Special-interest cash eclipses hometown support in a hurry

The Georgia Dental Association was one of the largest contributors to state legislative candidates in 2012, doling out $283,700 in contributions. But the dentists chose carefully. Of 242 candidates to receive contributions from the association, 208 were incumbents and 22 sought open seats where there was no incumbent to support.

The association picked just 17 losers in the 2012 campaign — a 93 percent success rate. All but four of the losing candidates were incumbent legislators running to retain their seats.

Similarly the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association gave to 163 candidates, 160 of whom were either incumbents or running for an open seat.

New candidates for the General Assembly often run as outsiders challenging the status quo.

But the winners become instant insiders, absorbed by the very system they ran against.

An analysis of campaign contributions by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution finds that first-time legislative candidates rely on money from friends and neighbors until they win their party primary. Even before they win the general election, fundraising shifts out of candidates’ home districts and into the hands of the professionals: the political action committees, the lobbyists and other special interests.

“I think it’s disgusting,” said Tom Bordeaux, a former Democratic legislator and current Savannah city councilman. “It teaches you your eighth-grade civics class is a lie,” he said. “Regardless of whether an individual is honest, a system fed with barrels of cash is corrupt, and the system is definitely corrupt.”

The AJC studied the campaign records of 38 lawmakers elected in 2010 and re-elected two years later and found the candidates received nearly half of their contributions from their own constituents leading up to their first party primary. After that, they were on the special interest gravy train, collecting more than three-quarters of campaign money from outside their districts, largely from PACs, lobbyists and other campaigns.

That fundamental shift away from home-district support tends to make special interests, and not constituents, more important to a lawmaker’s political future. The legislator’s greatest political asset is incumbency; the most effective way to remain the incumbent is to raise large sums of cash; the biggest sources of campaign cash are, you guessed it, not the folks back home.

Where did the money come from?

The transition from candidate, raising money locally, to incumbent, raising money from lobbyists and PACs, happens at light speed. And sometimes it happens so quickly even the candidates may not notice.

“Mine is pretty balanced,” said Rep. Valerie Clark, R-Lawrenceville, when told about the AJC’s findings.

She may think so, but since the 2010 primary, 95 percent of her fundraising has come from ZIP codes outside her Gwinnett County district. After she spent some time looking at her campaign filings, Clark, a former schoolteacher and principal, agreed.

Clark said she has local fundraisers, but they just do not raise as much as a fundraiser downtown.

“When I have a (local) fundraiser I very often don’t ask for money,” she said of her local events. “Sometimes I get $10 and $20 contributions from former colleagues.”

But you can’t spell impact without PAC. In the month after her 2010 primary, Clark received $2,500 from the state and local chapters of the Georgia Association of Educators, $500 from the state credit union PAC and $250 from the state chiropractors. Once she was the party’s nominee, she took in thousands more from Republican incumbents in the Legislature recycling their own special-interest contributions to expand both their party’s and their own political clout.

‘You’ve got to pick up the phone and call’

Sen. Hardie Davis, D-Augusta, said local officials are expected to raise money locally. After serving a few years in the House, Davis was elected to the Senate in 2010. He currently is running for mayor of Augusta.

“All politics are local and you’ve got to have broad support in your community,” he said. “The majority of my fundraising activity is in my community.”

Actually, about 67 percent of the money Davis raised to win a special election to the Senate in early 2010 came from outside his district. Since then, it’s been almost 80 percent. Davis’ large contributors include the state trial lawyers, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, Atlanta Gas Light and others.

Davis pointed out, correctly, that he is hardly unusual in soliciting money from large donors. In fact, it is a mark of success, he said.

“You develop a reputation for being a champion for business, of understanding the issues … as you increase your stature and seniority, you understand how important it is to fund raise and you make those phone calls,” he said. “You’ve got to pick up the phone and call. If you don’t ask, you are not going to get the support you need to be successful in public office. You’ve got to work at it.”

More money from St. Louis than Snellville

In leadership ranks, those imbalances become absurd. Some leaders of the General Assembly collect 95 percent and more of their campaign contributions from special interests, bringing in more money from outside the state than from within their own districts.

Sen. Don Balfour, R-Snellville, has raised $906,000 since the beginning of 2008, of which 1 percent came from inside his district. Indeed, Balfour has drawn more contributions from St. Louis than he has from Snellville voters.

House Majority Leader Larry O’Neal, R-Bonaire, raised 97.5 percent of his campaign cash from outside his district; records show that O’Neal has taken in far more from pharmaceutical companies than from his own constituents. House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, received 95 percent of her money from outside her district; Abrams received nearly as much from interests in Washington as from her own voters in east Atlanta.

The outside money enables special interests to legally finance seats for new legislators and then pay for their efforts to keep them.

Georgia ranks No. 50 among the states when it comes to the number of competitive elections to legislative seats, according to the National Institute for Money on State Politics, largely because incumbents can build such massive campaign accounts that they frighten off opponents. The institute considers a race non-competitive if the incumbent has no opponent or if one candidate raises more than twice as much money as his nearest challenger.

‘The state is becoming more like Washington’

Chuck Clay, a former Republican lawmaker-turned-lobbyist, said contributing to keep incumbents in power is good business.

“The state is becoming more like Washington,” he said. Business interests are “not going to wait until a crisis occurs to have friends at the state level. They are saying, ‘We are going to start investing in leadership, we are going to invest in who is in control.’ ”

Amy Wilson, a manicurist in Sugar Hill, gave Rep. Josh Clark, R-Buford, a $200 contribution during his initial 2010 run for office. Clark, seeking an open seat in a heavily Republican district, beat his primary opponent and was unopposed in the general election.

Wilson knows Clark personally and wanted to do what she could to help.

“I just know what kind of man he is and what his morals are,” she said. “I felt confident in having him take that seat.”

Prior to Clark’s primary, roughly half of his donations came from his district. After the primary, two-thirds came from outside interests, with large contributions from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the state physicians PAC, the Georgia Association of Realtors and others.

Wilson said she is not concerned the outside money will influence Clark. But generally she thinks it is good policy for politicians to look to their constituents for financial support.

“Those are the people they know. Those are the people they live around,” she said. “In the same sense that’s who they are going to be working for.”

‘They hear from PACS right away’

Thanks to legislative redistricting, most House and Senate districts lean heavily toward Republicans, with a smaller number packed for Democrats, the minority party in both chambers. Most of the Class of 2010 candidates were running for open seats vacated by politicians who were retiring or running for another office.

Those open seats often made for crowded party primary races, but whoever won their primary had a much clearer path to the Gold Dome. Nearly half had no opposition in the general election. Candidates in the AJC analysis started being treated like incumbents almost immediately, with PAC contributions emerging as the dominant feature of their fundraising.

“When they win the election, they hear from PACs and interest groups right away, the next morning. It turns around pretty quickly,” said Kerwin Swint, a political scientist at Kennesaw State University and a former campaign strategist.

In the week following the 2010 primary, an insurance industry PAC, chemical companies and others donated just under $20,000 to candidates in the AJC analysis despite the fact that none of them had ever held state office.

The National Institute on Money in State Politics study judged just 3 percent of the state’s legislative races “competitive” in 2010. Peter Quist, the institute’s research director, said with money playing such a large role in elections, knowing who is contributing can tell voters a lot about a candidate.

“It can say something about the candidate’s positions and it says something about who might have access to that candidate when in office,” Quist said. “Both are very important.”

‘You’re able to raise more money’

With districts carved out to protect them and mountains of cash at their disposal, incumbents have a decisive advantage. Sen. Balfour has had almost no serious opposition since winning the seat in 1992, although he had long-shot challengers the past few years.

“We’re getting to the point now where there are not many close districts. Most districts now are Republican districts or Democratic districts,” Balfour said. “Once the primary is done, you’re almost looked at as the incumbent, so you are able to raise more money from more sources.”

Like other lawmakers, Balfour said he holds local fundraisers. They just don’t raise many funds.

“When I do a local one, it’s neighbors, it’s people like that,” he said. “People like that don’t have a lot of money.”

Balfour was indicted recently on charges of illegally claiming legislative expense pay and double-billing the state and his private employer for the same expenses.

Last year, when questions about his expenses and his acceptance of trips, sports tickets and other favors from lobbyists were in the news, Balfour drew two Republican opponents in the GOP primary and a Democrat in the general election. All together, the three opponents raised $17,226 toward their campaigns, or about 2 percent of Balfour’s PAC-heavy warchest.

He beat them all handily.

‘Those dadgum signs. They are $200 apiece’

Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson, D-Tucker, said elected officials don’t like to bother voters with appeals for money when they can get those donations – in larger sums – elsewhere.

“That doesn’t mean they can’t (raise money in their district) if they want to,” he said. “It can be problematic.”

Former Rep. Judy Manning’s first campaign fundraiser was a wiener roast at $25 a head. It taught her an essential lesson in politics. “You had to have money to run a campaign,” she said.

Take, for instance, the larger lawn signs. “Those dadgum signs,” she said. “They are about $200 apiece, especially if you get three colors.”

Manning was elected to the State House in 1996 as a Marietta Republican and held the seat until last year when former Ron Paul organizer Charles Gregory upended her in the Republican primary. In that election, Manning raised $56,893, just 7 percent of which came from within her district.

“Unless you can tap some of those lobbyist types and get some real money you can’t compete,” she said. “I’m not saying it’s right.”

Henson said once the “community at the Capitol” gets to know a lawmaker, they make their decisions on whether to contribute.

“Often you’ll notice some of those people would be supported by one group and not the other,” he said.

So a lawmaker might get contributions from the auto dealers but not the trial lawyers. It’s based on familiarity, he said.

That means tapping into the network of campaign cash is tough for anyone who is not already in office.

“It’s very challenging for a primary opponent to get funding,” he said.

The social media ‘money bomb’

A political rarity, Gregory raised a fraction of Manning’s total, but beat her in part on the endorsement of local tea parties. Gregory also is part of a new breed of state politicians who are reaching out through social media to raise money.

In March, Gregory posted a “money bomb” alert on his Facebook page and on a Ron Paul forum soliciting small-donor contributions.

Henson said this kind of social media solicitation is common in national campaigns — the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 raised millions that way — and can open up new avenues for fund raising that do not involve industry PACs or other special interests.

“In legislative races you might see that more common in the future,” he said.

Bordeaux, who served 16 years in the Legislature, said the system would be better served if campaigns had more local support.

“The way it ought to be is that the hometown folks support the hometown guy and hand him some money to run,” he said. “Instead, what it has become is an industry- or business-inspired bankrolling of campaigns.”

When Bordeaux, a lawyer, was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he fought tort reform legislation. Of his campaigns during that period, he said, “I was financed by the trial lawyers. That was the horse I rode.”