Money Talks

By Martha Burk

A decade ago, the title of a handy little book by Ralph Estes on the U.S. tax system asked Who Pays? Who Profits? After Campaign 2006, it’s time to ask the same about politics.

Candidates and the issues they were for or against benefited from more dollars spent on advertising than ever seen before. These counted as the costliest ever midterm elections— more than $2.6 billion— much of it paying for negative television commercials. Similarly, massive amounts were spent on state ballot initiatives, including nearly $100 million by Big Oil interests in California to defeat an alternative energy measure.

So, who paid? And how might women profit (or not)?

In South Dakota, at least, vox populi shouted louder than vox megabucki. The referendum overturning South Dakota’s callous abortion ban was successful, despite under funding for pro-choice forces. With monies totaling nearly $2.2 million, the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families out-organized the antis, and the cause was helped by contributions from abortion- rights supporters around the country. Heaviest hitters included the Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota Action Fund and its supporters, national Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the ACLU, Working Assets, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Feminist Majority. In a big surprise— because unions haven’t been that supportive of abortion rights— the Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C., delivered $50,000.

The Vote Yes for Life coalition, which fought to uphold the ban, raked in over $2.6 million. The largest pot of money, $750,000, came from Promising Future Inc., a company set up by state Rep. Roger Hunt seven weeks before the vote. Hunt— who sponsored the state’s ban in the legislature—has refused to divulge contributors to Promising Future in the required campaign finance report, claiming attorney-client privilege. But South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson has insisted the law is clear and the donors to Promising Future must be revealed.

Other big contributors to the anti-choice campaign included the usual suspects—the American Family Association and Focus on the Family; the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal association; the National Right to Life Committee; the Catholic Chancery in Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Protestant and Catholic churches in South Dakota and several other states.

In California, where Proposition 85 would have changed the state’s constitution to create civil liabilities for physicians performing abortions on girls under 18 without written parental notice and a 48-hour wait-in period, Planned Parenthood affiliates and their supporters put up a significant portion of the $5.8 million raised to successfully fight the measure. Supporters of parental notification garnered only $4.2 million, mostly from San Diego Catholic newspaper publisher James Holman and winemaker Don Sebastiani (re-member next time you visit your local wine store). The California initiative and a similar one in Oregon were both quashed by decisive margins, 54 percent to 46 percent, but this is the second time in two years that California’s pro-choice advocates have had to wage an expensive fight to defeat anti-abortion initiatives in the state.

Minimum-wage raises were on the ballot in six states, and all passed by significant margins. Augmented by Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, these victories will create momentum for a raise in the federal minimum early in the congressional session, without the corresponding tax giveaway to the rich that the Republicans pushed last fall (see Ms., Fall 2006). Corporate money was behind the groups that wanted to kill the initiatives, but popular sentiment was with the winners.

The minimum wage initiative in Montana—which passed by 73 per-cent to 27 percent—was typical. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has long opposed minimum wage in-creases, and business groups kicked in almost $100,000 in the final weeks before the vote. Restaurant interests were at the fore: Pizza Hut gave $25,000, National Restaurant Association $20,000, Wendy’s of Montana $14,000 and Applebee’s $12,000.

Corporate money couldn’t buck public sentiment in Michigan either, even though this time, surprisingly, the boys in the boardrooms were on the side of women and minorities. Companies such as Ford Motor, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and Blue Cross Blue Shield bankrolled One United Michigan, the group fighting the state’s ban on affirmative action (the so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative). Each com pa-ny gave $150,000 or more to the un-successful campaign, which raised a total of $4.8 million. The groups pushing the proposal, led by Ward Connerly of California’s 1996 Proposition 209, raised less than a third of that—about $1.5 million—but it was enough, as the measure passed by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent. Affirmative action for women and people of color in public employment, public education and public contracting will now be outlawed in the state constitution. Connerly, by the way, is a consultant for the California housing industry, and nearly half the donations to the campaign (about $778,000) came from his organization, the American Civil Rights Coalition based in Sacramento, Calif. Remaining contributors included construction and real estate firms, engineering firms and an aerospace and military supplier—all likely beneficiaries of government contracts.

Not as many women as advocates hoped will be taking their seats in the House this month. Four of the five highest-dollar House races featured pro-choice women Democratic candidates: Christine Jennings in Florida, Melissa Bean in Illinois, Patricia Madrid in New Mexico and Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania. All but Murphy were outspent, and Bean the only winner. Jennings’ House race for the seat vacated by Katherine Harris was the most costly in the nation: More than $8.1 million was spent, most of it by her multimillionaire anti-abortion opponent, who kicked in $3.7 million from his own bank ac-count. But while one woman lost the most expensive race, another won the cheapest waged by a non-incumbent: Carol Shea-Porter, a Democrat from New Hampshire with a door-to-door campaign, spent only $206,000 to her opponent’s $605,101.

In the Senate, runner-up in the money-spending sweepstakes was Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who lost de-spite racking up over $24 million in expenditures. The biggest spender may be a big surprise, though: Even though her race was never remotely competitive, Hillary Clinton borrowed a tactic from G.W. Bush’s 1998 gubernatorial playbook and laid out over $35.9 million (including contributions to other candidates for the Senate)—some say to create a land-slide to boost a presidential run in ’08. Who gave to her? Just about everybody. Although most of her money came from individuals, big bucks from business poured in to top the list of special-interest contributions, outstripping labor.

Election 2006 showed us that in politics, like poker, the old saying “money talks” is sometimes true, but not always. It’s what that money buys for women in the next two years and beyond that will count.