Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Galbraith, a former senator from Windham County and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor.
[U]ntil this week, Vermont’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor was an entirely an honorable affair. Then, with five days to go before the primary, a new SuperPAC reported it was spending $120,000 on behalf of Sue Minter. The next day, Reid Hoffman, a Silicon Valley billionaire, reported that he was spending $220,000 on behalf of Matt Dunne. My competitors’ response to this money has changed my views of them, and not for the better. Dunne’s campaign may have stepped over the line to the illegal.
During my two terms in the Vermont Senate, I forced my colleagues to vote on my amendment to ban corporate campaign contributions and I did not always make myself popular. Federal law has prohibited corporate contributions to federal candidates since 1907 and even Texas prohibits them. (The Vermont Senate accepted the Galbraith amendment at one point before reconsidering and deleting it)
Corporate contributions are problematic for two reasons. First, the donor is inevitably an entity with business before the state. Second, individuals or businesses can evade the campaign finance limits by giving contributions individually as well as from each of the corporations that they control. Not only did I wage a legislative battle to ban these contributions but I have never accepted corporate money in any of my elections.
With my entry into the governor’s race, both Dunne and Minter decided to preempt a campaign issue by returning the corporate money that they had previously received. Dunne even ran ads praising himself as the first candidate to return corporate money, an example of a technically correct statement that conceals the truth. Both candidates denounced Citizens United and condemned the role of corporate money and SuperPACs in our politics.
I was therefore shocked on Wednesday to learn that a newly established SuperPAC was going to spend $120,000 on Minter’s behalf. The donors to the Minter SuperPAC include Vermont wind developers who had already given Minter’s campaign the maximum allowed by law. By using the SuperPAC, the developers got around the campaign finance limits and her pledge not to take corporate money. (There are no limits to what a corporation or individual can contribute to a SuperPAC.)
The SuperPac route gives Minter the benefit of the corporate campaign contribution loophole without having to violate her pledge not to take corporate money. But it is bad for Vermont. Whether one is for or against ridgeline wind development (I am against and Minter is for it), we surely can agree that it is bad when a developer with a stake in the regulatory decisions of the state makes outsized campaign contributions. And, this is what has happened with Minter’s SuperPAC.
Reid Hoffman’s independent expenditure for Dunne is even more problematic. The law prohibits coordination between a campaign and an individual (or PAC) making an independent expenditure.
Dunne says that Reid Hoffman’s $220,000 ad buy “came as a surprise to us.” This is hard to believe. The Silicon Valley billionaire is a personal friend of Dunne’s. Hoffman and his wife were early and generous contributors to Dunne’s campaign. In the debate, Dunne explained that Hoffman was responding to an unfair ad put out by the Minter’s SuperPac that had only revealed its existence the previous day.
To believe Dunne, one would have to believe that his friend Hoffman, a Californian, had been following the day to day minutia of the Vermont governor’s race, read about the creation of Minter SuperPac, mastered Vermont’s election law as applied to independent expenditures, and then produced pro Dunne ads — all in a 24 hour period and all without talking to Dunne or anyone involved in his campaign. I don’t believe it happened this way, and I don’t think Matt Dunne is telling the truth.
At the VPR debate, I asked Minter and Dunne to call publicly for an end to these independent expenditures. Neither candidate was willing to do so. Sue Minter was especially creative in explaining why she needed to keep the money: Asking outsiders not to spend on her behalf would, she said, constitute impermissible coordination.
These independent expenditures were carefully timed for the final few days of the campaign — after all the debates and forums were finished. They were timed to minimize press scrutiny and public reaction.
At some point, voters have to ask about the character of candidates who will do anything to win an election. Dunne and Minter repeatedly denounced Citizens United (the Supreme Court Case that permitted these independent expenditures) and repeatedly stressed the importance of getting corporate and big money out of politics.
But, when came to last minute in a tightly contested election, neither could resist. Neither is willing to ask their benefactors not to spend the money. Vermonters can send a message on Tuesday about the kind of politics we want in our state.
