When Judy Herman, a former Reno city councilwoman, got into politics, she got in for the right reasons. She was a populist candidate, and she wanted to give people a voice in government. She’d been involved in politics, through her father and others, since she was a girl. It took her a long time to figure out that politics can be a dirty business. She had to run for office.
Herman’s first campaign contribution check was from a father-and-son-run casino.
“The son pushed the check over to me and said, ‘You know, if we give you this check, we expect certain things,’ Herman recalls. The father quickly corrected the son, saying there were no strings attached, but the message remained.
The second time it happened, it was from a representative of a major northern Nevada casino.
“He pushed the check over. It was a $1,000 check, and he said, ‘Here’s what we expect from this: If everyone votes no, we don’t expect you to vote yes, but…’ What he meant was, ‘If some vote yes, we expect you to vote yes, too.’ I’m telling you, I got it all the time. I don’t know whether it was because I was new to politics, and so they thought I was weak. Maybe it was a gender thing.”
Herman says that there were other offers that were subtler but no less designed to influence her vote.
“I had one construction company come to me after I was in office and offer me $10,000 to do an employee handbook.” She had prior experience doing handbooks as a business consultant but wondered why the company would pay so much for something that could be done simply with a document template, known as a “boilerplate.”
“I said, ‘Why don’t I just give you the boilerplate?’ I was so stupid that I didn’t realize that he was giving me a job that everyone knows is boilerplate.”
Herman resigned her seat on the Reno City Council in 1998 during a controversy about whether she was living in her ward. She says she moved out of her district to help her husband, who was recovering from cancer surgery. She ran a failed election for mayor in 1998 and then lost a City Council race against Pierre Hascheff in 2000.
Most politicians across the state—even past politicians—are loath to talk publicly about the influence that money has had on them personally. It’s a hot issue in the north, where Sherrie Doyle, a Reno city councilwoman, is under indictment for 16 felony counts of theft. The Attorney General’s Office alleges that she stole $10,000 from her 1998 campaign and misused another $5,000. Some $15,000 has disappeared, reports David Thompson, deputy attorney general, and that would constitute theft in any other business, nonprofit organization or government office.
Doyle is campaigning for re-election to her Reno Ward 4 seat. For her part, she has said her problems arose from confusion created by the numerous and difficult requirements of the campaign finance disclosure forms.
Since Washoe District Judge James Hardesty has yet to rule on whether the grand jury had grounds to indict Doyle, and her situation could change within days, she’s only a part of this story.
The difference between a contribution and a bribe is clear, says Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, who’s looked at the issue from two sides, as a campaigner and as the state’s top law enforcement official.
“At its most basic level, the difference is simple: If the contributor expects something in return, [it’s a bribe],” she said. “For a campaign contribution, there are truly no expectations. That’s just hopefully people contributing for good government.”
Nevada politics has never had a squeaky-clean political reputation. But state campaign finance reforms in the last decade, with more detailed reporting of contributions and dispositions of funds, have helped. Still, every politician and candidate interviewed for this story—local, state, federal—says further refinements are needed to the campaign finance laws.
The problems are that the state budget contains little money to make reforms that will force politicians to be honest, special-interest groups don’t want to see their influence diminished, and elected officials have little appetite to enact reforms that may weaken their chance at reelection and could put their own tails in a legal wringer.
Buying seats, not votes
“The difference between a contribution and a bribe is that when they give [a contribution] to you they don’t expect anything in return,” agrees Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. “That’s No. 1. If they call you, you’ll be courteous to them, listen to them, but I have never been in a situation where someone felt, or even hinted, that because they gave a campaign contribution they were entitled to something that another person in a similarly situated position wouldn’t get.”
It’s a cliché that a contribution buys access to the politician, but it’s a cliché because it’s true at some levels. Goodman, for one, had money when he came to politics. The Vegas mayor, who gained fame as the “mob attorney,” says his relative wealth may help prevent contributors from getting the wrong idea.
“I am financially secure, so I’m in a position that people feel that they couldn’t control me, even if they wanted to,” he says.
But Goodman’s financial prosperity is the exception in Nevada, not the rule. Most politicians are of more modest means when they come into politics, gaining business contacts and wealth as they progress up the ladder. Occasionally, the poorer candidates, who can’t afford accountants, don’t know election law, don’t know how to keep strict track of money and don’t own the computers with business software, are the ones who end up under journalists’ scrutiny and, in some cases, like Doyle’s, in court.
Aye, there’s the rub. The public wants more “citizen” politicians, but the citizen politicians aren’t prepared for the business end of the campaign.
Though the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office records some of the required forms, no state office checks for accuracy or verifies the truth of what appears on the forms. That makes Nevada campaign law a recipe for turpitude. If Reno Councilwoman Doyle had simply lied on her contribution report, she would not be in court now. Her problem arose because she reported a $12,600 loan, $2,600 more than the legal limit of $5,000 from an individual for a primary and $5,000 from an individual for the general election.
Goodman says he keeps contributors at arm’s length. He pays an accountant to do the paperwork; he rarely accepts a contribution himself. When he does receive a contribution or gift, he turns it over to the accountant immediately. He says he often doesn’t know who has contributed to his campaign. He goes way beyond the minimum requirements, not even paying for his wife’s tickets to political functions (a widely accepted expense) out of the campaign coffers. He sends “thank-yous” on his own, not city hall, stationery.
As for his own past, Goodman says that he never tried to obtain political favor through campaign contributions when representing clients of ill repute.
“I didn’t know where city hall was when I was representing my clients in the old days,” he says.
Some analysts subscribe to Goodman’s theory that contributions buy only access. Contributors, especially special interests and lobbyists, are buying the chance to make their cases before legislators.
“People give money to candidates because they are of like minds,” says Eric Herzik, associate professor and director of graduate studies in political science at the University of Nevada, Reno. “If I’m a Democrat, I’m going to give money to Democratic candidates. My money isn’t buying their votes on any issues, because we’re already in agreement. I think that’s something the public really misses. Money is rarely used to buy a vote. It’s used to buy a seat, and that’s a key distinction.”
Herzik says the cynical public has watched too many bad movies where politicians get money stuffed into suitcases to approve, say, a zoning change.
But political graft is not always the stuff of fiction. Consider the recent trial of U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant, Jr. (D-Ohio), who was kicked out of Congress after being convicted of taking bribes, collecting kickbacks and filing fraudulent tax returns. Traficant was only the second representative to be kicked out of the House since the Civil War. The other was Michael Myers (D-Penn.), who was expelled after the FBI’s Abscam sting of 1978, in which FBI agents posed as associates of an Arab sheik, offering public officials money or other considerations in exchange for special favors.
Cases of this extremity are the exceptions in politics—we hope.
“If candidates were for sale, then on any given issue all you would have to find is who is the highest bidder,” says Herzik. “Look at Yucca Mountain. If the nuclear industry had so much money that they bought this issue, then why didn’t they buy Harry Reid, why didn’t they buy Dick Bryan, why didn’t they buy John Ensign? Is it because we only have honest politicians in Nevada? Come on.”
Other analysts would say that Herzik is being over-sanguine, and that contributors buy more than access to the candidate or a sympathetic ear.
“Yeah, [contributors] buy access,” says Paul Brown, southern Nevada director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN). “They buy access to the state treasury. They get tax breaks; they get sweetheart deals. That’s what they buy access to. That old line that they just buy access is baloney. Gaming, last time around, got roads paved from California, coming into here, with taxpayer money from Nevada.”
Two PLAN documents, “Cashing-In 1999, Campaign Finances Report in Nevada” and “Jackpot! 2000,” outline specific examples of special interest groups—gaming, mining, labor, and business—using money to influence policy. This goes beyond the simple fact that the person with the most money usually wins the seat he or she is running for. For example, “Jackpot! 2000,” shows that in 1998 and 2000, nearly 80 percent of all campaign contributions went to winning candidates. Out of the 52 winning candidates, 50 raised more money than their opponents. Only one incumbent lost, and her opponent raised more money than she did.
The voting public sees these kinds of numbers and comes to believe that the game is fixed. Voter registrations and votes drop. Suddenly, people are getting into the office not only without a majority of the population, but also without a majority of the population even voting.
“Campaign finance problems diminish, in the voters’ minds, [the idea] that they are being represented,” says Brown. “Large campaign contributions certainly give the appearance that your vote doesn’t matter. It’s bad for the whole process, and people drop out.”
How money influences elections and policy
Former U.S. Senator Richard Bryan says that money influences politics in ways far more subtle than the simple purchase of votes on the legislative floor. The big problem, he says, is the sheer amount of money that it takes to win elections. The money chase can influence the calendar, which can mean that legislators have less time to study issues and bills.
“Money has always been a factor in American politics,” Bryan says. “In recent years, particularly in major state and federal races, the amount of money that is required to run for office has just spiraled [upward]. It’s more than just an incremental or cost-of-living increase. What that has done, at least at the federal level, is it has driven the agenda [requiring] more and more of the officeholder and challenger’s time. You are spending a larger amount of time in trying to raise money that you need.”
Campaign reform is a greater challenge, on the federal level, for candidates to the House of Representatives, who run for re-election every two years. (U.S. Senators run every six years.) The two-year election cycles have politicians waking up the morning after one campaign and starting a new one in one long, circuitous fundraising effort.
“It has affected the legislative calendar at the federal level,” Bryan says. “There is hardly a night when the Congress is in session that somebody is not hosting a fundraiser—the political caucuses, Republican and Democratic senatorial campaign committees. There are breakfasts, there are dinners, and to the extent that those events occur in the evening, the legislative schedule is adjusted around those.”
Bryan said that there are few afternoon fundraisers in the middle of the week—that it’s not like elected officials do nothing but grub for money. The events are typically dinners Friday through Sunday. The fundraising frenzy also devours many members’ weekends.
Sen. Harry Reid, for his part, says that recent campaign finance legislation will decrease the amount of money demanded by federal campaigns, which may give politicians some breathing space. The Campaign Finance Reform Act, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), took unregulated “soft-money” contributions to political parties out of the equation, restricted the use of political ads and increased political contribution limits for private individuals.
Individuals, who were limited to donating $2,000 per election cycle to political campaigns, will be allowed to donate $4,000 per cycle under the McCain-Feingold bill. (For comparison’s sake, politicians in Nevada may receive up to $5,000 per primary and $5,000 per general election from an individual; PACs, people and parties are considered individuals.)
“What we did in passing the campaign finance bill—and I have to say, frankly, over tremendous Republican objection—is a step in the right direction,” Reid says. The bill passed the Senate by a 59-41 vote; only two Democrats voted against it. President Bush signed it on March 27.
“I believe that getting the soft corporate money out of politics will help,” Reid says. “That doesn’t mean that special-interest groups, like the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association, won’t be able to get involved, but it’s going to slow all that down. The direct contributions to candidates through state parties will stop. The last time I ran, in ‘98, John Ensign and I spent $20 million in the state of Nevada. Most of it was soft corporate money. The campaign finance law will stop that.”
That’s an expensive battle over a $150,000-a-year job. Of course, nobody runs for Congress for the money. According to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, there are more than 150 millionaires out of the 535 members of Congress.
Can the influence of big money be decreased?
Nevada’s campaign finance laws were promoted under Secretary of State Dean Heller and made into law in 1995. Those laws diminished the impact of soft money by putting caps on the amounts special-interest groups could give to the political parties or to the party infrastructure of the legislative caucuses. It lowered the threshold for the amounts that candidates could take without reporting them from $500 to $100. Finally, the law forced caucuses and parties to disclose where contributions come from.
In many ways, the state’s soft-money ban mirrored what Congress did this year with the Campaign Finance Reform Act.
The change was significant. Before the law passed, only about 60 percent of campaign contributions were disclosed; now it’s closer to 96 percent.
Heller said that campaign finance laws weren’t easily passed in Nevada. He asked the Legislature to reform the law twice, in 1991 and 1993, before action was taken.
But many agree that the measures didn’t go far enough toward reform. Heller has promoted the idea that, for simplicity’s sake, there should only be one annual financial disclosure form for candidates to fill out. As it stands, there are three reports to complete—an Ethics Commission report, a contributions form, a disposition-of-unspent-contributions form—which forces the candidates to file redundant information and forces the public and the media to search in many different locations to get information on who may be pulling a candidate’s strings.
Other politicians tout other reforms. State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Joe Neal would like to make it illegal for gaming companies to contribute to political campaigns. Reno City Councilman David Aiazzi has frequently said that he would like to see quarterly contribution and disposition reports. Green Party gubernatorial candidate Charles Laws thinks that fundraising and campaigning cycles could be shortened, so that local politicians would not be able to accept contributions from interested parties the day before crucial votes.
Critics also point to the lack of a state agency to examine campaign finance forms for errors or violations of the law and the absence of criminal penalties for candidates who violate the law.
This makes for toothless laws. Unless there is a written complaint, the Secretary of State’s Office does not investigate irregularities on disclosure forms. If there is a complaint and an investigation, those irregularities must be prosecuted under other laws—in Reno City Councilwoman Sherrie Doyle’s case, theft.
Heller says he has asked the Legislature for the authority to audit the reports every year, but he says, “That’s one thing that the Legislature has not allowed us to have.”
As for getting big money out of politics, Heller remains skeptical. While some states have taken significant steps to clean up elections, voters in Nevada haven’t really grabbed onto the idea. Four states have publicly financed elections—candidates opt out of raising private money and are funded by the state—but Heller doesn’t see an appetite for that in Nevada, mainly because special interests are too powerful.
“I’m not opposed to public financing, and I’ve actually advocated it in the past,” he says. “The downside to it is, the reason that you have problems with public financing is for the very reason you want it, or the very reason I would want it: It takes special interests out of the picture. Well, special interests don’t want to be out of the picture. They have a stranglehold on this process, and if you start financing these campaigns publicly, then you diminish the influence of special-interest groups.”
Vivian Freeman is battling to retain her seat in the Nevada Assembly, and this time she’s got a fight going against Jason Geddes. As a member of the Assembly Committee on Elections and Procedures, she gets some say in what reforms are addressed at the legislative level. She says the biggest problem with getting new reforms to take the money out of politics is pretty simple: There’s no money to do it. Nevada’s latest estimate of a $275 million budget gap has state officials forecasting layoffs and meaty trims of needed programs.
“Given our budget woes in the state right now, it would be very difficult to fund a lot of endeavors that would be more popular than these,” she says. “I think the chances of getting them funding would be pretty unlikely.”