A good piece on exposing the donors. I would be nice if more of this occurs.
Savvier donors will resist the temptation to make public fools of themselves. In which case, the press should to go to them. Reporters should do whatever it takes, consistent with journalistic ethics and the law, to find out which donors met which candidates, and who said what to whom. After all, the creation of a secret political discourse, in which rich people pay money to hear candidates say things they won’t say in public, is profoundly undemocratic.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman provided a great example of what such reporting can achieve when she broke the news last month that two gay hoteliers, Matt Weiderpass and Ian Reisner, had held an event for Ted Cruz, apparently because they share his hawkish views on Israel. By making the event public, Haberman made Cruz—who had been going around evangelical Iowa denouncing gay marriage—look like a hypocrite. And she made Weiderpass and Reisner—whose hotels were quickly boycotted by gay groups—look like traitors to their community. By making a private event public, in other words, Haberman threw sand in the Super PAC Machine.
Mega-donors should face a version of the same tradeoff politicians face. Presidential candidates know that in exchange for pursuing immense political power, they must forfeit much of their privacy. Mega-donors, who are also seeking immense political power via their donations, should have to make the same trade. Journalists should not only investigate their interactions with politicians, they should ferret out information about what they believe and how they conduct their affairs.
Last month, The New York Times offered a model for how to do that when Eric Lichtblau and Alexandra Stevenson reported that a hedge fund tycoon named Robert Mercer had donated millions, if not tens of millions, to super PACs associated with Cruz. Lichtblau and Stevenson went on to note that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has accused Mercer’s hedge fund of cheating the government out of $6 billion in taxes. (Both Mercer and Cruz want to abolish the IRS). They also reported that workers in Mercer’s home had sued him for not paying them overtime, and that Mercer had himself sued a toy manufacturer for allegedly overcharging him $2 million when it constructed a model railroad in his house. Will these unflattering nuggets embarrass Mercer into abandoning super PACs? I don’t know. But if such reporting became the norm, it would scare away some donors. And American democracy would be better for it.
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