Brandon Presley rolled out this week a list of ethics reforms that he said he would work to enact if he is elected Mississippi’s next governor.
Most of the proposals have great merit when it comes to legislative transparency and limiting the influence of lobbyists.
The Democrat said he would push for ensuring that the state Legislature is covered by Mississippi’s open meetings law, presumably ending the dodge used regularly by outgoing Speaker Philip Gunn to hold Republican caucus meetings as a way to bring a majority of lawmakers together behind closed doors to discuss legislative business and plot strategy.
He would also limit the gifts that lobbyists can shower on public officials and require more timely reporting from the lobbyists on what they do spend to try to ingratiate themselves with those in public office.
What’s more problematic are Presley’s proposed restrictions on campaign contributions, some of which he isn’t willing to follow in the current campaign against incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves. That’s because doing so would put the challenger at an even bigger financial disadvantage than that under which he is already laboring.
Presley wants to ban corporations in future elections, though, from making campaign contributions — such donations are presently capped at $1,000 — and to put limits on what individuals, political action committees and other groups can donate.
Limiting the power of big-moneyed interests on the outcome of Mississippi’s elections sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s unlikely to work. That’s because there’s that unfortunate Supreme Court decision from 2010, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In that 5-4 ruling, the court said the government can limit how much donors give directly to candidates, but it can’t limit how much donors give to politically minded organizations whose messaging and spending is independent of the candidate’s control.
Citizens United — combined with congressional efforts to limit direct campaign donations — produced the “dark money” system we have now, in which well-heeled individuals and corporations give large political donations to nonprofit groups that are not required to disclose their donors. Even though these groups technically operate separately from the candidate, and thus don’t fall under the same disclosure rules as political action committees, it’s pretty obvious which candidate they are trying to elect or defeat by the advertising they run.
This is a perfect example of why trying to limit campaign donations is a largely fruitless exercise. Invariably the politicians and their supporters figure out a way to work around those limits.
What does serve voters’ interests is full disclosure. Knowing who is giving to a candidate is a pretty good indication of whose interests that candidate will be largely trying to serve if elected. Give the voters that information, and they can decide whether that donor list makes them feel more comfortable about a candidate or less.
Had reformers spent more effort on emphasizing transparency and less time on limiting contributions, the dark money phenomenon might not be the factor it is today.
