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.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is running a reform-minded bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying his campaign is “powered by you.” He’s also the only 2020 presidential candidate besides Donald Trump himself with Federal Election Commission-reported super PAC expenditures on his behalf.
And that support is already substantial. The pro-Inslee Act on Climate Now PAC has spent $250,000 on ads supporting his campaign, and has imminent plans to drop an additional million. The PAC already appears to be engaging in familiar tactics for ostensibly “independent” political groups that can raise and spent unlimited sums: Ads unveiled this week appear to use “b-roll” of Inslee, which, as PAY DIRT readers know, political campaigns often make available to “independent” groups through discrete channels that don’t technically run afoul of rules barring super PAC coordination.
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Inslee’s group also underscores the gaping loopholes in a trendy good-government talking point for a number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. A number of them, including Inslee, have pledged not to accept corporate PAC money. Act on Climate Now’s backing for Inslee’s candidacy shows why that pledge is hollow.
Technically, a candidate has no control over the donors from whom a supportive super PAC does or does not accept money. Act on Climate Now, for its part, has also said it will not accept corporate money.
But the group obviously exists to take in large checks from Inslee supporters that would well exceed contribution limits to the campaign itself. And it’s surely been doing that, given the sums the group is spending.
Assuming that the super PAC has stayed true to its no-corporate-money pledge, that means its donors fall into one of four categories, each of them problematic for its own reasons.
Labor unions: Unions are, in fact, incorporated entities, so saying one accepts union money but not corporate money is nonsensical. And they are special interests, just as private companies are. The only meaningful distinction is that they generally favor more progressive policies than their corporate counterparts. So that distinction is one largely premised on policy preferences, not good-government principles.
Other political groups: Act on Climate Now can take in money from other super PACs, or traditional political committees. But those groups likely have not made the same no-corporate-money commitment that ACN has, and the pledge is meaningless if that corporate money is simply routed through a third party.
Dark-money groups: Like unions, 501(c)(4) nonprofits are, technically, corporations, and their ability to donate to political groups was secured by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The pipeline of cash from so-called dark-money groups to super PACs is one of the most significant effects of the decision—the practice is anathema to any reform-minded political effort.
Wealthy people: So you don’t take corporate PAC money. Do you take money from corporate executives? Given the sums Act on Climate Now is spending, any individual donations to the group were likely sizable, and therefore likely came from people who were successful in the business world. In fact, while corporate PAC money generally comes at least in part from donations by a company’s rank-and-file employees, donations by a company’s executives are effectively coming directly from the c-suite. It’s hardly a courageous stand against special interests to refuse money from the former but not the latter.
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