Twisted Logic

From Horns of Jericho Blog, February 10, 2015

Liberal House Democrats continue to fall flat on their promise to deliver accessibility and accountability to state government with HB1476, now slated for hearing on Thursday, February 10th. Via their own twisted logic, they would like the public to believe that they can offer more transparency to government by decreasing transparency.

Yes, that is as ridiculous as it sounds. I can’t make this stuff up. Here is the bill’s description per capitol.hawaii.gov(emphasis added):

Requires the Campaign Spending Commission to process all campaign donations so as to shield the identity of donors from candidates. Creates a publicly funded voter voucher pilot program in the Office of Elections.

Upon reading the bill, it is based on the flawed premise that a candidate will not be beholden to donors if they do not know who contributed to them. If the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission were to somehow “anonymize” the donor, it does not stop a candidate from learning or even hearing about the identity of a donor or the magnitude of their donation.

In the realm of the State Capitol, many donations come with a wink and a nod. Lobbyists rely on candidates knowing how strongly they support them and can easily find back channels to convey their benevolent gift. For example, Bob Toyofuku (lobbyist for the Hawaii Association for Justice and ambulance-chasing lawyers) simply needs to shake hands with Sylvia Luke after a House Finance hearing and say “enjoy the $2000”. No amount of anonymizing by the Campaign Spending Commission, no amount of lawmaking by the Legislature can change this.

To be fair, many political contributions are made out of gratitude. This is the sort of thing that must be judged in context, and on a case-by-case basis.

With such a highly flawed piece of legislation, it begs wonder whether the actual intent is not the increased government transparency promised by Scott Saiki (co-sponsor of HB1476).

Perhaps the actual intent is to shroud the entire process of political contributions in secrecy.  Perhaps there is something to hide.  Upon closer examination, the very individuals who would benefit from this poor legislation are the bill’s introducers.

Five of the bill’s introducers (Richard Creagan, Kaniela Ing, Bert Kobayashi, Nicole Lowen and Takashi Ohno) yields some interesting conclusions. [1] Below are the total contributions they accepted for campaigns in the previous two-year election cycle:

These same representatives accepted substantial sums from other representatives. [4] This includes Sylvia Luke, Scott Saiki, Scott Nishimoto and former state representative K. Mark Takai.

In fairness, there are a couple of ways that this can be interpreted. First, these representatives are such poor fundraisers that they need to be buoyed up by much more powerful representatives who are also much more prolific representatives. Alternatively, these representatives are paid for their support and obedience (fealty) in campaign contributions. The latter would suggest that if any one of these representatives were to step out of line and vote against their benefactors, they would receive less money toward their reelection.

Based purely on these numbers, it is quite clear that these representatives appear beholden to (a) liberal Democrats and (b) to ambulance-chasing attorneys. While I am open to alternative interpretations, the voting records of all five representatives are clear that they march lock-step to these supporting causes. There are no exceptions in their voting records to show that these representatives are an independent voice for their constituents and community. They do not vote for their communities, they vote for special interests.

Their districts do not have a voice in state government because it has been bought.

However, the numbers so far do not quite tell the story for Takashi Ohno. [5] For Ohno specifically, one other trend was quite clear:

In addition to plaintiff’s attorneys and liberal Democrats, Ohno owes much of his success in the last election to the support of out-of-state interests. Unless he plans on claiming former mayor Michael Bloomberg and his wife (both of whom maximized their contributions to Ohno at $2000 apiece) as family, he has a hard case to make as an independent voice for his community.

The take home message is quite clear: these representatives, based on their publicly available campaigns spending reports, are clearly in the pockets of special interests. When you owe your job to wealthy special interests like liberal Democrats and ambulance-chasing attorneys who can write $500 checks on a whim, it is hard to go against the grain.

More importantly, this analysis would not be possible if HB1476 were to pass. If the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission were forced to “anonymize” contributions, it would be possible for this blog, and for other concerned citizens to follow the money trail.

[1] As introducers of this bill, these sophomore (second-term) representatives stand out against other individuals because they are also part of the caucus of liberal Democrats. This distinction excludes Beth Fukumoto-Chang from this analysis.

[2] Contributions listed may differ slightly from other calculations as the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission only reports donations in excess of $100. It is likely that these numbers are higher than this blog is reporting.

[3] For purposes of this post, any gift that could be directly or indirectly attributed to plaintiff’s attorneys, lobbyists for plaintiff’s attorneys, or other organizations that support them (Hawaii Association for Justice) were included in the totals.  Contributors to campaigns will frequently use the names of surrogates (like spouses) to avoid the image of publicly supporting a candidate.

[4] For purposes of this post, gifts that could be attributed to any organization or individual associated with a sitting representative were included. This includes the Hawaii House Democratic PAC which is a slush fund for liberal Democrats to transfer funds to candidates while covering any traces of the originator of the money. Contributions from obvious family members were excluded.

[5] Tallies for other representatives were not made. Gifts to Ohno included to contrast against other contributors noted in this analysis