
study similarly pointed to these races, adding that “Levine supported
the CalChamber in 43 percent of votes, which is high for a Democratic
legislator.”
In fact, the Chamber’s Jobs PAC had paid at least $100,000 for polling and mailers that were used to
attack Allen and Butler.
A group affiliated with the Western Growers Association was heavily
involved with the attack mailers – which played a role electing Levine
and Bloom.
It’s not unusual for big business to hedge its bets by
contributing to liberal candidates. Likewise, the mere acceptance of
corporate money doesn’t guarantee a candidate will always vote business’
way. What raises eyebrows about Corporate Democrats, however, is the
preponderance of corporate money in their coffers, which more resemble
the treasuries of traditional Republican candidates than of
progressives. At first glance, Corporate Democrats may not seem to be
conservative surrogates, thanks to their votes for causes dear to
progressives and because of the ratings they receive from liberal
activist groups. To look at the high rankings (often in the 90 to 100
percentiles) bestowed by environmental organizations,
reproductive-rights groups and unions – and correspondingly low scores
from, say, conservative tax organizations and gun lobbyists – Corporate
Democrats have little trouble appearing to be pragmatists who are forced
by circumstances to stand up to their party’s base for the common good
of California.
Yet the fact remains that California is the most
progressive state in the nation, governed by the most progressive wing
of a Democratic Party that has discovered its Sacramento supermajority
is not so super. (What’s stopping the state from enacting more visionary
legislation than it has since 2012? Or from offering its low-income
workforce a higher minimum wage than $10 an hour – and sooner than
2016?) Unlike Washington D.C., where progressive reforms have been
thwarted by a determined conservative opposition, in California that
opposition comes from within. And, voting records show, this opposition
does not necessarily exercise power in obvious ways.
Once elected,
Corporate Democrats don’t always flex their muscle by openly sponsoring
or supporting business-friendly bills, but sometimes by doing nothing –
by abstaining from voting on bills that business opposes. A single
abstention can mean life or death for a measure that requires a
supermajority to pass. The bill to give enforcement power to the Coastal
Commission, AB 976, for instance, died after Levine and several other
Democrats abstained on the final vote. The same thing happened to AB
880, the “
Walmart Loophole”
bill, which received 46 Aye votes, with 27 lawmakers voting against it
and six abstaining. A total of 54 Ayes, or a two-thirds supermajority,
was required. Although Levine voted Yes, three other Democrats voted
against the bill, while five more abstained.
The California
Chamber candidly acknowledges the importance of persuading Democrats to
abstain from voting as part of its strategy to defeat bills business
opposes. In its website recap of legislators’ 2013 voting records, the
Chamber notes, in a section titled “
When Not Voting Helps”:
Sometimes
a legislator is unwilling to vote against a colleague, but is willing
to support the CalChamber’s opposition to a bill. In such cases, a
legislator may abstain from voting, which will hinder passage of a bill,
just as a “no” vote does.
Kenneth
Burt, who has taught as a visiting scholar at the University of
California at Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, agrees that
the Chamber has been increasingly involved in trying to elect Democrats
who are aligned with big business interests. Burt adds that this process
has accelerated since the 2010 passage of another ballot initiative,
Proposition 25, which allows a simple majority vote to pass the state
budget. (Disclosure: Burt also serves as the political director for the
California Federation of Teachers, a financial supporter of Capital
& Main.)
“Prop. 25 eliminated the ability of a few Republicans
to demand additional tax breaks for big business as the price of
passing a budget,” Burt says. “As a result, the Chamber could no longer
get its Republican allies to hold hostage the whole legislative
process.”
Loyola Marymount’s Guerra foresees consequences for
progressive initiatives in California that are more profound than the
loss of one party’s supermajority.
“I could see,” Guerra says, “in
the future almost three parties in California — Republicans, the
liberal progressive wing of the Democratic Party and moderate
Democrats.”
Such a tectonic divide may already be in motion.
