Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [160]
Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller, Dollars and Votes, 61–62.
The sociologist Clayton Peoples has picked up on their analysis:
A true relationship can build between contributors and legislators, and this starts with the initial contribution. Clawson et al. (1998) note that PAC officers tend to deliver contributions in person so that they can start building a relationship (p. 33). The relationships begun with initial contributing grow stronger with subsequent interactions. Part of this stems from the overlapping activities of PAC associates and legislators, or the “focused organization” of their ties to use Feld’s (1981) terminology. PAC personnel “inhabit the same social world as [lawmakers] and their staffs…” and therefore contact occurs frequently since they “live in the same neighborhoods, belong to the same clubs, share friends and contacts, [etc.]” (Clawson et al. 1998: 85–86). This leads to genuine social relationships described by some as “friendship” and characterized by mutual trust. One PAC officer Clawson et al. (1998) interviewed said, “It’s hard to quantify what is social and what is business…. Some of those [legislators] are my best friends on the Hill. I see them personally, socially… they always help me with issues” (pp. 86–87). Other PAC officers provide similar statements. For instance, one officer contends, “The [legislator] that is your friend, you are going to be his primary concern. The PAC certainly is an important part of that…” (p. 85). This leads Clawson et al. to conclude, “What matters is… a relationship of trust: a reputation for taking care of your friends, for being someone whom others can count on, and knowing that if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” (p. 88).
Clayton D. Peoples, “Contributor Influence in Congress: Social Ties and PAC Effects on U.S. House Policymaking,” Sociology Quarterly 51 (2010): 649, 653–54.
Tolchin and Tolchin made a similar point in their powerful book Pinstripe Patronage: Political Favoritism from the Clubhouse to the White House and Beyond: “Lobbyists and members of Congress often become tied to each other through relationships based on mutual favors. These ties have become much stronger in recent years as election “reform” necessitates more and more fund-raising interdependence.” Martin Tolchin and Susan J. Tolchin, Pinstripe Patronage: Political Favoritism from the Clubhouse to the White House and Beyond (Boulder, Colo. Paradigm Publishers, 2010), 89.
60. Thomas M. Susman, “Private Ethics, Public Conduct: An Essay on Ethical Lobbying, Campaign Contributions, Reciprocity, and the Public Good,” Stanford Law and Policy Review 19 (2008): 10, 15 (quoting Paul H. Douglas, Ethics in Government [1952], 44).
61. Tolchin and Tolchin, Pinstripe Patronage, 2.
62. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money, 297.
63. Ibid.
64. Susman, “Private Ethics, Public Conduct,” 10, 15–17.
65. Michele Dell’Era, Lobbying and Reciprocity, working paper, Nov. 2009, 19.
66. Lawrence Lessig, “Democracy After Citizens United,” Boston Review (Sept./Nov. 2010), 15.
67. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money, 72.
68. Painter, Getting the Government America Deserves, 155. (“Campaign contributions are involved in earmarks, sometimes from lobbyists and sometimes from other persons and entities that benefit from earmarks.”)
69. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money, 124.
70. Silverstein, Turkmeniscam, 137.
71. Birnbaum, The Money Men, 169–70.
72. Ibid., 50.
73. Ibid., 169.
74. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money, 193–94.
75. Ibid., 172.
76. Ibid., 167.
77. Association of American Medical Colleges, “The Scientific Basis of Influence and Reciprocity: A Symposium” (2007), 10–12, available at link #96.
78. This idea is developed in Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, Voting with Dollars: A New Paradigm for Campaign Finance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 25–44.