News Intelligence Analysis

 

 

A New York Times Editorial

 

July 19, 2003

 

The Marketing of Political Clout

 

Senate hearings on President Bush's judicial nominees have stumbled upon another slippery rock in the fetid landscape of politicians' soliciting corporate America for big-money campaign donations. Turning the rock over, we have something called the Republican Attorneys General Association, whose ranking members in at least six states — the people's lawyers, keep in mind — have been personally begging for donations from corporate leaders in the very fields entrusted to the public officials. Donors from banking, insurance, liquor, computers and more have ponied up hundreds of thousands of dollars for the attorneys general's campaign fund since 1999. We are told to relax: the group is legal, and the Democrats have a parallel attorneys general group shaking the money tree for balance.

This fresh twist came to light through one of its founders, Attorney General William Pryor of Alabama, Mr. Bush's nominee to a federal appeals judgeship. Mr. Pryor calls the group's rattling of the collection box eminently defensible. But a whistle-blower has leaked documents about the association's phone-call assignments and the "targeting" of H.M.O. executives and the insurance industry as one of its "natural areas." The money was funneled to the Republican National Committee, where donors were kept secret and the committee was free, in turn, to donate $100,000 to Mr. Pryor's campaign.

"Shakedown" is too inexact a word for this political babbittry. Mr. Pryor's breezy defense of the money-raising is at least as objectionable as, say, his strong views opposing abortion and gay rights. He does "not want corporations to be punished," he says, and generally takes a "market oriented" approach to state law enforcement. Market, indeed, as in seeing what the market will bear.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

 

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