Truth In Advertising

	Eric Lotke November 17, 2006
	Eric Lotke is research director of the Campaign for America's Future . Voters left the door to campaign finance reform wide open after the 2006 election. The evidence is in the millions spent on campaign ads. It’s no surprise that the 2006 election was the most expensive in history or that Republicans outspent Democrats. What is surprising is how the money was spent, since more was spent complaining about money than anything else. Illegal corruption a lá Tom Delay and Bob Ney was a frequent theme in campaign advertising, and legal corruption a lá campaign contributions was even more prominent. Corporate lobbies regularly appeared as a villain, whether driving up the price of oil, polluting the Everglades or fouling up health care. The Campaign for America's Future did a close analysis of 11 benchmark races, focusing on paid television advertising. In these 11 races, a total of $146 million was spent on TV ads, a principal way of communicating with voters. Fully $36 million worth of ads were spent on the subject of campaign contributions and corruption, with the two subjects blending closely together. Ads discussed lawful corporate campaign contributions and routine lobbying practices in the same tone they discussed the incarcerated lobbyist Jack Abramoff or the indicted former House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay. Most importantly, campaign ads connected money in politics with problems of ordinary people. They featured drugs people couldn’t afford, colleges priced out of reach, and fuel prices breaking family budgets. The ad copy went beyond lamenting the price of gas or the fact that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit didn’t let the government negotiate for lower prices. It condemned the influence of Big Oil and the pharmaceutical companies in writing the laws governing those issues. “Gasoline prices are at record levels and middle-class families are feeling the pain,” said Patrica Madrid in an advertisement that ran 378 times during her campaign to represent New Mexico in the U.S. House of Representatives. “But Heather Wilson took almost $400,000 from the oil and gas industry while voting to give them, $2.6 billion in subsidies.” “For too long the HMOs and drug companies have written our health care laws. Now we’re all paying the price,” said Sherrod Brown in an advertisement on his way to victory for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio. This message—that “pay-to-play” was more than an abstract rule violation that required a process remedy but is a threat to the American dream—crossed party lines. Democrats spent $20 million lamenting the corruption of money in government. Republicans spent an additional $16 million, more money than they spent talking about the war in Iraq. “Big Sugar!” booms the announcer in a $131,000 ad run by incumbent Republican Rep. Clay Shaw in Florida, fighting a challenge to his seat from Ron Klein, a Florida state legislator. “Big Sugar. Pumping pollution into the Everglades. Pumping campaign money into Tallahassee’s politicians like Ron Klein. Klein has already taken $16,500 from Big Sugar and Klein weakened pollution cleanup standards to appease Big Sugar. Environmentalists call it a death sentence for the Everglades. Now Ron Klein wants to go to Washington with the sugar industry helping pay his way again. Ron Klein can’t change Washington. He’s already part of the problem.” Klein responded in kind. In a district with one of the highest percentages of Medicare recipients in the country, Klein ran ads highlighting problems with the new prescription drug benefit. One $689,000 ad showed a congressman who sold out senior citizens for personal profit. “We know that Clay Shaw’s drug deal was bad for seniors and good for the drug companies, but there’s more to the story. As he was writing a bill to give them billions in new profits Shaw bought drug company stock for himself. Once the law was signed, Shaw sold his stock, putting profits in his own pocket. So here’s how this drug deal went down. Shaw took care of the drug companies and he took care of himself.” In ad copy from the campaign for the 1st Congressional District of New Mexico, both parties read from the same script: Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “Same Lane” 327 screenings for $127,773 starting September 19. “They just keep driving in the same lane. George Bush and Heather Wilson. Wilson’s taken $416,000 in contributions from Big Oil and Gas, energy special interests who give millions to Bush. And Wilson voted for the Bush energy plan. Billions in tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, while they’re already making record profits. Heather Wilson and George Bush. They get their way, and New Mexico gets left behind.” Heather Wilson, “Corruption Cards” 506 screenings for $157,773 starting September 20 (following “Corruption Cards,” with 613 screenings for $214,894 on September 5). “Troubling Questions. A casino owner wanted less competition, and Patricia Madrid got over $100,000 in cash. But there’s more. A contract to build a private prison was in jeopardy until Patricia Madrid intervened to save the $13 million deal. Just 18 days later, Madrid got ten grand from the people who got the contract. Madrid’s friends got the contract. Madrid got her cash.” In 2006, big business appeared before voters as Public Enemy No. 1. More money was spent on ads depicting Big Oil and Big Pharma as threats than on ads warning of Osama bin Laden. Both parties promised to protect American families from the danger of big business “special interests.” The trouble, of course, is that contributions from big business helped pay for those ads. The newly empowered Democrats have just as much to lose as the newly disempowered Republicans if they take on their corporate donors. But the combined power of a fed-up electorate, the ability of grassroots contributions via the Internet to alter the money game and the success of public “clean money” campaigns in Arizona, Maine and North Carolina can be the impetus to find another way. As Sherrod Brown concluded in his ad about HMOs, “It’s time to put people first.”