State Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon has divided and harmed the Colorado Democratic Party by meddling in Southeast Denver's Democratic primary elections this year.
Gordon seems to have anointed himself kingmaker, reaching out to handpick the successor to his soon to be vacated Senate District 35 seat, a post he is leaving because of term limits.
But the unsuccessful candidate for Secretary of State didn't stop with the Senate. Gordon has chosen to stick his nose into the Democratic primary battles for House Districts 6 and 9, also in Southeast Denver.
While Gordon certainly has the right to endorse candidates for the August 12 primary, it might have been classier and less divisive to sit on the sidelines this time out.
What is especially unfortunate about Gordon's interference is the way he did it -- by falsely impugning the integrity of the three candidates who have incurred his disfavor, a particularly sleazy tactic, a page right out of Karl Rove's playbook.
Gordon is playing the latest political game of demonizing the term "PAC money." Some political operatives, Gordon among them, are trying to convince the voting public that any candidate who accepts PAC money is in the pocket of special interests.
Nothing could be further from the truth. A simple examination of political campaign contribution records reveals just how weak his argument really is.
The victims of Gordon's political slander at State Rep. Alice Borodkin, Joe Miklosi, and Liz Adams, who are seeking the Democratic Party nominations for Senate District 35 and House Districts 9 and 6, respectively.
Gordon has wrongly painted the trio with his low-integrity-potential-corruption paintbrush because they accept contributions from PACs.
Here's how Senate Majority Leader did it:
In one of his public emails, Gordon mentioned that the three candidates he endorsed -- Joyce Foster (SD35), Paul Rosenthal (HD9) and Lois Court (HD6) -- refused to take PAC money.
He said it took "courage and conviction to forego contributions from PACs," and then concluded that the candidates who did not accept the PAC money would "have an easier time representing the people who live in their district, rather than special interests." Rosenthal even hung a copy of Gordon's pronouncement, with key words highlighted, on my front door. Plus he mailed another version out to Democratic voters.
The clear implication was that the candidates who refused PAC money would better represent the district than those who accepted PAC money.
To quote, Jimmy Durante, "baloney!"
Just What Are PACs Anyway?
While you hear a lot of talk about PAC money, most voters barely understand what the term really means.
"PAC money" describes contributions made to candidates by Political Action Committees, or PACs, which are formed because direct political contributions from labor unions and corporations are illegal.
PACs allow such diverse groups as corporate executives, labor union members, or the Sons of Norway, to pool their funds and contribute to candidates who support their views.
Within certain restrictions, PACs can collect as much money as they want, but they can only give a limited amount of money to candidates. In Colorado, PACs are allowed to contribute a maximum of $400 per political candidate per election.
And What About Non-PAC Contributions?
In contrast, non-PAC contributions are often piled up into huge political war chests.
Hundreds or even thousands of individual, non-PAC political contributions are often collected by "bundlers" who deliver thick stacks of contribution checks to political candidates.
Each family member -- including minors -- can "contribute" up to the maximum. For example, say a local commercial real estate mogul in Denver and his wife have three children, aged 14 years, 7 years and 2 months. A bundler could collect up to $400 from each member of that family -- a total of $2,000 -- under Colorado law. All that money can go to a single candidate.
I'm sure that 2-month old infant will sleep well knowing his or her campaign money is being well spent.
Take the example to the next logical step. Say the bundler works his or her way through just a single commercial real estate company, collecting $400 contributions from all the family members of all the company's executives. The potential is thousands and thousands of dollars in political campaign contributions from a single company and, tens of thousands of dollars from a single industry group -- compared to the $400 limitation imposed on any PAC, no matter how big it is.
Which candidate is more likely to be influenced, then, by special interest money -- the one who may have received tens of thousands of dollars from the real estate industry, or the one who received a hundred bucks from some PAC?
The fact is, you can't predict who would be more influenced based on the pattern of contributions.
This is the question for voters to decide -- not Ken Gordon as he's skating out of office.
PAC Contributions Do Have Tangible Benefits
PACs allow groups with common interests to contribute to candidates who support their positions on certain issues. There is nothing particularly wrong with that.
By examining summaries of public campaign contribution records, it's easy to spot the PACs that have contributed to each candidate. Citizens can then compare those contributions against the politician's voting record and make their own decisions as to whether undue influence was involved.
Because some employers have retaliated against employees for their political beliefs, employees fearing employer sanctions can contribute anonymously to PACs. While this can obscure transparency at one level -- the name of the individual contributor -- the citizen-voter can still easily determine which PAC made the contribution. In a perfect world, all contributions would be public.
Anti-PAC Arguments Are Weak
The theory behind the anti-PAC money concept is that if all the contributions come only from individuals, or from the government itself in the case of public financing, candidates are less susceptible to pressure from the interest groups the PACs represent.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the kind of PAC contributions we find in Colorado lead to significant corruption or undue influence. As a result, political operatives like Gordon (he used to accept PAC contributions) who now rail against PAC money paint all candidates who accept PAC funds as corrupt, when just the opposite is true.
The vast majority of politicians in Colorado and across the nation who accept PAC money are not corrupt.
This isn't to say that special interest groups haven't corrupted or unduly influenced politicians. But many of the recent major political corruption scandals have involved bundlers, kickbacks and lucrative lobbying jobs after politicians leave office -- not PACs.
In the world of politics, however, impression becomes reality whether or not it is based in truth, and Gordon seemed to bank on that as he attempted to influence the primary elections in Southeast Denver.
The Anti-PAC Money Theory Is Flawed
Gordon's assertions involve a leap of logic that cannot be sustained by the public campaign contribution records. An examination of the Borodkin-Foster primary contest in Senate District 35 is a prime example.
Colorado campaign contribution records, found at the Secretary of State's website, are listed at two levels -- summary reports and more detailed reports.
For the candidate accepting PAC funds, Borodkin, identifying where the money came from is simple and easy. The PAC contributions -- many of them below the $400 maximum -- are clearly listed. In Bordkin's case, PAC contributions come from such diverse interests as biotech, teachers, labor unions and public utilities.
The records of the non-PAC candidate, Foster, are a little more obscure. It's not her fault, but the way the records are designed.
The summary reports list only the names and addresses of individual contributors and their contribution amounts. There is no indication which industries, if any, might employ them. That information is found only by going down one more level and digging through the individual contribution reports.
Even these more detailed records are often incomplete, but many contributors do list where they work. A cursory examination of those records show many contributions coming from the real estate investment community, either directly from employees or from family members.
Does this mean Foster will simply be a rubber stamp for real estate and investment interests?
Certainly not.
Gordon Misses the Mark
Gordon has erroneously focused only on the source of the funds -- PAC or non-PAC -- and doesn't even bother with the amounts of money involved or who employs the individual contributors.
And accepting PAC contributions certainly doesn't guarantee amassing a huge campaign war chest.
For example, by the end of July 2008, non-PAC Foster had raised more than $109,000 for her Senate primary race. In contrast, Borodkin had raised just under $43,000 through individual and PAC contributions. In House District 6, non-PAC candidate Cort had raised nearly $66,000 while PAC candidate Adams had raised just under $61,000. Only in House District 9, did the PAC candidate outraise the non-PAC candidate -- just over $49,000 for Miklosi and just under $31,000 for Rosenthal.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to draw any meaningful conclusion about how any one of these six Democratic candidates would act in office based on whether or not they accepted PAC contributions.
And for Gordon to even imply that candidates who accept PAC money will be less responsive representatives and more susceptible to special interest influence is simply wrong and can't be supported by the facts.
He has done the candidates and the Democratic Party a great disservice.
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Longtime Southeast Denver writer and former journalist Richard J Schneider studies political science at the University of Colorado at Denver graduate school.