Wyoming LAP Book - How Campaigns are Financed

HOW LEGISLATIVE CAMPAIGNS ARE FINANCED

      Most legislators elected in 1996 spent money on their campaigns. Where did the money come from?

      All legislative candidates, winners and losers, are required to file a Candidate's Statement of Receipts and Expenditures with the Secretary of State's office within 10 days after the primary and general elections.
      The report requires the candidate to list by name, date, and amount all con tributions received from individuals, political action committees (PACs) and political parties. The candidate must also list all "in-kind" contributions (donations of goods or services), anonymous contributions, and contributions from the candidate and the candidate's immediate family. The candidate does not have to provide a name or date for cumulative contributions under $25; these can be reported as "unitemized."
      Many candidates choose to assemble a committee to run their campaign, e.g., the "Smith for House Committee." All contributions received by the committee, and the committee's expenditures, must be reported with the candidate's statement.
      In The Wyoming LAP* Book, we have compiled the campaign contribution information on each legislator. A detailed explanation of the presentation of this information is provided in the following section, How to Locate Your Legislator.
      Overview of Campaign Financing. Most of the money for most Wyoming legislative races comes from PACs.
      This contrasts with Wyoming statewide races, as well as state and national races in most other states, where - despite the publicity given to PACs - most campaign funds come from individuals.
      PACs exist because corporations, unions, and most other organizations are prohibited by election reform laws from contributing directly to candidates.
      Instead, they must form a PAC, file a Statement of Formation with the Secretary of State's office, and report their contributions and expenditures within 10 days after an election. (Semi-annual reports are also required during non-election years.)
      PACs raise their funds from individuals associated with the interest they represent. For large corporations, this is typically accomplished with a payroll deduction from managerial employees.
      Depending on their contracts, union members may choose an additional checkoff with their dues or make separate political contributions. Other organizations usually solicit their PAC funds by direct mail or other fundraising techniques.
      Wyoming law does not impose any limits on PAC contributions to state legislative races.
      Although PACs are frequently targeted as a bad influence in electoral politics, they are at least partly accountable to the public through reporting their contributions and expenditures. Campaign reforms focusing solely on PACs tend to create rather than solve problems.
      Limiting PAC contributions leads to either more PACs (to get around the limit) or so-called "independent expenditures," where groups spend money on behalf of - or, as is usually the case, against - a candidate without consulting with that candidate's campaign.
      Also, large individual contributions, or a large sum of small individual contributions collected by a certain interest, may bring special interest influence to bear just as surely as a PAC.
      The Money in Western Politics Project of the Western States Center in Portland, Oregon, has been compiling campaign contribution data from eight western states since 1990. A listing of PAC contributions to Wyoming legislative races in the 1992, 1994 and 1996 election cycles is shown on the following two pages.
      Note: PACs which contributed less than $1000 in each election cycle are not included in the following list, but are included in the legislative profiles. Due to reporting inconsistencies and other circumstances such as returned checks, the PAC contribution totals shown here may not exactly match the total of all contributions listed in the legislative profiles.

Political Action Committee Contributions

Political Action Committee	1992 contributions	1994 contributions	1996 contributions
Energy, Chemical and Railroad Industry PACs
AMAX Coal PAC (Cyprus Amax)	1600	2025	2650
Atlantic Richfield PAC	4800	3175	5000
Burlington Northern PAC (BNSF)	3250	2400	4000
Chevron PAC	10,000	5700	7600
Coastal Chemical Corp. PAC	4750	3100	3600
DuPont/Conoco PAC	2400	800	1725
Exxon Corp. PAC	11,900	9300	13,750
FMC (trona) Corp. PAC	2700	1900	0
Marathon Oil PAC	4800	1450	3100
Mont.-Dak. Utilities PAC (MDU Resources)	1200	1300	1300
Pacific Power & Light PACs	10,070	7200	7850
Petroleum Association of Wyoming PAC	9150	6900	8150
Questar Pipeline PAC	7250	1750	1000
Sun Oil PAC	2700	0	0
Texaco PAC	$5000	2550	2750
Union Pacific PACs	18,500	11,750	4500
Wyoming Amoco PAC	17,500	10,900	11,850
Wyoming Rural Electric Assn. PAC	1900	1000	1950
Totals	119,470	73,200	80,775

Union PACs
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers PAC	600	1500	1300
Int'l. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers PAC	0	3000	2700
Teamsters PAC	10,050	550	0
United Mine Workers PAC	1300	1000	1300
United Transportation Union PAC	16,400	7100	8232
Utility Workers of America, Local #127 PAC	3530	2800	1000
Wyoming AFL-CIO PAC	20,450	5440	6779
Wyoming Public Employees Assn. PAC	18,100	12,150	11,200
Totals	70,430	33,540	32,511

Professional PACs
Life Underwriters PAC	4500	3950	2050
Wyoming Certified Public Accountants PAC	2600	2950	1950
Wyoming Dental PAC	1400	200	1300
Wyoming EYE PAC (optometrists)	2000	0	0
Wyoming Education Association PAC	55,691	44,250	30,100
Wyoming Medical Society PAC	4650	2500	3700
Wyoming Realtors PAC	3850	2000	5100
Wyoming Trial Lawyers PAC	22,185	21,000	20,650
Totals	96,876	76,850	64,050

Other Business PACs
AT&T Mountain States	1800
Contractors PAC	4600	4725	9840
Norwest Bank PAC	1550	500	2000
Trucking Industry PAC	6350	5225	6550
US West PAC	10,000	6900	6100
Totals	22,500	17,350	24,490

Ideological PACs
Equality State Coalition PAC (all in-kind)	2775	280	2236
National Rifle Association PAC	0	9000	0
Wyoming Conservation PAC	1940	626	1098
Totals	4715	9906	3334

      Individual contributors to Wyoming campaigns are limited to $1000 per candidate per election (the primary and general elections count as two elections), with an overall limit of $25,000 per election cycle.
      Candidates and their immediate families are not subject to this limit with regard to their own campaigns.
      The largest individual contributor during the 1992, 1994 and 1996 elections was the True family of Casper, including the late H.A. True, Jean True and their three sons and their spouses (Diemer and Susie True, David and Melanie True, and H.A. III and Karen True). The True family made individual contributions as well as contributions from their federal PAC, the True Responsible Government Committee.
      The True family's principal business interests include oil, trucking and ranching. Diemer True is a former state senate president and former chair of the Wyoming Republican Party.
      The True family collectively contributed over $22,000 to Republican candidates in 1992, over $7500 in 1994, and over $9300 in 1996 (the latter two figures includes contributions from the True PAC).
      The second largest individual contributor, R.E. Holding, gave approximately $7250 to legislative candidates in 1996, $5000 in 1994 and $5100 in 1992. Holding owns the "Little America" fuel/motel/restaurant complexes in Wyoming as well as large landholdings in the West.

CLEAN MONEY CAMPAIGN REFORM

      Unsurprisingly, nearly 80% of Americans believe that elected officials are more accountable to those who give money to their campaigns than to ordinary people. The current campaign finance system, which almost invariably provides contributors some sort of quid pro quo in the form of tax breaks, relaxed regulation or other special treatment, has alienated the public and helped reduce participation in what should be the world's most vibrant democracy.
      We need to move toward a campaign finance system that allows our elected representatives to put the public interest first. As long as private money finances campaigns, private (special) interests will continue to exercise undue influence on the legislative process.
      The solution? One possibility is Clean Money Campaign Reform, aimed at cutting the direct connection between candidates and special interest contributors (both PACs and individuals).
      Clean Money Campaign Reform proposals provide candidates a set amount of public financing for their election campaigns if the candidates voluntarily: (1) reject private money; (2) limit their spending; and (3) shorten their campaigns. Participating candidates qualify by demonstrating broad public support, not by raising money (as in the presidential campaigns, which are partially publicly funded).
      While Clean Money Campaign Reform proposals have been offered at the national level, concrete action to implement Clean Money is moving forward in the states.
      In 1996, Maine voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative establishing a Clean Money finance system for their governor's race and state legislative races. More than a dozen other states are working on similar systems.
      Because many people are already turned off by the current campaign finance system, the idea of funding campaigns with taxpayers' money often triggers a further negative reaction: "I'm not paying for that!"
      But on second thought, most people realize they pay for campaigns now - and not by choice. When a big contributor gets a special tax break, who pays the tax the big contributor used to pay? When clean air regulations are relaxed to benefit a certain industry, whose air gets dirtier?
      This effect is seen even at the level of the Wyoming Legislature, where significant campaign contributions coupled with a strong lobbying presence give the state's mineral energy industries tremendous influence. This is manifested in tax breaks for mineral production, increases in sales tax instead of property tax and repeated attempts (many successful) to weaken protections for workers and the environment.
      Elected officials naturally want to please their supporters. Clean Money Campaign Reform seeks to restore fairness and equality to our democracy by making taxpayers and a candidate's supporters one and the same. If public officials are elected with public money, maybe they will want to please the public, not just a select few.