Obama’s campaign says they don’t accept money from lobbyists, and Clinton’s campaign does. Everyone seems to accept this assertion. Indeed, everyone seems to accept that it is significant and bold for the Obama campaign to have such a policy.
But I don’t understand what it means to accept money from a lobbyist. A conversation I just had with my friend Ryan:
John: so the obama campaign says they do not accept lobbyist contributions
John: it is my understanding that organizations/companies cannot contribute to a campaign anyway
John: how is it that lobbyist can contribute to a campaign?
John: from the human’s own pocket, in a grey-market way of getting a commercial money to a campaign?
John: or is there a separate system.
Ryan: hmm… I don’t know much about that
Ryan: I remember the whole “swift boat veterans for truth” thing from the last presidential election, where advertisements for bush were paid for by a third-party organization not affiliated with his campaign, so that is definitely one way to do it.
John: ah yes.
John: that is completely different though
John: those people were “independent”
John: lobbyist contributions go directly to a campaign, in a legal way
Ryan: Often companies will “encourage” employees to contribute to the company’s selected candidate
John: right
John: still not lobbyists.
John: (i think)
Then Ryan found this, which states:
PACs get their money not from the sponsoring group’s treasury, but from its members or employees. That arrangement neatly bypasses federal laws that prohibit direct contributions.
Which seems to suggest Ryan was right about the companies encouraging their employees. Is this the whole picture?
- All money-offering lobbyists represent PACs
- PAC members are easily identifiable
- Obama rejects money from PAC members
- Clinton accepts money from PAC members
According to this article, the answer is no:
While refusing money directly from federal lobbyists, who get their income from clients, Obama takes money from those clients.
[snip]
“If you cannot be completely pure, is it worth it to be partially pure? That seems to be debatable,” said political scientist Bruce Cain, director of the University of California Washington Center, based in the nation’s capital.
“We cannot say his policy is completely meaningless,” Cain said. “But it doesn’t insulate him from interests.”
I don’t know anything about the lobbying system — it seems that this article is saying “the lobbying system has many layers, and Obama is only opting out of contributions from the very first layer”.
The article mentions: “Obama still received 68% of his money from donations of $1,000 or more, compared with 86% for Clinton.” (this goes along with the NY Times quote I mentioned a few paragraps ago). I wish the article gave Obama more credit for running a very different campaign from Clinton, but I can see how one could say that the Obama campaign is being less than cut and dry with its “accepting money from lobbyists” language.
On the other hand– maybe the Obama campaign is doing something that no major campaign has done for decades? Is this the case? Does anyone out there know the answer?
