Stick to Information Technology, David Pogue!

by Karl Kurtz

First it was a Foreign Service officer in Buenos Aires presenting an uninformed view of lobbying in America, now it's a New York Times information technology columnist spouting off in his blog about how votes are bought and sold in Congress and state legislatures.  I'm a big fan of David Pogue's clever and witty commentaries in the Times about electronic tools and gadgets that make our lives better and more fun but also sometimes drive us nuts. 

But in today's blog post, "Following the Money Trail Online," Pogue has gone far beyond his area of expertise based on his reading of a web site, maplight.org, which attempts to correlate votes by members of Congress and the California Legislature with campaign contributions received.  Many people have commented on his post and taken him to task for his assumptions about causality, in effect arguing that it is just as likely that money follows votes as it is that votes follow money.  One of the most sophisticated (and accurate) of these comments is #9 by political scientist Matthew Jarvis.

In his own responses to the comments, though, Pogue remains unconvinced, saying, "You guys are killin’ me!  You are telling me that a legislator can accept $2.2 million and NOT BE INFLUENCED IN ANY WAY?"  I'm sure I can't change Pogue's mind on this (especially if he lumps contributions from thousands of often competing sources together into a single total), but I want to weigh in on the subject of money and politics in more depth than is possible in a comment on his blog site.

One specific example that Pogue brings up is California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, whom he chastizes for receiving substantial contributions from labor unions and voting with them 94 percent of the time.  Neither the web site that produces this information nor Pogue notes that Speaker Nunez was a labor union official before he was elected to the legislature. That was his background and experience in life.  The voters in his district knew that and elected him to office, as did the members of the Assembly who selected him to be speaker.  Even if there were no money in politics, we would expect someone with this background and experience to vote with labor.  (I'm wondering more about the six percent of the time that he voted against the unions!)

Let's take a more high profile example on the other side of the political aisle.  Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney spent large portions of their life outside of politics working as executives in the oil industry.  The states that they come from are major energy producers.  Is it any wonder that they received major contributions from the oil industry in their campaigns and that, once elected by voters who knew their backgrounds, they made decisions that favor more energy production?

I'm not arguing that campaign contributions have no influence on political decisions, only that their influence is greatly overdrawn and not taken in the context of all of the other factors that affect legislators' actions.  Here is a list of several other key factors that influence lawmakers' decisions:

1. Constituents.  On matters that are important to their districts and on which most of their constituents agree, legislators almost always vote with their constituents.
2. Legislators' core principles and beliefs.  The work, family experiences and socioeconomic backgrounds that legislators bring to public service create strong dispositions toward public policy issues (e.g. Nunez on labor issues or Bush/Cheney on energy policy).
3. Legislative leaders and political parties.  There are substantial differences between the political parties on most major issues.  Legislators who want to get ahead and achieve their policy goals must often respond to their party's agenda and leaders.
4. The merits of the issue.  Usually there are merits on both sides of any public policy issue, and people don't agree.  But the legislative process ensures that all sides of the issue are heard, and lawmakers have the opportunity to make their own decisions.

Empirical studies show that on big issues, constituency, party agenda and personal beliefs have much more impact than campaign contributions.  Campaign contributions are more likely to affect voting decisions on the margins--on issues of low importance to constituents or on which the legislator has no beliefs.  The main thing that large campaign contributors expect to gain is access--the ability to get in the door of a legislator and make their voices heard.

At the end of our discussion of "what makes legislators tick" in Republic on Trial: The Case for Representative Democracy (from which much of the above argument is taken), Alan Rosenthal, Burdett Loomis, John Hibbing and I conclude:

...[T]he overwhelming majority of legislators can and do maintain their integrity even though they are constantly raising money for political campaigns; only a few can't and don't.  What do these contributors get for their money that they wouldn't get otherwise?  Not much.  They get what any political supporters or local influential people would get--courtesy, an ear and consideration.  Pehaps they get it somewhat more readily than noncontributors might.  Despite public and media suspicion, there is no evidence that campaign contributions significantly influence legislators' decisions.

Comments

[jason]

First of all, an otherwise coherent argument is difficult to take seriously when the Vice President of the United States has his name misspelled. Secondly, it doesn't make sense for contributors to try to buy the loyalty of someone who got elected without them, it makes sense for special interests to provide the essential financial backing to candidates that they like before they enter office. Money isn't subverting legislators, it's subverting the democratic process itself. Dollars are media buys, media buys are votes. This probably wasn't the argument Pogue was making (I'll go back and read that), but succesfully refuting any causal link between contributions and a legislator's actions once in office doesn't refute the argument that campaign money influences legislatures.

[Karl Kurtz]

Oops! Thanks for catching the misspelling of our vice president's name. I have corrected it in the original text. At least I didn't refer to President Busch.

[John]

Thank you for bringing such nice posts. Your blog is always fascinating to read.