The other day the Virginia League of Conservation Voters PAC announced that it will spend more than $1 million to help elect Ralph Northam governor. This followed similar news that a Planned Parenthood PAC will spend $3 million to the same end. On Tuesday, the environmentalist group NextGen America threw $2 million into the pot.
As we pointed out earlier this summer, environmental groups spend far more than Dominion, their bête noire. In fact, it’s not even all that close: For every $3.32 Dominion spends on Virginia campaigns, environmental groups spend $4.99.
People are also reading…
Similar ratios likely apply with regard to Planned Parenthood. Most anti-abortion groups can’t begin to raise the kind of money the women’s health care provider can.
But this is not a plea for more equal spending. Rather, it is for more equal scrutiny.
First, Dominion’s campaign contributions attract a great deal of attention. It’s common to see reports about how much the company gave whenever Virginia politicians take a stand on a controversial issue or project related to the utility. Yet references to campaign spending by environmental groups occur far less frequently.
Sure, Dominion is a regulated entity, and the propriety of its campaign donations is a reasonable topic for debate. But that’s a separate issue from the amount of attention paid to its donations, relative to the attention paid to even larger donations from other sources.
The unspoken assumption behind the lopsided attention seems to be that if a legislator who votes with Dominion also took money from Dominion, then there must be some connection. It can’t simply be the case that he thinks the utility has the better argument. He must be doing the bidding of his paymasters.
But the same implication ought to apply in every case where a politician sides with a donor. Either campaign donations and in-kind aid are corrupting, or they are not. They cannot have a corrupting effect only when made by groups the observer happens not to like.
Yet that is how they are often treated.
Four years ago Planned Parenthood Votes gave Terry McAuliffe just under $1.2 million. But when McAuliffe took steps beneficial to Planned Parenthood, such as vetoing legislation to defund the group, that donation generally went unmentioned.
On the other hand, Dominion’s comparatively measly donation to the governor — $75,000 — comes up again and again, especially when his support for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is mentioned. That makes no sense. If a mere $75,000 can sway the governor, then how much effect on him must a cool million-plus have?
Few people who profess to be concerned about the corrosive effects of campaign spending ever seem to have wondered. Will they show any more interest about the spending on Northam?