The Dodd Squad Fires Back
| Wed Jul. 8, 2009 12:42 PM PDT
The Chris-Dodd-is-no-K-Street-pawn campaign is ramping up. I just received an email from Colleen Flanagan, communications director for the Connecticut Democratic Party. She'd seen my blog item commenting on today's Roll Call story on the senator's recent efforts to "distance himself from K Street" and wanted to direct my attention to a press release the party issued earlier today defending Dodd's record.
It’s tough being a lobbyist in Washington these days, and Senator Chris Dodd isn’t making it any easier. Yet another story today in the DC press features unnamed lobbyists, who will speak only on the condition of anonymity, whining that they aren’t getting their way with the Banking Committee Chairman and Senator Kennedy’s top deputy on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
The release goes on to list a series of quotes in which lobbyists whine that Dodd's shutting them out and ends with a quote from Flanagan:
“It speaks volumes that these industry insiders aren’t willing to be named, yet they continue to peddle their stories to anyone who will listen, trying to gain sympathy and a leg up on these critical legislative measures. The only sympathy these unnamed sources deserve to get is that they sound so silly in article after article complaining that Main Street has Dodd’s ear and not K Street.”
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In a separate email, Flanagan told me: "The point is that advocating on behalf of consumers is nothing new for Sen. Dodd, and the people who say otherwise are ignoring close to 30 years of his track record on these issues."
As I noted earlier, Dodd has indeed been a champion of consumer causes. But his image problems are largely of his own making. And he's placed himself in a position where it's easy to call his motives into question. For years, he's raised huge amounts of campaign cash from lobbyists and finance industry players. As Jonathan Stein and I detailed back in April, almost a third of Dodd's first quarter receipts came from financial execs and interests, whose industry Dodd holds great sway over as Senate banking committee chairman. (That doesn't take into count sizable contributions from K Streeters or the insurance or health care industries.)
Dodd's campaign machine clearly sees an opportunity here to rehabilitate the public's perception of the embattled senator. While publicly they are expressing outrage about lobbyists "peddling stories" about their lack of access to the senator, privately they must be thinking that any press that puts Dodd on the wrong side of K Street is just the type of PR they're looking for. After all, without stories like that, there wouldn't be ads like this:
Comments
Dodd's a fake Democrat
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Jul. 8, 2009 6:15 PM PDT.
or maybe this is the Democratic Party.
So what do we do?
Submitted by Jim (not verified) on Wed Jul. 8, 2009 10:07 PM PDT.
I have reasons to want to cut Dodd slack, foremost among them his stance against the execrable FISA revisions of last summer, along with his somewhat pro-consumer record. But the influence of K street and predatory capitalism (as opposed to the Adam Smith kind) over all politicians, either D or R (I can't imagine Sanders gets much money from these guys) is disgusting -- and Dodd is no exception to this rule.
OTOH, when it costs a bare minimum of $3M, an average of $10M, and sometimes upwards of $40M to run a credible Senate campaign, few Senators who are not independently wealthy can afford not to take these massive corporate campaign contributions. The SCOTUS since the Buckley v. Valeo decision in the 1970s has essentially mandated a "one dollar, one vote" rather than "one person, one vote" campaign system by ruling that money = speech and therefore most campaign expenditure regulations violate the First Amendment. And they are poised to allow corporate-funded "adumentaries" free rein -- unlimited corporate political speech, in other words blanketing the airwaves with unlimited cash -- with the rehearing of Citizens United v. FEC this fall.
And serious campaign finance reform faces two obstacles: (1) the Buckley decision and (2) the unwillingness of the Capitol Hill corporate-government revolving door denizens (aka Senators and Congresscritters) to vote for a reform that hurts their long-term economic and political interests, even if it would be in the best interests of the country.
In short, whatever one thinks of Dodd's behavior here, collectively, we're b0rked.
campaign finance
Submitted by Daniel Schulman on Thu Jul. 9, 2009 6:48 AM PDT.
Good points, Jim. And it looks like the campaign finance situation may only get worse. Interesting piece in Politico yesterday on the topic: "Decades of lawmaking and court decisions restricting the flow of cash into U.S. elections are on the verge of coming undone, placing President Barack Obama in the unexpected position of presiding over the possible demise of the modern campaign finance regime."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24675.html
DS
Yep
Submitted by Jim (not verified) on Thu Jul. 9, 2009 1:47 PM PDT.
That's right -- that's the Citizens United case that the SCOTUS has now held over for rehearing in September (possibly before Sotomayor's confirmation). The Politico piece is mostly about Obama's shameful foot-dragging on campaign finance reform initiatives -- which I hadn't known about, so thank you.. The sentence you quoted, though, refers to the Citizens United case I mentioned in my previous post. The last few paragraphs cover this in a little more detail (not using blockquote as it results in teeny text):
"Both the public financing and FEC debates, however, are overshadowed by a pending development over which Obama has no control: the Supreme Court’s surprise announcement last week that, in lieu of deciding a relatively narrow case about whether restrictions on corporation-funded broadcast ads also applied to movies, it would consider overturning the restrictions as a whole.
"Those restrictions are a major pillar of McCain-Feingold. And the court’s announcement that it would hear arguments in September from the Obama administration and the group challenging the restrictions prompted angst among the reformers, who predicted a sweeping decision could reverse the century-old prohibition on corporate contributions to candidates."
W-wait... *what* did they just say? "A sweeping decision [that] could reverse the CENTURY-OLD prohibition on corporate contributions to candidates." And there goes the ball game.
Talk about judicial activism. A century-old safeguard against corporate power, gone. And they have far more money and power now than they did then, even in the days of the robber barons and the railroads. And we're headed back there, in spades.
Like I said, we're b0rked.
More details at Adam B's Daily Kos diary.
