Corporations’ convention dollars questioned

WASHINGTON — A watchdog group says numbers in a report it released Wednesday make a mockery of the Federal Election Commission’s contention that corporate donors who subsidize the national political conventions “are motivated by a desire to promote the convention city and not by political considerations.”

The Campaign Finance Institute said in the report that the 173 corporate donors expected to pour more than $112 million into the two upcoming conventions have a high-dollar history of high-level interest in government action that affects their businesses. Atlanta’s Coca-Cola and UPS are among those donors.

Since 2005, the donors — through their executives, employees and political action committees — have given $180 million to political parties or candidates for federal office. Those contributions are limited by federal law, but contributions to the political conventions are unlimited.

The convention sponsors also have spent more than $1.3 billion to lobby federal lawmakers since 2005. Data in the report came from the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Large convention donations may give the donors’ lobbyists more clout with those they seek to influence,” the report said.

It’s difficult, the institute concluded, to make a case that the convention donors are not politically motivated.

“The (numbers) reveal that the federal interests of companies donating to both conventions are especially large,” the report said, also noting that the money flowed to the parties in response to “solicitations from partisan elected officials and fund-raisers dispatched by the host committees.”

“These solicitors have dangled promises of access to grateful federal elected officials,” the institute concluded, charging that the convention cash “undermines the Federal Election Commission’s justification for this soft-money loophole.”

In a 2004 decision, the FEC reaffirmed previous decisions “that donations of funds to (convention) host committees are, as a matter of law, distinct from other donations by prohibited sources in that they are motivated by a desire to promote the convention city and hence are not subject to the absolute ban on corporate contributions.”

“The fact that historically members of the opposite political party have played key roles in convention host committees strongly supports the commission’s conclusion that host committee activity is motivated by a desire to promote the convention city and not by political considerations,” the FEC said in the 2004 decision.

The Campaign Finance Institute report shows that the 141 corporate donors to next week’s Democratic National Convention have given $160 million in political contributions and spent $1.1 billion on federal lobbying since 2005. The 80 corporate donors to the Sept. 1-4 Republican National Convention have given $99.9 million dollars in contributions and spent $821.3 million on federal lobbying in that period.

An additional 48 corporations that have given to both conventions have spent $79.8 million in contributions and $567.3 million on federal lobbying, the report found.

The institute also noted that convention host committees are not required by law to disclose their benefactors.

“As their surrogates help the host committees raise more unlimited contributions for their political coronations, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have been talking rather vaguely about changing or reviewing the convention finance system,” the report concluded. “They have at least acknowledged a problem that the FEC ignores.”

But the institute rapped both candidates for not proposing ways to “end all unlimited contributions for national party conventions” and “require the parties to use only limited contributions to fund these biggest political ads of the presidential election.”

The Democratic convention sponsor list includes Texas-based corporations Anadarko Petroleum, AT&T Inc., Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., ConocoPhillips, EDS Corp., Lennox International and Waste Management Inc.

AT&T, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., and Waste Management Inc. also have contributed to the GOP convention.

Florida-based Office Depot has contributed to the GOP convention.

Georgia-based AFLAC Inc. and Coca-Cola have given to both conventions. Southern Co. has donated to the Democratic convention. Sandy Springs-based UPS has given only to the GOP convention.

Ohio-based Kroger Co., Forest City Enterprises and Key Corp. have donated to the Democratic convention.