After the Campaign Cash, the Backlash

"With the recent Supreme Court ruling, we are in a position to be
able to take corporate positions that were not previously available in
allowing our voices to be heard." So wrote Roger Nicholson, senior vice
president and general counsel of the International Coal Group, a mining
company based in WestVirginia, in a letter to other coal companies.

Nicholson goes on to explain that "a number of coal industry
representatives recently have been considering developing a 527 entity
with the purpose of attempting to defeat anti-coal incumbents in select
races, as well as elect pro-coal candidates running for certain open
seats. We're requesting your consideration as to whether your company
would be willing to meet to discuss a significant commitment to such an
effort."

Coal executives had already been putting money into the races that
Nicholson cited as being particularly "of interest" (races against
politicians who had supported environmental and safety regulations for
coal mining companies) but in the form of individual, legally limited
contributions. A 527 would allow them to spend far more.

Of course, the coal industry wasn't alone in seeing Tuesday's
elections as a historic opportunity for promoting its corporate
interests in the political sphere. Finance, health care, energy,
telecommunications-lots of industries found they had political needs and
the money to protect them.

Can't buy me love?

The first national election since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission
(which unleashed corporations to spend unlimited-not to mention largely
undisclosed and unregulated-amounts of money on political advertising)
was the most expensive midterm in history. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics,
candidates, political parties, and interest groups spent some $3.5
billion to sway voters-with the number expected to rise to $4 billion
once all the money is counted. That beats the 2006 midterm elections by
more than a billion dollars.

(As a comparison, $4 billion is the amount that the U.S. pledged last
month to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria ...
over the course of three years.)

But can money really buy votes? A new report from Public Citizen found that, of 74 races in which a seat changed parties, 58 went to the candidate who had received the most money from outside groups empowered by Citizens United.
Winning candidates received an average of $764,326 in outside money
(not counting candidate or party funds), compared to $273,268 for losing
candidates. Some races were far more one-sided; in Illinois, Republican
Senate winner Mark Kirk benefited from $8 million more in outside money
than his opponent, Alexander Giannoulias, who was targeted by American
Crossroads, Crossoads GPS, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all funnels for corporate money. Small businesses are distancing themselves from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's politics.

But the scariest part isn't how much money was spent in this year's
election. It's how much will be spent in elections to come as a political spending arms race escalates.

''This is the new normal,'' Joan Fitz-Gerald, president of America
Votes, a group that coordinates advocacy by progressive organizations, told the Los Angeles Times. ''Whether we will have to do it in just the way [business groups] did, perhaps not. But we do need to squarely face reality."

Speculation about what that new reality will look like has already begun. At a panel on the impact of Citizens United held by the Committee for Economic Development, Politico editor Jeannie Cummings argued
that some businesses would become political forces independent of
parties. She cited coal and ethanol as industries that could "take on
both Democratic and Republican parties."

But will it get that far?

A growing backlash

Citizens United has been deeply unpopular since it was
decided in January. Polls have found that 80 percent of Americans oppose
it; upwards of 70 percent would like Congress to find a way to
reinstate the campaign spending regulations that it invalidated.
Ninety-two percent, according to a New York Times/CBS poll
conducted last week, believe candidates should be legally required to
disclose how much money they raise and where it comes from.

Even business leaders are worried about the new reality. A poll by
Zogby International found that, of 300 business leaders surveyed, 60
percent felt pressured to contribute to politics. Two-thirds agreed with
the statement, "the lack of transparency and oversight in corporate
political activity encourages behavior that puts corporations at legal
risk and endangers corporate reputations."

Meanwhile, bipartisan citizens groups have been mobilizing to curb
the impact of the ruling in a variety of ways, such as amending the
Constitution to declare that corporations do not have the same right to
free speech that humans do, requiring shareholders to approve companies'
political spending, and passing legislation like the DISCLOSE Act
(which would require fuller disclosure of where political money
originates) and the Fair Elections Now Act (which would provide federal
funding for Congressional elections). Others are working to expand
publicly financed elections, successful examples of which exist in
Maine, Arizona, and Oregon.

So far, none of these ideas has gained the necessary traction to restrain the impact of Citizens United. But the overwhelming role of corporate campaign cash in Tuesday's election may change that.

John McCain, whose famous bipartisan campaign finance reform bill was gutted by Citizens United,
predicted a voter backlash against the ruling once it became clear just
how much money special interests would be able to pour into campaigns.
(Russ Feingold, the Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, lost his seat in
the Senate on Tuesday after a campaign in which unregulated outside
groups spent $3 million on his opponent's behalf.)

As the nation undergoes a painful recession, the flood of corporate
money looks all the more unfair. "We are saving more, trimming our
budgets, and trying to make ends meet," pointed out Joan Dowlin
in the Huffington Post. "When we see such wild spending by big
businesses, unions, and other special interest groups to try to
influence our votes, we wonder where all this money is coming from. We
wonder why they have the cash and we hard-working Americans don't."

We wonder why our politicians support policies that benefit
corporations instead of citizens. We wonder why big companies get bailed
out, or why regulators look the other way. We wonder, and we wonder...
and then we act.