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Rootstrikers to push political reforms, but Abramoff doesn’t support many of the central tenets of that and other reform groups, including public financing of elections and overturning “corporate personhood� court rulings that deem political spending by the rich to be a free speech right. In fact, Abramoff is still a rightwinger who shows little interest in limiting the ability of wealthy corporations and individuals to freely spend their money on political candidates and issues, placing him at odds with pretty much the entire political reform movement. Phillip Ung, a spokesperson for Common Cause — which has been working on these political reform efforts for decades — was a little skeptical about getting help from someone who once embodied the most corrupt and excessive aspects of the current system. “As much as we enjoy his newfound support for political reform, we also understand that he has a debt to pay, and not just to society,� Ung said of the $44 million in restitution that Abramoff still owes to his victims. Ung said that a stark example of
political corruption like Abramoff represents does help the cause, but that has little to do with his current advocacy. “The reform flag at the federal level goes almost nowhere if there’s not a political scandal,� Ung said, although even that isn’t saying much because, “Congress and DC only have tolerance for political reform one every 10 years or so.� With Democrats now overwhelmingly controlling California’s Legislature and executive offices, Ung sees opportunities for important reforms here. The most promising is Senate Bill 27, which would require political groups that raise more than $500,000 to disclose their donors. By contrast, Abramoff’s proposal seems tepid at best, and his strategy for selling it relies on using political spending to elect sympathetic people to Congress, which would seem to undermine his reform message almost as much as his pitches to corporate clients to hire him for lobbying consulting services (see www.abramoff.com). “He seems to be going back to his old ways,� Ung said of Abramoff. Abramoff said his legislation would broaden the definition of lobbyist, limit their campaign contributions to $500 per election cycle, and
prevent public officials from working as lobbyists for 10 years after they leave government. Then Abramoff said that he and his unspecified “we� will dump money into six contested Congressional races in 2014, trying to elect three Democrats and three Republicans who pledge to support his legislation, following that up in 2016 by targeting 25 to 50 races.
“I am agaInst money beIng used the wrong way In the system.� jack abramoff “Then and only then will Congress take it seriously,� Abramoff concluded, arguing that politicians respond to losing their jobs more than other means of persuasion. He’s going to use aggressive political spending to win the reforms he seeks, which don’t really do anything to limit political spending. When I asked Abramoff how increased political spending can
reform a political system corrupted by money, he replied, “You play with the tools and the battlefield you’re on.�
The sysTem, or iTs sponsors? Abramoff blames Congress for corruption far more than the lobbyists or wealthy special interests who are doing the corrupting, noting how difficult it is to get political reforms approved by legislators who want to later cash in on their public service. “The lobbyists are a response to the system set up by Congress,� he told the students, building on his earlier point that “99 percent of everything I did was legal, and that’s a bigger deal than the 1 percent that was illegal. That’s what has to change.� But he acknowledges that reforming the system will be “impossibly difficult� because those who are invested in the current system will always find loopholes to any new regulation. “They’re extremely brilliant people and their goal is to get around things,� he said. Omitted from Abramoff’s recitation of what’s wrong in Washington are the people doing the corrupting, that other 1 percent, the very rich. When I asked him about how he can really attack institutionalized
political corruption without going after the cash that feeds that corruption, he told me, “I tend to be nervous about a political approach that says, ‘It’s the rich.� Abramoff actually supports the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling, which ended controls on the political spending of wealthy individuals and corporations, telling the students, “We all want certain corporations to have the rights that we individuals have.� Abramoff also seems to dismiss the possibility of a grassroots political reform effort, saying that any change in the system would need support from both the left and the right, and the latter will kill any effort to actually remove private money from political campaigns. “You’re not going to have federal financing of elections. The right will die before they let that happen,� Abramoff said. That might have been the most insightful thing that Abramoff said to the students, although he certainly didn’t intend it the way that I heard it: maybe the right needs to die, in the political sense, before the system that Abramoff both decries and supports will change. 2
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