Oklahoma labor Commission Mark Costello recently provided Oklahomans with a service by exposing lobbyist influence.
You may be aware that Costello campaigned for office and won election on a platform of not accepting political contributions from lobbyists. This means that as a statewide elected official Costello is turning down thousands of lobbyist-directed dollars that would no-doubt be flowing into his re-election account had he not taken this pledge.
Costello has now started to expose and champion the case for why politicians should reject this funding.
To make his case he has pointed to a group that has historically contributed heavily to Democrats but has subsequently shifted gears and now contributes predomintly to Republicans. Why the change? With every statewide elected position and the Legislature in Republican hands those who are seeking influence now appear to be buying that influence from Republicans.
Here is what Costello said in an email to Republican party officials.
“In 2010, when Republicans held a majority in both chambers, the public employees’ PAC contributed $102,750 to Republican candidates. This compares to only $57,750 donated to Democrat candidates in the same year.
Until we became a majority in the legislature, the public employees’ PAC was a long-time political enemy of Republicans; in 2004 the OPEA contributed $86,143 to Democrats in an effort to prevent Republicans from gaining a majority of House seats while contributing $2,500 to a handful of Republicans – a 34 to 1 ratio for Democrats. We won – they lost.”
I find it remarkable when politicians attempt to assert that lobbyist contributions do not matter. Whenever a politician makes this point, in my view, he is either extremely naive or very dishonest. Costello has provided a service to the people of Oklahoma in that he has quantified this influence by documenting the shift in contributions from Democrats to Republicans. This is an obvious effort to buy influence with Republicans because of the change in power.
Working inside of the legislative environment for the past five years has allowed me to see this influence first hand. We know that we have to factor in for lobbyist opposition whenever we try to downsize the size of government. Even the most basic and important of modernization reforms will come under fire from those lobbyists who are attempting to preserve the status-quo and the benefits that their employer receives from inefficient, big-spending state government.
Since this last legislative week was the first week of the legislative session much of the work was in committees. Lobbyists aggressively work to influence the bills in the committee process because this is the vital first step to passing or defeating a bill. These lobbyists will fill committee meetings, feed questions to the members of the committee who are carrying water for them and will put great pressure on the other members to vote their way. They are professional relationship manipulation experts, and expert strategists and they know the pressure points to push to get a key lawmaker’s vote. Their attempts to kill a good bill appear to be rather like a game to them. A team of lobbyist can point to a dead bill much like a trophy and use it as a warning to other legislators who might try to upset their deal. Anyone who believes those big campaign contributions don’t factor into the voting consideration of some of the legislators is very much out of touch.
Costello is right to call on lawmakers to refuse these lobbyist-direct political contributions. Lawmakers who do not have to worry about these campaign contributions are freed up to vote on bills on the merits without undue special interests influence. I can personally testify that not taking gifts or contributions from lobbyists was one of the best decisions I could have made because it has absolutely liberated me from having to take the lobbyists influence into account when casting my vote.
