Opinion/Streetalk............ 5 Sheila Leslie

The hypocrisy of Harvey’s prosecution

My 10-year-old daughter ran across the parking lot breathless with excitement, waving a hundred dollar bill. Our Girl Scout Troop was selling cookies, and she couldn’t wait to tell me that a man gave them the money but didn’t want the cookies. I was by Sheila Leslie suspicious, of course, and walked with her to the cookie station where another mother told me it was true. Harvey Whittemore just wanted to anonymously support the girls, and graciously peeled off a C-note, declining the goods. This was my first exposure to the grand persona of Harvey Whittemore. Fast forward 17 years to a disgraced Whittemore, found guilty of three felonies, awaiting sentencing in September. In those intervening years, I had lots of interaction with Harvey, the famous one-name lobbyist, representing Nevada’s most powerful special interests. As a legislator, I sometimes voted against him, but also gratefully accepted his help in getting my agenda through a cranky and recalcitrant state Senate where term limits hadn’t yet taken effect. The facts of the crime, making excessive campaign contributions to Sen. Harry Reid, are fairly straightforward, leading a reasonable person to

The RN&R ran this the conclusion that Harvey did indeed story on March 3, break the law. He clearly influenced 2005, when Harvey Whittemore was still at the top of the heap: family, friends and co-workers to donate the maximum to Sen. Reid’s www.newsreview. re-election campaign, and then reimcom/reno/public- bursed them through “gifts” which power-private-man/ often exceeded the amount donated content?oid=24231. to the campaign. Harvey truly is a generous man. But despite the ugly set of facts, it’s hard to work up any outrage over Harvey’s crime, when corporations and political action committees brazenly do much worse, albeit legally. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have opened corporate coffers since the Court ruled that campaign contributions are protected free speech, and therefore immune to restrictions, removing any semblance of fairness or transparency from the process. Harvey’s crime was thinking he could go a step further and make straw-man contributions, clearly against the law, calculating his actions would probably go unnoticed by a system that does little to regulate itself. He might have succeeded except for a separate lawsuit by his business partners who pointed the FBI in the right direction.

A smart lawyer, always looking to problem-solve a solution that satisfied everyone, could easily have hidden his contributions through legal means. Instead, Harvey got too comfortable with his wealth and influence, perhaps thinking no one would notice or care.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Myhre told the Reno Gazette-Journal his office was happy with the convictions, helpfully explaining that “these laws exist to protect the election process from undue influence and provide transparency to the voting public.” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman told reporters the conviction demonstrates the U.S. Justice Department is determined to prosecute people “who use illegal tricks to corrupt our democratic process. … The cornerstones of our campaign finance laws are contribution limits and transparency, and Mr. Whittemore’s crime was designed to undermine both.”

Neither mentioned the corrupting influence of political action committees that don’t have to disclose their donors or corporations that “bundle” their contributions to exceed the limits. These maneuvers are legal, but hardly less corrupting than Harvey’s crime.

Ironically, this case may open the way for unlimited contributions by individuals as it is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dominic Gentile, Harvey’s lawyer, says the case is far from over. “The U.S. Supreme Court has before it right now the precise issues that were raised by us pretrial, dealing with whether any limits on how much any individual can contribute to a campaign or to a person running for office are unconstitutional.”

Yes, Harvey was wrong to break the campaign laws. But his illegal actions pale in comparison with the legal bribery and abuse of the system that goes on all around us every day. Ω