The 2014 political auction in North Carolina

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, October 14, 2014.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the heated battle between Senator Kay Hagan and state House Speaker Thom Tillis for the U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina has nothing to do with the positions or statements of either candidate or the sniping by their campaigns staffs or the outrageous social media banter that passes for political discourse these days.

What is most astonishing is the degree to which political pundits and interested observers seem to shrug their shoulders at the obscene amount of money being spent on the race, as much as 80 percent of it by out of state groups that don’t have to reveal their contributors.

Just this week came the news that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was planning to spend another $6 million on television ads for Tillis in the last three weeks of the campaign on top of the $3 million it had already planned to spend.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee started spending $9 million on commercials a few weeks ago and will be running ads until Election Day too.

There are announcements virtually every day by single issue groups on both sides about their latest media buy or web ad campaign. The ads have been running since last spring when the Koch-brothers- backed Americans for Prosperity started spending $8.3 million to criticize Hagan for her support of the Affordable Care Act.

The Senate Majority PAC led by Senator Harry Reid has spent $10 million supporting Hagan and attacking Tillis.

The ads are ubiquitous.  A recent story in the Los Angeles Time cited an analysis by the Kantar Media/CMAG and the Wesleyan Media Project that found that 62,000 ads have already aired in North Carolina and the frequency of the ads will only increase in the next three weeks.

The news stories about the latest millions spent attacking one candidate or the other are reported mostly in terms of the effect they will have on the race. Very few people seem to wonder if it’s a positive development that our current political system has evolved into a massively expensive battle between largely anonymous special interests.

And it’s not just in North Carolina of course and it is not just in Senate races either. The National Institute on Money in State Politics says that spending in the Florida gubernatorial election this year may reach $150 million.

Outside money is pouring into state legislative and judicial elections across the country and in North Carolina too.  That used to be a campaign issue itself, pointing out when your opponent was being bankrolled by out of state interests.

Now it seems more like an accepted practice as the money chase reaches new heights.

And the money almost always comes with strings, sometimes you can see them and sometimes you can’t. Mother Jones reported recently that executives at one hedge fund under federal investigation had given several million dollars to congressional campaigns in both political parties.  That seems a long way from one person, one vote.

The Supreme Court is partially to blame for the big money drowning our democracy with decisions that remove contribution limits and allow corporate money to influence elections directly.

Congress and state legislatures have refused to pass tough disclosure laws to at least let people know who is behind all the millions manipulating our democratic process.

The new conservative majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly ended promising public financing programs for judicial candidates and people running for several statewide offices.

Welfare for politicians they like to call it, apparently happier if elected officials are beholden to the shady hedge fund managers and other shadowy special interests that offer money with strings attached instead of members of the public the politicians are supposed to represent after they are elected.

None of this is to say that reform groups aren’t working hard to diminish the influence of big money. They are, in North Carolina and elsewhere.

But they need help and the first step is for more of us to stop taking it for granted that our political system has to be run by $10 million dollar checks from groups we’ve barely heard of.

That may help somebody get elected and you can call it naпve if you want to, but it’s not the way our democracy is supposed to work.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/10/14/the-2014-political-auction-in-north-carolina/