Everywhere he goes, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger draws cheers
proclaiming
”
I represent the people, not the special interests.
”
Everywhere he goes, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger draws cheers proclaiming “I represent the people, not the special interests.” But almost all those political appearances are subsidized by developers, car dealers, oil and chemical companies, utilities, banks, stock brokerages and other major businesses.
So when Schwarzenegger says “special interests,” it’s clear he means anyone who doesn’t contribute to his various committees and causes, principally labor unions and Indian casinos.
Now leaders of Schwarzenegger’s pet campaign committee, known as Citizens to Save California (from what? from whom?), are making a big push to cripple union political involvement via a ballot initiative they plan to put up for a vote either next November or in June 2006.
The putative proposition would prohibit public employee unions from using dues or fees for political contributions to candidates or committees except from members who provide prior written consent each year.
For Californians who want to clean up state politics, this measure could be one useful step. But it would fix only half the problem and if done alone, it would actually further darken the current scene.
That’s because corporate bucks are just as pernicious as union dollars and even more ubiquitous, no matter what Schwarzenegger may say. Both varieties of big money have influenced state policy – often destructively – for decades. If the voters put the clamps on the union side, they’ve got to limit corporations, too, or the playing field will be tilted to favor management over workers, development over the environment, business over consumers.
The justification usually advanced for limiting big labor’s use of union dues is that some union members disagree with causes their leaders push and don’t want their dues used for those purposes. Never mind that union members can oust their leadership in elections if they please.
“That never happens,” says conservative activist Steve Frank, a top aide in both Bill Simon’s 2002 Republican campaign for governor and the 2004 senatorial run of Bill Jones. Of course, it does happen occasionally – generally when union leaders get badly out of touch with the desires of their members.
Unions see the forthcoming battle over this measure as an Armageddon, a war they dare not lose over an attempt to make them politically extinct. The California Teachers Association, for one, will try to fight back by asking members to OK a dues increase for the next three years, with the money earmarked to fight Schwarzenegger’s teacher merit pay proposal, his school budgeting, restrictions on use of union dues and more.
But the potential means are now present to level the playing field – and cut political spending exponentially. For at the same time that some petition circulators are trying to qualify the anti-union measure, others are on the street with another to ban corporate political spending and contributions without a prior vote by stockholders.
The logic is similar to that behind the attempt to limit political use of union dues: Many stockholders disagree with causes supported by managers of the companies they invest in.
“They can always sell their stock if they don’t like what management is doing,” says Frank.
But many investors don’t even know they sometimes get reduced dividends and profits because of management’s political largess. If, like millions, they invest through mutual funds, they usually have no clue about political involvements of companies they partially own. Plus, many thousands of investors in utility stocks and others with high dividends depend on that income as surely as union members need their wages. They can’t sell the stock any more than union members can quit their jobs.
So the two measures are almost precisely analogous. Some estimates place the output of corporate and union cash at more than $100 million if a special election is held over these initiatives and others this fall.
If voters really do detest the amounts of money being poured into California politics and the influence it can buy, they can do the sensible thing: put both union and corporate political spending restrictions on the ballot and pass them. That’s how to fight effectively against the major special interests.
But don’t pass just one measure and not the other. That would set up a scene even more unequal and unfair than today’s.
