Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
Aerospace and defense giant Boeing broke out its checkbook in a big way last month, as it faced global regulatory scrutiny over a catastrophic airline crash —quickly followed by another this month— that raised concerns about software problems in one of its newest models.
The company doled out $827,000 in political contributions in February, according to a newly filed report with the Federal Election Commission. That’s more than Boeing’s political action committee has ever reported donating in a single month, according to a PAY DIRT review of FEC records.
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That massive spending spree comes as Boeing’s political clout is tested by worldwide scrutiny of its new 737 MAX 8 model, two of which have crashed since October (only one of which came before last month’s spending spree). Last week, major airline markets including China, India, and Indonesia grounded or heavily restricted flights by that aircraft. A number of European countries also limited its presence in their airspaces.
In the United States, inspectors general at both the Pentagon and the Department of Transportation are investigating the matter, and a federal grand jury has subpoenaed at least one person involved in the aircraft’s development.
That intense regulatory and law enforcement is running up against a company that’s nearly unrivaled in its political muscle in Washington. Boeing was the 11th-largest spender on federal lobbying last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And its operations are dispersed across the country, lending the company significant parochial political support.
But even Boeing’s most reliable congressional backers have gone wobbly since the second MAX 8 crash on March 10 in Ethiopia. That wavering came in spite of the unprecedented sums that the company’s PAC dished out in February.
Its donations were fully bipartisan. Boeing’s PAC wrote $100,000 checks to the Democratic Governors Association, the Republican Governors Association, and the Republican State Leadership Committee. It sent $180,000 and $165,000, respectively, to Democratic and Republican congressional committees. And it donated the per-election maximum to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), his leadership PAC, and the re-election campaign of Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler, the former chair of Armed Services’ Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.
The huge sums that Boeing’s PAC doled out last month dwarfed its contributions in prior years for the same period. The most monthly donations the company had ever previously reported in February of an election off-year was in 2011, when it contributed a total of $129,500, or about 15 percent of its contributions last month.
Whether Boeing adequately insulated itself from impending congressional scrutiny, though, remains to be seen. On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee’s panel on aviation and space announced a hearing into the MAX 8 crashes. Of the subcommittee’s 15 members, Boeing has only donated to one this year.
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