The problem with "pass-through" donations

What are inter-campaign fund transfers, and what’s wrong with them?

I’m so glad you asked. Consider this:

Political candidates in Georgia, even those with no opposition, may collect campaign cash and give it to other candidates or political causes. The practice is most prevalent among powerful incumbents, who attract the lion’s share of special-interest money. These pass-through donations have the effect — many would say the intent — of consolidating the incumbents’ power.

Several dozen Georgia legislators — with the support of the advocacy group Common Cause Georgia — want to change all that. House Bill 920, introduced in January, would have capped inter-campaign transfers so a candidate could donate no more than $10,000 per election cycle. Some 22 Republican lawmakers, 18 Democrats and an independent co-signed HB 920, but it never even got a committee hearing.

About 20 states prohibit or severely restrict such transfers. But in Georgia, House Speaker David Ralston, insisting campaign finance was not a factor in the scandal that brought him to power, wouldn’t address the issue in his 2010 ethics bill.

A $10,000 cap might have drastically altered the course of Georgia politics. In 2005, Republicans who took over the Georgia House began collecting enormous amounts of campaign contributions from lobbyists, businesses and other special interests wanting to get cozy with the new power structure.

The GOP’s House leadership — Speaker Glenn Richardson, Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter and Majority Leader Jerry Keen — would have been limited to giving $30,000 each — or $90,000 total — to other campaigns since then. Without a limit, they gave $1.4 million to GOP candidates and causes. Coincidentally or not, they held on to their leadership jobs.

Republicans did not invent this practice. In 2002, then-Reps. Terry Coleman and Larry Walker gave $300,000 to Democratic incumbents and the state party as they were gathering incumbents’ support to become the next speaker of the House. Coleman, who gave $37,000 more than Walker, won.

Walker made no pretense that the donations and his campaign for speaker were unrelated. “I don’t know if it helped me, frankly,” he told the AJC at the time. “But I think if I had not done it, it would have hurt me.”

Long before that, says 30-year lawmaker George Hooks, powerful Democrats were doing the same thing.

“I have seen various and sundry officeholders hold fund-raisers and do things for fund-raising,” said Hooks, a Democratic senator from Americus. “Then they will disburse it in order that they have others beholden to them.

“I don’t feel like it is right to do that. ... I don’t like to see people just turn around and give it to folks willy-nilly.”

Hooks, by the way, has $290,000 in his campaign’s bank account and no contested election to spend it on. He’s given $2,500 in campaign funds to other candidates since 2006 but eight times that much to charity.

Next year, Rep. Wendell Willard (R-Sandy Springs) plans to push again for a cap on inter-campaign transfers and other ethics reforms. To set the table, Common Cause is asking all candidates for state office whether they back limits on inter-campaign transfers and gifts from lobbyists.

Gubernatorial hopefuls Roy Barnes, Nathan Deal and Karen Handel have all committed to both reforms, but the real question is whether the Legislature will give them the opportunity to sign a bill imposing such limits.

Common Cause says it has received no word yet from key legislative leaders: Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams.

And what about Ralston?