SENTIENT TIMES February/March 2004

The Buying of the President 2004

Interview with Charles Lewis
By Amy Goodman

“If I’m a voter watching someone run for president, I want to know who their patrons are. I want to know who is behind them. I want to know who their friends are and who they’re going to reward when they get into power. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, we have a commercial democracy, a pay to play process, where everyone has alliances with vested interests. Whether it’s business or labor or whatever the groups are. One of the ways to find out is to “watch what they do, not what they say.” Ignore the ads and the speeches. See who is behind these guys and you will learn a lot real fast. I think that’s relevant data.”

Charles Lewis, executive director of the nonpartisan Center of the Public Integrity explains how the process of choosing a president has moved from the voting booth to the auction block in a study released last January by the Center for Public Integrity, and published as the book “The Buying of the President 2004: Who’s Really Bankrolling Bush and his Democratic Challengers and What They Expect in Return.” This interview aired on January 9, 2004 on Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the US.

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I want to start going back one election: McCain versus Bush. You talk extensively about this and it’s particularly interesting since McCain is also known as being one-half of the McCain-Feingold Bill, that deals with campaign finance. But talk about President Bush’s rise to power, and his contributors.

Well, you know, this is a story just in another stratosphere. We have never seen anything like this. This is a fellow [Bush]who runs for president in ’99, had been an elected official for five or six years in the United States, and he almost three times more than any presidential candidate in US history. Why? How? He had an extensive bundling network involving hundreds and even thousands of people who not only would give checks—the Pioneers would have to raise at least $100,000—but the insidious part of the Pioneer thing is that every check would be numbered so every industry would get credit for the cash. And new documents that have come out show letters where they want to make sure they get credit. Now, why do they want credit? Gosh, I wonder. But anyway, so he gets the money. He starts to rise. But then a stunning thing happens. McCain beats him in New Hampshire. No one saw that one coming, including Karl Rove, by the way. McCain wins by 19 points. It was not even close. They go into South Carolina as the next primary in 2000, and the entire Republican establishment and moneyed interest all coalesce into South Carolina. The head of the Team 100 said, if you want to see soft money continue in American politics, you better get off your duff and get out there.

So, the reason I focused heavily on South Carolina is the unaccountability of what happened. McCain was mugged. Through emails and leaflet drops and phone banking and all kinds of slightly under the radar, for the media, stuff. McCain was outspent by five to one at least by Bush and another millions and millions of dollars spent by a half a dozen to a dozen, quote, unquote, “independent groups,” all of whom seemed to like George Bush, and basically smeared him. I mean, said that his wife was a drug addict and that they had a black baby and just the most spurious stuff that you can imagine to try to upset South Carolina voters. At the end of the day, Bush wins, and they think “the reformer.” He had a phrase, “the reformer with results,” they felt that the reformer was actually Bush, because they had seen all of these ads about being a “reformer with results.” Bush had never reformed anything regarding politics in Texas, and was in fact against campaign finance reform. The facts and the truth were rendered irrelevant. He had political laryngitis in his career until that moment. And his proposal, it was a five-page proposal like a day before the debate, was a non-existent proposal.

You also talk there, and when talking about the Pioneers (the name of the Bush campaign for the highest contributors), about the significance of Enron and when it came to South Carolina, the allegation that—and this is all too common in politics—the companies making hidden contributions by putting campaign campaigners on their payroll for a particular candidate.

Ralph Reed, who lives in Georgia and has a company called Century Strategies contacted hundreds of thousands of voters. Rick Burke of the New York Times did a story that Enron had Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, on their payroll and they did not want the public or the media to know that this right-wing conservative, who is inflammatory in some circles in the US, was on the Bush payroll, so they put him on the Enron payroll as a lobbyist. Now of course Rove and Reed hotly denied it, but it was on page one of the New York Times. What’s particularly frustrating is what happened with this under the radar spurious stuff against McCain happens two years later with Max Cleland, a guy who, as McCain put it, left three limbs on the battlefield. They had ads comparing him with, picturing him with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and questioning his patriotism. This was all done by Ralph Reed and others, outside groups that were not part of the party officially, and not part of the campaign against Cleland in that case. So, I mean what I’m interested in is what’s happening to American politics? We don’t know who’s out there doing anything. It’s very hard to track these people.

You say that there was a very systematic approach to raising money with the Pioneers. Everything, the marking of the checks, the credit going to the industry. Where are those records?

That’s the other part. They can’t account for $60 million that they raised. They can’t quite produce those records. I made a joke in the book and said the excuse they have given in depositions is like “the dog ate my homework.” Under oath, the head of the Pioneers and all of these people said, “well, gosh, we cannot find these records.”

They don’t legally have to hand over the information about who was contributing money?

They have to hand over—the contributors themselves are disclosed but how you got there, and what you did, in this instance, this is a discovery thing, in a legal case. And now that the case has been decided by the Supreme Court, I’m sure all of these things will be rendered moot, so we’ll probably never know, at least any time soon that I can see. They’re essentially stonewalling or saying they don’t have it.

A lot of people will remember President Clinton and the Lincoln bedroom for sale or rent, for reservation overnight to the highest donors. You talk about governor Bush in Texas. Before he was president and his own little White House there. And who got to sleep over.

Bush had about 60 big funders sleep over. There’s something that the national media and the public don’t fully appreciate. Bush was planning to run for two or three years. Was flying people in to Texas to tutor him. Was bringing in funders to gear up the campaign and planning the Pioneer system. The funders were sleeping overnight in the governor’s mansion. What’s deceptive about that is when he announced his candidacy in March of 1999, he burst out and within three months raises $37 million. Which at that point had never happened in American politics. So, all of the other Republicans and the media all gushed, my God, he’s so popular, everyone is swarming to him. He clearly, as far as I can tell, had been laying the groundwork for two years. When did you start announcing your campaign and when did it officially begin? Is it the day that you file your papers or the day you start collecting checks? There was clearly a lot of orchestration going on here that’s not been fully laid out.

Where is the biggest money for Bush coming from?

It’s coming from the financial sector, as noted in the New York Times last January. Six out of ten of his top career patrons are from the financial district. But the issue with Bush is that he is an incumbent president. He’s obviously friendly to the business community. And he’s gone from $67 million that he raised in 1999 as a challenger to $130 million four years later. So, he’s expanding his financial base, and clearly, there are companies and industries all over America that are very happy with Mr. Bush and his policies. And so it’s not just the financial sector, obviously. It’s from the mining companies, the pharmaceutical industry. Back in 1992, the pharmaceutical companies, the richest and most profitable industry in America gave evenly to both parties. Now they give between 80% and 90% to the Republicans because for the first time in a half century, the Republicans control the entire Federal Government. So, money is following power, which frequently happens when you track money in a substantial way. Because it’s not just Bush in the White House, it’s across the board, these companies now see this is a spectacular moment for them, a bonanza. They’re not only giving them money, they’re writing the Bills, that’s what’s happening.

Not in their wildest dreams did the mining industry imagine that a kindred soul, hell, one of their own lobbyists would become chair of the Republican Party.

That’s right. Mark Roscoe was a mining lobbyist. He is now a lobbyist helping companies get Homeland Security. So, the corporate community has embraced this administration. That’s probably not news to anyone, but what we do is show how they have embraced it, how much money each sector has provided. We get into a lot of detail about who got what, what policies have changed. Obviously, the environment and a lot of things have changed. My favorite part about the Bush chapter is the Cheney letter.

We did 200 Freedom of Information Act requests, which is a record for us at the Center. We do them occasionally, but never like that. We found a letter that Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton sent to Vice President Al Gore. So, right off the bat, that’s an unusual letter to find. The letter urged the Vice President to relax, or eliminate, a proposed policy to increase environmental regulation, essentially, regarding clean air and other matters. Cheney complained about the impact that this legislative initiative or regulatory initiative would have on his industry or his company. He closed the letter saying, whatever you do, it should be in a clear and open debate in the public.

This obviously is fascinating for several reasons. From an environmental standpoint looking at what happened under Bush-Cheney in the first three years with the environment. It shows what everyone has suspected. You have two people from the oil industry with basic hostility towards most of the environmental standards in this country. And, of course, they’re getting huge amounts of money from all of the industries. The polluters and the mining industries and all of those people. So, that letter kind of confirms if you had any doubt where he’s coming from, it’s in black and white on his own stationery. The real delicious irony, of course, is that Cheney wanted a clear and open debate back then, but he didn’t want any of his meetings with energy executives in America who secretly met with him to plan energy policies, on the public record. He has gone to court to prevent any access to information about just who was in the meetings. The letter is a snapshot in many ways for all of the things that I have been hearing and reading and noticing the last three years. We have the letter up on our site.

Let’s look at who is funding democrats right now, beginning with Wesley Clark.

We didn’t find any career patrons, he announced September 17th and we had already turned in the manuscript. He has since raised $13 million. The most interesting thing about Clark that we found is that he was a registered lobbyist for a company called Axiom, trying to get government contracts at the time he announced his candidacy. While he was an analyst on CNN, and during the Iraq war, he was trying to get Homeland Security and airport security and all kinds of other government contracts, and reportedly met with Dick Cheney in 2001 and 2002 on behalf of Axiom. On one hand he is creating a leadership committee to run for president, and simultaneously, he is on the air as an expert retired general. The other part is he is doing what many generals do, cashing in and helping a company get contracts. It’s a part that’s not in the resume ads right now in Iowa.

Howard Dean?

All the Democratic numbers are approximately, well, a tenth of Bush’s numbers, but particularly so in Vermont. Dean’s received money from some of the telecom companies, but the most interesting thing we found about him was he assisted the utility industry during a utility deregulation in Vermont in a way that infuriated many, many rate payers and may saddle them with hundreds of millions of dollars in higher rates. And one of his chief of staff went to work as a lobbyist and is a top person for the leading utility. That’s not something that you see in the ads, either. It’s just interesting. He also has had an issue about his gubernatorial papers being opened up. In 11 years he did not open any, and did not have disclosure for himself and his own assets which are nearly $4 million, or any state legislator and his lieutenant governor. Vermont has the worst disclosure in America. Vermont and two others have no disclosure for personal assets of their senior folks. Dean not only did not try to improve, reform, or change it, he did not endorse legislative initiatives to try to reform it.

Certainly the campaign changes as someone becomes as successful as Dean has become, starting on the internet, getting the small amounts of money and then when the establishment sees that he is surging ahead, a whole new group starts to give money. What has been the transformation of that campaign? How is the nature of where the money comes from changed?

The nature is that a lot of big companies that maybe have never even visited Vermont are giving tons of money, and there are telecom companies, there’s AOL Time-Warner. Anyway, a lot of them are embracing Dean now in the flooding of the zone, so to speak, with their cash. We have tracked his numbers in the first six months of the year, and we now have the third quarter numbers up on the site. But we are going to see more of this. Howard Dean’s campaign staff was the third highest donor, that shows how anemic his numbers are. The third highest patron through June was $15,000. AOL Time-Warner is the top donor and Microsoft is coming in, and Goldman Sachs and IBM and you have union support, united food and commercial workers. But what you will see now is more. Now that he’s up to $40 million, the numbers are going to get more corporate over time. It’s just inevitable, because they’re worried that he might actually be the nominee and some, in their way of thinking, some fluke may happen and he might actually become president. They better make sure they have an in with the next president. So you’re going to see money flow more and more to him.

John Edwards?

Nothing earthshaking to report, except that 22 of the top 25 career patrons are law firms. He has already been perceived as almost entirely having funding from the trial lawyers. The question for him all along was, could he expand his base beyond trial lawyers? There’s not substantial evidence that he has done that, to be honest.

What does trial lawyers mean? What interest does that represent?

Trial lawyers are the plaintiffs bar that brings litigation against, frequently, product liability litigation, or, powerful folks when there’s no other recourse. That’s one way at looking at trial lawyers. That’s not the way many people look at trial lawyers. That is what they do—they bring lawsuits. Some people feel there’s too many lawsuits. But that is a different thing to different people. What Edwards has done which is really interesting is he is unabashedly a trial lawyer. He doesn’t shy away from being one. In fact, he is proud that he is one. He uses the populist David and Goliath image of going into the courtroom against the suits as part of his message. And the question is if it didn’t resonate fully with Democratic voters, which is unclear, will it resonate with the rest of the nation? And no-one has ever done that. This is new territory, politically.

Senator John Kerry?

Kerry is an interesting guy with three terms in the Senate. What we found that I was interested in is the top patron is a law firm in Boston where his brother works. And they have given something like $222,000 over his senate career. That is one of the leading telecommunication firms in America. Kerry sits on a committee that has oversight over the telecom industry, but also the Federal Communication Commission that regulates the telecom industry. On a number of occasions, he has sort of done the bidding of certain companies that are represented by that firm, and we actually did a breakout type report on our website in the spring, and we elaborate further in the book about this relationship. It’s not the only other relationship. He has other patrons, but that was his top patron and that was something that sort of jumped out.

And Dennis Kucinich, the Congressman from Ohio?

Kucinich is the most quintessential Democratic candidate if you look at his donors and the perceptions we have as Americans of their donor base. I believe nine out of his top ten patrons are unions, and the other one is the trial lawyers association. There’s not much money there. But, you know, he has done things, obviously, to help labor and big surprise, because when you have that much concentration from nine of the top ten, you clearly, if there’s one labor candidate, pure labor candidate at the highest levels of your patron list, it’s Mr. Kucinich.

Senator Joseph Lieberman?

Senator Lieberman is a complex case because he’s sort of a new way Democrat. He has reached out aggressively throughout his career to the business community. So, he has funding mechanisms, a fund raising network outside his campaign committee, by the way, which we talk about in the book. Listen to his top donors—Citigroup, Hartford Financial, Chase Enterprises, Goldman Sachs Merrill Lynch, Liebman Brothers, Credit Suisse. Heavy, heavy financial folks from the New York-Connecticut area, and insurance interests which are important in Connecticut. He has helped a number of these companies. Remember, it was Lieberman who helped the accountants change their standards. We had an Enron scandal partly because no one was watching the store in terms of auditing. When Enron broke, Lieberman was shocked that we could have this scandal and how could this happen? Lieberman has been very helpful to these accounting companies to insurance companies. We have a specific instance also with biotech companies that he is close to, and again all of these relationships are very elaborately laid out. Basically what he did is take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the biotech industry and from several other companies, and he hired their top lobbyists on his staff. He then cosponsored bills that they wanted.

The Reverend Al Sharpton?

He is the most interesting and multi-textured in terms of things we found. Obviously, a controversial figure in lots of ways. Most interesting is the co-mingling of non-profit money with personal money. Strange things happening like records being required by the I.R.S. and there’s a fire and there’s no records provided. He’s the only candidate that’s been indicted multiple times. I mean, he is a very interesting guy. When you read it, it’s probably the most fun to read chapter in the book. You know, Sharpton is ahead of Kerry in the national polls. I don’t mean to make any aspersions about his level of candidacy. In terms of his background this is not what you would call a typical major candidate background in terms of scrapes with problems and issues.

What do you make of Ted Koppel’s questioning of Kucinich, Moseley-Braun and Sharpton saying, basically, asking if they’re running vanity campaigns? That defining the effectiveness of their campaign is to do with the money that they have raised, and ABC pulling their reporters from their campaigns right after that debate.

I think that they are saying things in their campaign that no one else is saying, and I think it’s very important for their voices to be heard, and, you know, we do have a problem where we have candidates that are getting matching funds and they desperately need the matching funds, because they were never prolific fund-raisers in their careers, that are then discounted by the media as not being players because they don’t have money. And it’s sort of a vicious cycle here. Then we’ll discount them further and just have the moneyed folks who are considered important.

Yet as you said, even pulling behind moneyed folks in the national polls. The candidates we didn’t talk about were the two parties, the Republican and Democratic parties because their money is often some of these candidates’ money.

We have a big chapter on the parties, and we have the top 50 patrons for both parties. You know, Phillip Morris is the top patron for the Republican party. Three of the top ten for the Republican party are tobacco companies. Over on the Democratic side, labor unions are all over the top ten. I believe six of the top ten are labor unions. The number one donor for the Democratic party in the last ten years but probably the last 20 years is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSME, which has given $36 million to the 527’s, the secret mysterious organizations, not counting campaigns and parties. That doesn’t mean there’s not a strong corporate presence also with the Democratic Party, there is. But obviously not to the extent of the Republicans.

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Quid Pro Quo is Alive and Well in the U.S.

Visit www.campaignlegalcenter.org and go to “Internal Political Party Documents” for quid pro quo between the corporate contributors and the political contributees of both parties. There’s a letter from the Republican party chairman to the drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb requesting $250,000 with an enclosed copy of the GOP’s health care proposal, asking Bristol-Myers for any changes they’d like to make. The letter from the GOP states “We must keep the lines of communication open if we want to continue passing legislation that will benefit your industry.”

There’s a letter from the Republican Party’s finance chairman is to the chairman of Global Crossing, the telecommunications giant that, at the time, was pushing for federal approval of a merger (and who since then has been shown to have been cooking the books). Global Crossing had pledged $100,000 to the GOP, with a promise to raise it to $250,000 if the merger went through. It did, so, the finance chairman wrote back to the chairman of Global rossing “I am taking the liberty of enclosing an invoice for the additional upgrade.”

- Hightower Commentary, www.jimhightower.com

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