Big corporations, far more than the Religious Right, helped to elect the congressmen who oppose freedom.

Business Financing of the Repressive Right

Edward Roeder Observing the sideshows on Capitol Hill this year, one can't help but wonder what's happening in American politics. Now that a Senate subcommittee has passed legislation redefining Life, can new statutes mandating the meanings of Good and Evil be far behind? What has become of rational, reasoned, tolerant debate on the important issues of the day? How did the Troglodytes take over? How was the national agenda rewritten to give top priority to topics that were nonissues just a few years ago—a woman's right to choose an abortion, the right of the state to impose the death penalty, sex education, government prayer, and the teaching of Biblical Creationism in public schools, voting rights of minorities, equality for female citizens, and so on?

These issues seemed to have been resolved in the first 200 years of the country's history, as America grew more civilized and the rule of law replaced local power and caprice as the basis for governance. But now such issues are at the top of the legislative

Edward Roeder, a Washington-based free-lancer specializing in reporting on money in politics, is the author of PACs Americana, a directory of political action committees and their interests.

calendar of the United States Congress, among the most important_ issues of the last Congressional elections, and likely to be crucial in deciding the next elections.

It is not a coincidence that almost all of the "New Right" and "Christian Right" members of Congress favor economic, tax, and regulatory policies long advocated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

One longs for the days when the bad guys on the hill were simply crooks, or lobbyists for wealthy special interests and the Congressmen they controlled. Today's threat comes from lobbyists for Life, God, and the Family and from their chosen members of Congress.

Almost unnoticed is the fact that the money behind the New Right candidates is not largely generated by the New Right but by corporate America. Their campaign funding doesn't come from fundamentalists off in isolated hollows of religious and ideological purity; it comes from the boardrooms of companies with which most Americans do business.

It does not require a long memory to recall when Ronald Reagan was considered far too reactionary to be a serious presidential candidate, or to recall the days before Jesse Helms could claim to be a major power, committee chairman, and senior statesman in the

U.S. Senate. So what has happened to our politics?

Conventional political wisdom has it that the electorate, fed up with the government's failure to solve economic problems and spurred on by hate-mongers, jingos, and fundamentalists of the Christian Right, shifted rightward and formed alliances with candidates who were considered part of the lunatic fringe only a few years ago. This is reinforced by spokemen for New Right and Christian Right groups, who claim nearly full credit for the Republican sweep, asserting that they have taken over the conservative movement, used it to take over the Republican Party, and used the GOP to take over the White House and the Senate.

This view also holds that political action committees (PACs) of the Christian Right, using the direct-mail fund-raising services of Richard Viguerie or his imitators and spinoffs, were principally responsible for providing the money, and thus the propaganda campaigns and political technology, to engineer these victories.

This view comforts all sides. For the Christian Right, it's an ego trip. For Republican moderates, it's an excuse for the fact that their party is increasingly dominated by manic re-pressives. And for the Democrats, liberals, progressives, and humanists-

6

Drawing hr Ellen Steinfeld

concerned about the impending demise of their political majorities and large parts of the Bill of Rights—it suggests an easy villain: the Christians did it.

Thus, blame is shifted. The prob-lem is not the ideological vacuousness of the Democratic Party's pragmatists, who define the public interest as that which advances their own political careers. The problem is not the Republican appeasers who get along by going along with the anti-individualist moralists of the New Right. No, the problem is the fanatic intensity of the Moral Majority's purists, who are depicted as political supermen, a dogmatic force not to be denied. That is hogwash: the Devil made me do it; the Christians made me do it.

The only thing wrong with putting responsibility for the right-wing take-over on the shoulders of Jerry Falwell and his coterie is that the Christian Right really had very little effect upon the last election. And while several New Right PACs that are not expressly Christian were effective, their combined effect was probably less than that of the energy industry, or the financial com-munity, or organized labor.

Greg Denier is research director for "People for the American Way," an organization set up by Norman Lear to counteract the intolerance of video preachers who suggest that politicians who disagree with them are "un-

Christian, un-Godly, un-American, or immoral." As Denier describes it, the Washington-based group airs TV ad-vertisements "that emphasize more positive values in the American tradi-tion, such as diversity, pluralism, and tolerance for differing opinions." In other words, the ads mock the Falwell-ian notion that a preacher can promul-gate the word of God on how a politician must vote on secular issues to attain salvation at the pearly gates and at the polls.

In large part, Denier's job is to research the workings of the intolerant Christian Right. "It didn't seem that any of them (Christian Right PACs) had any large sum of money. Our research shows that PACs self-identified as Christian have really not spent much money." Denier's assertion is borne out by a review of records at the Federal Election Commission. The money for Christian Right candidates did not come from Christian Right PACs, but from PACs of corporations and pro-fessional and trade associations.

Money has made the difference, but not money from the Moral Majority (which has dissolved its PAC) or other fringe groups. Under the "reforms" of

the past decade, money has replaced people as the chief measure of power in elections. The big shift in American politics is that today's elections are less political and more . financial; they involve fewer people and much more money than just a few years ago. Winning a seat in the House of Representatives cost an average of $40,000 in 1974. By 1980, the average cost had risen to nearly $200,000—up 400 percent during a period when the Consumer Price Index rose a total of 66 percent. During the same period, the cost of Senate seats rose 103 percent, and that doesn't include the meteoric rise in independent expenditures or the huge outlays by various Republican party organizations (up more than 300 percent), which cannot be attributed to specific Senate candidates.

Meanwhile, voter turnout was dropping, from 43.5 percent in 1970, steadily off to 35.2 percent in 1978, and from 61 percent in the presidential year of 1968 to 54 percent in 1980.

The message to candidates is clear. To compete today, they need much more money but fewer votes. So they put less effort into organizing and more into fund-raising. Most of the campaign

The Issues The "most repressive" members of Congress were those who voted consistently against the rights of individuals. The issues are listed below.

Draft Registration: A vote for registering 19-20-year-old males was anti-freedom. Domestic Violence: A vote to fund shelters for battered spouses was pro-freedom. Forced Pregnancy: A vote to prohibit Medicaid abortions, even for victims of rape, was anti-freedom. Abortion Rights: A Senate vote to prohibit Defense Department medical benefits from covering abortions for GIs and their dependents was anti-freedom. So was a House vote to prohibit student fees at colleges from paying for health plans that included abortion. ERA Extension: A vote to allow states more time to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment banning sex discrimination was pro-freedom. School Prayer: A vote to end federal court jurisdiction in school prayer cases was anti-freedom. Sex Education: A vote to require parental approval of sex education course and course materials was anti-freedom. Institutionalized Persons: A vote to allow the Justice Department to sue on behalf of inmates of state mental or correctional institutions was pro-freedom. Death Penalty: (Senate only) A vote for the death penalty was anti-freedom. Voting Rights: A vote to extend protection for the citizenship rights of minorities was pro-freedom. Fair Housing: A vote to facilitate enforcement of laws against housing discrimination was pro-freedom. Gay Rights: (House only) A vote to prohibit legal services funds from being used for gay rights was anti-freedom.

Excerpted from "Freedom Fighters," Playboy, August /98/.

Fall, 1981

7

money raised by most of the members of the 97th Congress came from contribu-tors who could not legally vote in the elections their contributions influ-enced—out-of-state donors, usually linked to an interest group with a special stake in legislation before Congress. And most of that out-of-state money came from PACs of lobbies of business and the professions.

A few months ago, Playboy asked me to make an analysis to identify the most repressive members of Congress. The resultant article, "Freedom Fighters," appeared in the August 1981 Playboy. I've reviewed the campaign finance records of the "Most Repressive Members of Congress." Members of Congress on this list are not necessarily those whose reputations or flamboyance in defense of extremist positions are worst; rather, the list is of those who most consistently voted against individual liberty. (Because the list is based upon objective compilation of voting records, freshmen are not included.)

Key votes on eleven issues relating to the liberty of individual citizens were

compiled for every member of Congress. (A brief synopsis of the issues is in the box on page 7.) The selection of issues and key votes seems to have been fairly balanced. On average, all senators voted pro-freedom 50.8 percent of the time and anti-freedom 49.2 percent of the time. Twenty members of the House of Representatives are listed as "repres-sive" because they voted against the rights of individual citizens on every issue. Seventeen senators are listed because on all, or all but one of the issues, they voted against the rights of individuals. (See box, page 8.)

Any analysis of the "Most Repres-sive Members of Congress" is, of course, subjective to a degree. Readers might not agree that each key vote selected was the best for indicating a member's stance on individual human rights. But any member of Congress whose record shows the consistency required to make the list (no pro-freedom votes for House members, none or only one for Senators) has a solid record, on a broad range of varying issues, of opposition to human rights.

So who put these guys in Congress?

It was neither Podunk primitives nor New Right groups that provided the margin of cash to swing elections for the Foes of Freedom. Of the 37 on the list, only 13 got support from the Conserva-tive Victory Fund, only 12 from the right-wing Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, and only 12 from the National Conservative Political Action Committee (also called NCPAC, pronounced NIK-PAK).

No, it was corporate America, including professional groups and many of the firms with which you or your neighbors do business, perhaps even firms in which you own stock, that backed these Foes of Freedom. At least 21 PACs, primarily business and professional organizations, supported 20 or more of the members of Congress with the most repressive voting records. (See box, page 9.) Your friendly neigh-borhood banker, doctor, and dentist probably belong to the associations whose lobbies were big supporters of the most repressive members of Congress.

The contribution record of the American Medical Association suggests that, when the issue is life, your

The Most Repressive Members of Congress: The Foes of Freedom Below is a list of members of Congress who most consistently voted against the rights of individual citizens. Because it is based on members' voting records, it does not include any freshmen, except for freshmen Senators, whose voting records as Representa-tives in the House were tabulated. In the House, 20 members voted against freedom on every issue. The issues were comparable to those in the Senate, except that no House vote was taken on the death penalty and the House did not vote on gay rights.

HOUSE Pro-Freedom Votes

SENATE Pro-Freedom Votes

John Ashbrook (R.-Oh.) (0 of 10) William Armstrong (R.-Co.) (1 of 10) Robert Badham (R.-Ca.) (0 of 9) Thad Cochran (R.-Ms.) (0 of 9) Dick Cheney (R.-Wy.) (0 of 8) Pete Domenici (R.-N.M.) (1 of 11) Dan Daniel (D.-Va.) (0 of 9) .J. James Exon (D.-Nb.) (1 of 9) Robert Daniel, Jr. (R.-Va.) (0 of 11) Jake Garn (R.-Ut.) (1 of 11) William Dannemeyer (R.-Ca.) (0 of 9) Barry Goldwater (R.-Az.) (0 of 7) Phil Gramm (D.-Tx.) (0 of 8) Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) (0 of 11) Jim Jeffries (R.-Ks.) (0 of 9) Gordon Humphrey (R.-N.H.) (0 of 9) Ken Kramer (R.-Co.) (0 of 9) Roger Jepsen (R.-la.) (1 of 9) J. Marvin Leath (D.-Tx.) (0 of 8) Paul Laxalt (R.-Nv.) (0 of 9) Robert Livingston (R.-La.) (0 of 10) Russell Long (D.-La.) (0 of 7) Tom Loeffler (R.-Tx.) (0 of 9) James McClure (R.-Id.) (1of11) Larry McDonald (D.-Ga.) (0 of 11) John Stennis (D.-Ms.) (1 of 10) Sonny Montgomery (D.-Ms.) (0 of 11) Steve Symms (R.-Id.) (0 of 7) Eldon Rudd (R.-Az.) (0 of 9) Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.) (0 of 11) Norman Shumway (R.-Ca.) (0 of 9) John Warner (R.-Va.) (1 of 9) Bud Shuster (R.-Pa.) (0 of 10) Edward Zorinsky (D.-Nb.) (0 of 10) Floyd Spence (R.-S.C.) (0 of 11) Charles Stenholm (D.-Tx.) (0 of 9) Excerpted from "Freedom Fighters. " Playboy. August 1981.

Paul Trible, Jr. (R.-Va.) (0 of 9)

8

Business Interests Supporting Repressive Congressmen Political Action Committees (PACs) frequently have innocuous-sounding names like "Civic Involvement Program" (General Motors), which sound more like organizations sponsoring high school essay contests than like groups that raise and spend money to influence elections in which they often have no right to vote. So this list is of the corporations, trade associations, and other lobbies that sponsor the PACs that supported most of the members of Congress who made the list of the "Most Repressive Members of Congress." For Senators, the contributions go back to the year before their present terms began. The other figures cover the 1979-80 election cycle.

PAC SPONSOR

Number of Repressive Congressmen Supported

Of the 20 Of the 17 Of the Total 37 in the House in the Senate

Total PAC spending to influence federal

elections in 1979-80 American Dental Assn. (13 PACs) 35 20 15 $1,062,383 National Rifle Assn. 33 19 14 $1,125,123 American Bankers Assn. (29 PACs) 33 20 13 $1,517,294 A T & T (23 PACs) 32 19 13 $913,913 American Medical Assn. 32 17 15 $1,812,021 American Trucking Assn. (3 PACs) 29 18 11 $289,523 General Electric (2 PACs) 29 13 16 $272,861 Nati Assn. of Home Builders (2 PACs) 29 18 11 $621,974 Sears, Roebuck Co. (2 PACs) 29 15 14 $140,037 Ind. Insurance Agents of Amer. 28 14 14 $389,025 Colt Industries 27 14 13 $117,825 Standard Oil of Indiana (AMOCO) 25 11 14 $376,313 Westinghouse Electric Co. 24 11 13 $146,625 Shell Oil 24 14 10 $62,200 Litton Industries 24 13 11 $215,913 General Motors 24 11 13 $243,188

physician may care more about quan-tity than quality. The AMA PAC contributed to 32 of the 37 Foes of Freedom. The AMA worries about big government when it moves in on the medical industry but seems less con-cerned about government impingement on the rights of individuals. The AMA supports members of Congress who would make it a crime to abort even a horribly injured zygote (but who vote against prenatal and infant care pro-grams). AMA PAC money went to members who rail about the potential threat of euthanasia (but oppose programs to help the handicapped and elderly). And the AMA gave its support to members of Congress who oppose giving contraception information to teen-agers without parental consent.

A cynical view might be that the AMA supports members who oppose funding shelters for battered spouses because such shelters cut into their business of sewing up victims of domestic violence. But the AMA isn't so diabolical. It doesn't want to increase domestic violence; it just doesn't give enough of a damn about stopping it. What the AMA wants is to make sure

that any national health insurance or hospital cost containment programs won't interfere with the right of physicians to get rich tending to other people's misfortunes. And so it supports candidates who support its positions, regardless of their positions on other important issues, such as human rights.

"We take a very broad look at a member's record," says a spokesman for the AM A's AMPAC who asked not to be named. "You're accusing us of being single-issue, and I think that our record will show that we're not. We feel very confident that we have supported the wishes of our membership."

It may well be that AMPAC supports its members' wishes. But it supports politicians who vote for positions on "social issues" (such as the Human Life Amendment, to define abortion as murder) that the AMA has officially opposed in Congressional testimony.

These interest groups and lobbies, of course, don't necessarily give a damn about restricting abortion rights or bringing prayer back to the schools. But they have formed an alliance with the New Right to get rid of moderate and

liberal legislators who would tax their profits, restrict their anti-competitive trade practices, and impose regulations on pollution, worker safety, and consumer ripoffs. Such lobbies may support incumbent moderates against more liberal primary challengers, but in the general elections, business heavily supports conservatives, frequently in-cluding the pseudo-conservatives who consistently oppose individual liberty.

Sixteen lobbying organizations have PACs that supported most of the repressive congressmen. Some of them refused to comment on the question of whether it is appropriate to hold the organizations accountable for its PAC contributions.

Most that did comment said that in deciding which candidates to support they didn't particularly care about issues of repression.

Sears, Roebuck has a PAC man-aged by John G. Cashman, Sears's National Director for Political Action. "We tend to key on the economic issues," says Cashman. "You have to put certain ideologies before others as far as we're concerned. ... It's abso-lutely impossible to judge candidates

Fall, 1981 9

across the whole spectrum ... so we're forced to make a choice based basically on economic grounds."

But Cashman noted that Sears is aware of the social implications as well. "The people who support the social issues you're talking about tend to be exactly the other way on the economic issues," he said. "Whether you like it or not, there is an ethic that is starting to reassert itself that has long been submerged, the Judeo-Christian ethic."

Cashman then recommended an article by right-winger Howard Phillips, on the impact of belief and the resurgence of morality as the basis for politics. "It's something that's pretty damned profound." Whether moved by Howard Phillips, the Judeo-Christian ethic, or simple self-interest in influ-encing elections, Sears's PAC con-tributed to 29 of the 37 members of Congress who most consistently voted against individual rights.

Corporate officials don't like their firms to be held accountable for the conduct of legislators their PACs helped elect by spending large sums to influence your elections. But the flip side of single-issue politics is that the candidate General Motors helped elect because of his position on airbags becomes the senator who votes on all issues, including issues of personal freedom.

"I don't think we bear any responsibility for how a member votes on issues not related to business," said Frank Farone, a spokesman in the Washington office of GM. "It's a no-win issue and we don't want to get involved," he added, declining further comment.

But GM is involved. If GM, whose PAC spent a quarter of a million dollars to influence last year's elections, bears no responsiblity for the outcome, who does? What's good for General Motors may not necessarily be good for the country. GM supported 24 of the 37 most repressive members of Congress.

General Electric Co., the sponsor who brought you Ronald Reagan on TV in the 1960s, did not want to comment on the politicians it helped bring to the floor of the Senate in 1980. When told that 13 of the 17 senators on the "Most Repressive" list were also on

GE's PAC contribution list, GE PAC Secretary Stephen Galpin asked, "Those were the worst? How many of the best did we support? Because our support is based upon a variety of considerations, mostly economic but including human rights, I suspect that you will find that our political action committee sup-ported many candidates with records you would find admirable."

Indeed, GE has also given the Moral Majority reason to be angry, giving to 19 of the 22 senators who voted consistently pro-freedom, taking the opposite position from those listed in the box on page 8.

While GE, which has contributed to 86 of the 100 senators, can claim to consider a broad range of issues, most corporate PACs claim that their interest is only in promoting their business-related lobbying.

Shell Oil spokesman Tom Denman issued a statement from corporate headquarters in Houston when asked for comment, conceding that Shell's PAC had contributed to politicians labeled "most repressive" but noting (correctly) that "the contributions were modest." The statement concluded: Shell's PAC "selects candidates on the basis of their record or stated intention to support sound economic policy and to promote the free enterprise system. The particular votes or issues subjec-tively selected by Mr. Roeder for his ranking have never entered the decision process."

Similarly, M. E. M. Crosby, Director of Government Relations for Westinghouse, said, "I can't think of any reason why, when we sit down to think of who we're going to give to, we would be aware of how they were going to vote on that kind of issue" (of individual rights). And Mark Adams, Executive Director of the American Dental Association's PAC, noted, "We sure didn't base our support on the criteria you used. If it fell into that, it was just happenstance."

At PAC after PAC, officials recite the litany of nonresponsibility. Brian Meyer, Treasurer of the American Bankers Association's PAC, said, "The reason we supported these members had nothing to do with these issues." John Aquilino, Director of Public

Affairs for the National Rifle Associa-tion, plainly observes, "We're a single-issue organization." Aquilino added that the NRA views the right to bear arms as "the last safeguard of the people against tyrannical government," but that the NRA is "absolutely restricted to this one issue."

And that is precisely the point. Half the dictators, book-burners, and torturers in the world would meet the criteria of agreeing with these PACs on their economic issues, or the NRA on gun control.

Is a company accountable for the actions of politicians its PAC money helps elect? "I don't think that's reasonable," says Crosby of Westing-house, "because I don't think it's possible to determine that our money had anything to do with their election."

PACs make contributions for two basic purposes: to influence elections (to get rid of their opponents and elect or reelect their "friends"), and to influence legislators on specific issues. If the Westinghouse PAC isn't giving money to influence elections, what is the purpose of the contributions? "We like to think it has some effect," said Crosby.

Meyer of the American Bankers Association's PAC also says the PACs cannot be held responsible for the results of their efforts. "The people you've got to hold responsible are the voters who voted 'em in," Meyer said.

The PAC officials present a strange paradox. Legally, they can't be giving money to bribe legislators. So the purpose of their contributions must be stated as influencing elections. Yet they disclaim any responsibility for the effect of helping to defeat or elect candidates who might otherwise not have been chosen by the voters.

The importance of the PAC money cannot be understated. Most of the members of the House of Represen-tatives got more than half of their campaign money from PACs.

If politicians can be held account-able for where they get their money, it seems only logical that business and professional organizations can be held accountable for where they put it. These PACs don't necessarily intend to support repression with their campaign money. They just don't care. •

10 Vow; akowti