Labor & Employment Law

Our Votes Versus Corporate Cash Can Decide Election

By Mike Hall

A week from today we?ll have a chance to counter the hundreds of millions of dollars of secret corporate campaign cash that is blowing campaign spending records through the roof this election season.

Vote. Get your family to vote, your friends, your neighbors and your co-workers to vote. Vote for the candidates who won?t privatize Social Security, phase out Medicare, cut the minimum wage, ship jobs overseas cripple Wall Street reform and repeal health care. If you haven?t already joined Labor 2010, click here to volunteer for this last week’s get out the vote drive.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations could make unlimited campaign contributions, corporate money has been flowing to the Chamber of Commerce, and a host of front groups with extremist agendas. Under tax and campaign finance laws, most such groups don’t have to disclose their donors until after the election.

That money is filling the war chest of  right-wing, fringe groups like Karl Rove?s American Crossroads that yesterday announced it  was dropping $3 million (ontop of the tens of millions of dollars already spent) into an ad blitz for just a dozen House races. The National Right to Work Committee just launched a slime campaign against Rep. Joe Sestak (D) running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.

Click here for more on these secretly funded groups.

Over the weekend President Obama said these ?phony front groups?

funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads all across the country distorting the records of Democrats.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is nearing the end of its $75 million political ad campaign to put anti-worker, corporate board-room friendly candidates in control of Congress.  The business group likes to portray itself as a mainstream voice of business big and small, financed by contributions from more than 300,000 businesses?96 percent of which are small businesses?supposedly.

But as a recent The New York Times article and a series of reports from Think Progress make clear, it?s not Mom and Pop?s print shop or laundry that?s fueling its record breaking election spending and other pro-business lobbying blitzes for the same candidates with the same extreme agendas backed by the newly created front groups. It is tens and tens of millions of dollars in non-reportable contributions from giant corporations footing that bill.

Because the Chamber is not required to report corporate donations, it doesn?t. But using corporate tax records and other public documents, the Times reports:

These records show that while the Chamber boasts of representing more than 3 million businesses, and having approximately 300,000 members, nearly half of its $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors. Many of those large donations coincided with lobbying or political campaigns that potentially affected the donors.

Those big-time donors include Goldman Sachs, Edward Jones, Chevron Texaco and Aegon, a multi-national insurance company based in the Netherlands. Recently Fox News tossed a $1 million contribution to the Chambers? political war chest.

The Times reviewed 70 Chamber-produced ads so far this Fall and found that 93 percent are aimed on the midterm elections and either support Republican candidates or criticize their opponents.

And the pace of spending has been relentless. In just a single week this month, the Chamber spent $10 million on Senate races in nine states and two dozen House races, a fraction of the $50 million to $75 million it said it intends to spend over all this season. In the 2008 election cycle, it spent $33.5 million.

Outside the election battle, Dow Chemical sent $1.7 million the chamber this past year in dues and lobbying contributions same time the Chamber was mounting a lobbying campaign against a bill to require chemical plants to take stronger measures against  attack, according to  the Times.

In the same vein, the Times reports:

Prudential Financial?s $2 million donation last year coincided with a Chamber lobbying effort against elements of the financial regulation bill in Congress.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 26, 2010 (boomark / email).