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December 21, 2006

Why Good People Break Campaign Finance Laws

The news that Oregon state Rep. Donna Nelson may find herself under criminal investigation for hiding thousands of dollars of contributions in her recent campaign does not surprise me – not because of anything related to Donna Nelson in particular, but rather to the fact that at least on the right in Oregon, there is little real appreciation of, or thought given to, the reasons for our campaign finance laws. They are often viewed in the same way we view speed limits – if you think no one is looking and it is expedient to ignore them (or if you can find a way around them), you will. Even good people on the right often seem to have a fairly lackadaisical attitude about campaign finance, and if those good people are, like Donna Nelson, a bit empty in the attic or easily influenced by less scrupulous members of the right-wing establishment, sneaky schemes like this can fly under their moral radar.

The complaint against Donna Nelson is that she signed a statement on October 1 stating she did not expect to raise or spend more than $2,000 on her campaign (even though she had $12,500 left in her campaign account from the 2004 election), but she had apparently collected and sat on thousands of dollars of contributions from various conservative PACs, some dated as early as July, which she then reported as having been received in October. Her story is that she didn't get around to going through her mail until then, so she did not know she had even received these contributions. I am a bit skeptical of her entire story because she had said she did not expect to have to run a tough campaign, and yet others knew better, witness a post by "sponge" on Cwech Blog on September 19, two weeks before her statement was filed: " You can hope Donna sits this one out, but she won't. She's sitting on a lot of money and will spend it liberally in a few weeks."

Donna Nelson claims she has very little help and that the reports take a lot of time. Having filed a good number of very lengthy and complex campaign finance reports, I find her argument that the difficulty and time-consuming nature of the reports was responsible for her failure to report these contributions to be ludicrous. Her report was only 18 pages long. A report of that length is pretty much a simple listing of names, addresses, occupations, and dollar amounts, as well as a listing of expenditures – which can be pretty much copied right out of a check register, and only a few items are listed on each page of the form. If it was too difficult, then we can only assume Donna Nelson is indeed the intellectual light-weight some have described her as being.

That said, by all accounts she is a nice person who cares about her constituents and works hard for them. As Ted Piccolo said back in October, "The biggest rub on Rep. Nelson is that she is kinda quirky. Big deal, we all have our quirks and at least hers are not illegal." Well, maybe they are, but this gets to my point. It is really easy in the climate on the right (and perhaps the left, but I don't know) for even good people to miss the real purpose of campaign finance laws and thereby fail to see what the big deal is in breaking them a little here and there.

Campaign reporting laws exist because the public wants to know who is supporting candidates and measures. This is, after all, government by the people and for the people. If the people are being asked to make a sound decision, they need complete information. Too many politicians do not respect the fact that the people are the governors. They want to keep information from the people and manipulate the people so as to achieve their own ends, which may not be in the best interests of the people.

But I am not so sure that is what happened in Donna Nelson's case. My bet is this never even occurred to her (though a conscious disrespect of the will of the people may well have motivated her advisers). She probably just thought she was going to pull off a clever maneuver and outwit her opponent. The problem here is that the culture within the political system, at least on the right, is so focused on strategy and the game of winning elections and so disassociated with the people that otherwise good and decent people will break campaign finance laws with no more of a thought than they would give to keeping a wary eye out for a police officer while occasionally driving too fast.

Posted by Becky at December 21, 2006 12:19 PM