Fundraising sets apart the candidates in 25th District
Syracuse Post-Standard
Mike McAndrew and Mark Weiner
October 26th, 2008
Donations to Sweetland dwarf those to Hawkins. But the amount given to Maffei makes it all seem like chump change.
Howie Hawkins concedes that he has little chance of winning.
Contributors have given just $5,000 to the congressional candidate from Syracuse for his 25th District campaign. His largest donation has been $200.
The Green Populist candidate has not had enough money to buy a single political ad on TV or radio.
Meanwhile, Republican candidate Dale Sweetland raised $334,000 through Sept. 30, proving that a major-party candidate can tap enough sources to dwarf a third-party challenger.
But at the same time, Democrat Dan Maffei built a quantum advantage over Sweetland by collecting $2 million, allowing his campaign to run a steady stream of TV ads for weeks.
The disparity in money among the three candidates seeking to fill the seat being vacated by Rep. James Walsh, R-Onondaga, couldn't be clearer. To these candidates and outside observers, the volume of money involved in the campaign and concerns about influence by special interest groups suggests that reforms in the way campaigns are financed are overdue.
"Everyone agrees there is a lot of money in politics and it has a distorting effect," said Massie Ritsch, speaking for the nonpartisan watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics, in Washington, D.C. "But nobody has agreed on how to deal with that, short of removing private money from the process."
Money and influence
Maffei's campaign war chest might give him an advantage in building an organization and running advertisements, but it also opens the Democrat to charges that he would be influenced by groups who back him. The Sweetland camp believes Maffei's fundraising strength is also his Achilles heel.
If Maffei is elected, Sweetland tells voters, Democratic congressional leaders will control Maffei because they have donated about $109,000 to his campaign.
Political action committees representing Democratic congressional leaders, lawyers, teachers, labor unions and others have given Maffei 37 percent of his contributions.
His largest source of contributions is Act- Blue, an online fundraising group that forwards donations from individuals to progressive candidates. ActBlue has collected almost $40,000 for Maffei.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has donated more than $27,000 to Maffei and is his second-largest contributor.
"I think it's clear the Democrats are really leveraging their power in order to buy this seat," said Sweetland's campaign manager, Bill Rapp. "In the end, does the average guy, the Joe the Plumber dude, really believe that Dan Maffei is not going to owe some favors?"
That criticism is somewhat blunted by Sweetland's admission that he asked the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political arm of House Republicans in Washington, for campaign donations and would have accepted its money. But the cash-strapped organization turned him down.
The NRCC, with diminished assets for this election cycle, had to limit the number of candidates it supported.
Ken Spain, speaking for the NRCC, in Washington, said the group does not comment about strategy in specific races. But he made it clear that if Sweetland had more fundraising success in Central New York, the national party might have been willing to help.
"The NRCC's job is to help candidates get across the finish line," Spain said.
Following the money
Maffei has raised about 34 percent of his money from out-of-state individuals and groups.
But the out-of-state PACs are not just special-interest groups in Washington that have nothing to do with the Syracuse area, his campaign said. Almost every construction trade union in Syracuse is contributing money to Maffei through national PACs based elsewhere.
Even a PAC representing Joe the Plumber the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 773, based in South Glens Falls is a $1,000 Maffei donor.
"There are a lot of people who these PACs represent here in the district," said Maffei campaign manager Michael Whyland. "All of these unions who have made contributions have workers here."
One of those unions, the Service Employees International Union, has more than 4,000 workers living in the district, Whyland said.
Sweetland has raised about 4 percent of his money outside of New York and about 16 percent from PACs.
His biggest contributors include PACs representing auto dealers and nonunion contractors; executives at Stearns & Wheler Environmental Engineers, a firm paid $3.3 million by Onondaga County while Sweetland was the Onondaga County Legislature chairman; and Wes Gregory, the chief executive officer of WeCare Holdings, whose subsidiary Waste Stream Environmental was paid $18 million by Onondaga County while Sweetland was the county Legislature chairman.
Sweetland said campaign contributions never influenced his votes as a county legislator or Legislature chairman. He said he publicly criticized the county's decision in the early 1990s to hire Waste Stream Environmental to haul away sewage sludge, but later came to support the contract after the company "proved to me they were qualified and could perform what the county needed."
Besides, he said, Waste Stream's contracts were negotiated by the county executive, not the Legislature.
Reforming the system
Groups like the Center for Responsive Politics agree that political action committees and other contributors continue to have an unhealthy influence on Congress despite reforms instituted since 2002 under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
To reduce the influence of PACs, some good-government watchdog groups have urged Congress to authorize public financing for congressional candidates. Currently, only presidential candidates can use tax dollars to campaign.
Among those supporting the public campaign financing movement in 2006 was Dan Maffei.
At the urging of three government watchdog groups, Maffei signed a pledge when he was running two years ago against heavily funded, nine-term incumbent Walsh. Maffei promised "to put voters before lobbyists by supporting legislation to establish and enforce campaign spending limits by providing a set amount of public funding for all candidates who agree to take no private contributions."
Now that he's the 800-pound gorilla in the race, Maffei has not been pushing campaign finance reform as an issue.
Instead, he's setting records. The nearly $2 million Maffei raised is the largest amount of money ever raised by a candidate for the local congressional seat, topping the $1.4 million mark set by Walsh in 2006.
"Everyone agrees there's a dire need for campaign finance reform," said Whyland, Maffei's campaign manager. "Campaigns shouldn't be this expensive. You shouldn't have to raise $2 million to effectively communicate your message. There should be an equal playing field."
"Dan Maffei supports public financing of elections as the only way to ensure that no particular candidate or side has an advantage," Whyland said.
Sweetland said Thursday he does not favor public financing of congressional campaigns: "I don't think people should be forced into paying tax to pay for political campaigns."
Sweetland supports other reforms.
He pledged that if he's elected he will try to pass legislation to restrict congressional candidates from accepting more than 20 percent of their donations from outside their district or more than 10 percent from PACs. He promised to adhere to those guidelines even if Congress won't adopt them.
For his part, Hawkins said he supports public financing for congressional campaigns.
He said that he'd like to see a system in which candidates could rely on private contributions or could receive public financing of their campaigns by collecting a minimum number of $5 contributions.
"I think as part of that, for federal elections, there should be a requirement that broadcasters provide equal free media time for all ballot-qualified candidates," Hawkins said.
Hawkins said he won't accept PAC money for his campaign unless it is from a nonprofit group or approved by the rank-and-file members of unions.
As for the Democrats and Republicans, Hawkins tells voters, "The two major parties have been bought and paid for."
Washington bureau reporter Mark Weiner can be reached at mweiner@syracuse.com or 202-383-7818. Mike McAndrew can be reached at mmcandrew@syracuse.com or 470-3016.
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