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The Money Rolls In

Posted on April 5, 2007April 5, 2007 by Staff

By Chris Fitzsimon

The 2008 political season is somehow already upon us, whether we are ready for it or not. Virtually every day brings news from the presidential race and candidates are now announcing for governor and other statewide offices. There is already talk in political circles about the 2008 legislative races, even though the 2007 session is just two months old.

By now the conversation is familiar and has little to do with issues facing the state and nation. The New York Times reports this week that Sen. Hillary Clinton has raised $26 million in the first three months of the year, while former Sen. John Edwards has raised $14 million. Sen. Barack Obama has yet to release his fundraising totals, prompting national pundits to speculate that it could be a surprise, whatever that is.


The News and Observer lead story Sunday detailed the campaign contributions that State Treasurer Richard Moore received from lawyers in firms that make money on the legal aspects of issuing bonds that Moore’s office controls.

Moore is an all-but-certain candidate for governor in 2008, and he denies there is any connection between his contributions and what the News and Observer calls “steering” the bond work to law firms that give money to his campaign. Moore points out in the story that it’s legal to take money from the firms, and that’s true.

The report includes one especially disturbing anecdote. The director of the Housing Finance Agency, Bob Kucab, says Moore’s former deputy chief of staff and political operative told him to stop using a law firm in New York and begin working with a Raleigh firm with ties to Moore.

No one is alleging that Moore broke the law, but it is not the first time that folks have raised questions about the relationship between his donors and state business. News accounts earlier this year about the ties between Moore’s contributors and companies that manage the state’s pension fund prompted a fierce response from Moore political consultant Jay Reiff.

Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue will be Moore’s chief opponent in the Democratic primary for governor and after Perdue’s political staff emailed the stories about Moore to supporters, Reiff responded with a stinging email about Perdue’s fundraising.

It is all about the money. Republican Sen. Fred Smith has already formally announced his candidacy for governor and Monday released his first television commercial, the message clearly being that he has the resources to wage a serious campaign. The news accounts also always point out that one of Smith’s likely opponents is Bill Graham, a wealthy Salisbury lawyer willing to spend millions of his own money on the race.

The lesson from all the absurdly early 2008 political jockeying is that money is even more important in campaigns than it was during the last election. Candidates are judged by how much money they can raise and attacked by their opponents for whom they raise it from.

It is happening in the General Assembly too. The realtors are fighting proposals to allow counties to impose a real estate transfer tax to pay for schools and other services. The realtors have launched an ad campaign to stop it, but it is also not lost on lawmakers that the realtors donated more than $600,000 to legislative candidates in 2006, more than any other PAC in the state.

It simply goes on and on. Money determines who is a credible candidate, locking people out who do not have the ability to raise millions or access to private wealth of their own. It is clearly a factor in legislative policy debates, whether legislators want to admit it or not.

When it is all totaled up, legislative candidates will have spent more than $30 million last year and not much of it came from people who get paid by the hour and are worried about making ends meet. Big money controls our elections and increasingly big money threatens to control our policy debates.

A brief look at the headlines proves that. The 2008 campaign does need to be about money, but not how much each candidate has raised. Instead we need an honest debate about how to give our elections back to all the people, not just the ones writing the biggest checks.

Chris Fitzsimon is the director of N.C. Policy Watch.

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