Houston Chronicle: The first trickle In Texas, a campaign ad precedes a coming flood of corporate cash

Houston Chronicle
The first trickle
In Texas, a campaign ad precedes a coming flood of corporate cash
Editorial
March 27, 2010

The U.S. Supreme Court shook American politics to the core with a 5-4 ruling in January freeing up corporations and other groups to independently spend as much cash as their directors wish in support of chosen candidates.

The decision, Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission, overturned legal precedent and federal and state campaign laws in declaring that corporations, labor unions and trade associations, among others, have the same free speech rights as individuals to participate in the electoral process. While statutes prohibiting direct contributions by those groups to candidates and their campaigns remain intact for now, organizations are free to advertise to their hearts’ content on behalf of their favorites.

Critics, including the high court liberal minority, decried the decision and predicted that the U.S. electoral process will soon be distorted by the injection of millions of dollars in corporate cash that will drown out individual voices and influence outcomes.

The court majority argued that corporations would be restrained by their economic interests from going overboard in backing candidates.

Although the fall campaigns are still months away, Texas has already gotten a taste of the new brand of politicking. As reported by the Texas Tribune, the first corporate ads to run under the new court guidelines surfaced in a combative Republican primary for state representative in the East Texas District 11 that sprawls from Crockett to Carthage.

The incumbent, Chuck Hopson, switched parties from Democrat to Republican last November and began his re-election effort in the March GOP primary against two opponents.

Enter Larry Durrett, the president of a real estate company, KDR Development Inc., and a franchise restaurant business in the district. Durrett had a motive for injecting his corporate clout into the state rep contest that the Supreme Court majority never envisioned: revenge. Durrett had been defeated in his run for the seat in 2006 when Hopson was a Democrat.

So Durrett dipped into his KDR coffers to pay for attack ads that ran in three area newspapers, painting Hopson as a fake conservative and exhorting district Republicans to vote for one of his opponents. They included the tag “Political advertisement paid for by KDR Development Inc.” Before the Supreme Court ruling, the ads would have violated Texas law.

Since then, the Texas Election Commission has issued a position statement sanctioning unlimited political expenditures by corporations. They cannot be coordinated with candidate campaigns, but joint efforts would be difficult to prove. The content of Durrett’s ads are notably similar to campaign pieces by Hopson’s opponents.

Durrett told the Tribune the reason he used his corporate funds was “you take the money out of the pocket that’s got some money in there.”

Perhaps because of the limited scope of the attack ads and incumbent Hopson’s deep roots in the district, he had little trouble in rolling up a 61 percent victory in the primary. But the incident demonstrates in a microcosm the unanticipated motives and potential problems involved in unleashing the corporate genie into state and federal elections.

Such groups already have the regulated power of participation through duly constituted political action committees. In the brave new world of post-Citizens United, multi-million-dollar corporate media blitzes directed against opponents for either personal or political reasons could become the norm.

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, both Democrats, are pushing legislation to limit the political damage done by the Citizens United ruling. New disclosure requirements would be placed on corporate contributions, with prohibitions on spending by corporations with government contracts or partial foreign ownership. Others have called for a statute to force corporate executives to get the approval of shareholders for any political activities.

Such measures might not stem the tide of campaign cash and influence unleashed by the court’s ill-considered decision, but at least observant citizens will be able to figure out the sources of the flood.