On January 9, 2007, Unity08 sent out a press release to all its friends in the corporate media:
Unity08 makes cleaning up the influence of lobbyist and special-interest money a defining element of its effort to win the White House in 2008
Washington, DC … January 9, 2007 … Unity08 launched its Clean Money Pledge today, kicking off the official presidential campaign season with its top-priority effort, a campaign to curtail the culture of lobbying excesses and endless elected-official fundraising in Washington.
Unity08 is calling on American voters to sign the following pledge at www.unity08.com:
“Change in Washington starts at the top. I will only vote for a presidential candidate who has raised more than half of his/her funds through small contributions of $250 or less.”
With the Clean Money Pledge, Unity08 makes reducing the influence of lobbyist and special interest money on American politics a defining element of its effort to win the White House with a bipartisan “Unity Ticket” in 2008. Unity08 believes that long before the first presidential primary, the race for big campaign dollars dramatically limits the choices available to American voters. In today’s presidential politics, only those candidates who are stellar at courting big-dollar donations from lobbyists and special interests generate the media attention necessary to situate themselves for a legitimate run in the primaries.
Unity08 sent a letter the week of December 25 to every possible or likely presidential candidate informing them of this new campaign and asking them to commit now to adopting this self-imposed limit and generate more than half of their total contributions in small, $250 increments or less.
“Unity08′s battle to transform American politics begins in earnest today,” said Unity08 founders council member Doug Bailey. “Americans are sick and tired of power in Washington built on lobbyist money and special interests, and of candidates paying lip service to the problem without actually doing something about it.
The whole “opposition to lobbyists” thing was pretty interesting, considering that two lobbyists are the co-chairs of its rules committee, and four registered lobbyists were chosen to represent Unity08 in court as it demands the right to take… small donations from everyday folks? Ha, ha. No, the Unity08 lawsuit demands the right to take donations of unlimited size. That wouldn’t be clean money by Unity08′s definition, would it?
Until Unity08′s DC lobbyist-lawyers prevail, the pesky, pesky law now in place keeps Unity08 from taking contributions of any more than $5,000, a limit about which Unity08 whines to the judge. But even with the help of that limitation, Unity08 cannot seem to keep its own Clean Money Pledge.
Let’s consider the most recently available data of campaign contribution data to Unity08. Yesterday (three days late — but who cares about details when you’re running an election?) Unity08 provided another month of campaign contribution data. These data appear to be for the month of March 2007 if Unity08 is keeping its records correctly, although time has shown we cannot depend on that. We will have to wait until July of 2007 (for the six-month report that is required by the IRS in odd-numbered years) to verify what are typically error-ridden data. Until then, we’ll just have to go with what we have.
By looking at the different between Unity08′s latest year-so-far report and the one it offered last month to summarize January-February of 2007, we can tell what contributions Unity08 has disclosed since March. The disclosed contributions (which are those of at least $200) are only 21 in number, at the rate of two contributions every three days. Not a very fast clip, is it? But oh, what a difference the size of those few contributions makes! Here’s the distribution of contributions:
6 contributions of $5,000 = $30,000
1 contribution of $2,500 = $2,500
2 contributions of $2,000 = $4,000
3 contributions of $1,000 = $3,000
5 contributions of $500 = $2,500
1 contribution of $250 = $250
2 contributions of $200 = $400
Unity08 itself has drawn a bright line: donations of $250 or less are “clean,” and donations of more than $250 are “dirty.” With that guidance helpfully kept in our noggins, let’s consider just how clean the disclosed donations to Unity08 in March 2007 were:
Oh, dear, that’s not very clean, is it? Only 2% clean, to be specific.
Now, we must be fair: Unity08 has chosen not to disclose information declaring how much money it received from individuals giving less than $200. But we can make a fair guess from previous reports. In the 3rd quarter of 2006, Unity08 received donations of about $9,000 per month from donors of less than $200, and in the 4th quarter of 2006, Unity08 received donations of about $8,000 per month from donors of less than $200. Let’s be generous and imagine that Unity08 grabbed in the larger number from these two quarters, $9,000 of “Clean Money” from donors of $200 or less. What would the share of “Clean Money” compared to that of “Dirty Money” look like under these circumstances?
That’s still wouldn’t be very clean: 81% dirty, 19% clean.
I suppose this means that by Unity08′s own standards laid out in its Clean Money Pledge, you really should not be supporting the organization. How dirty do you suppose Unity08 executives are feeling right now?
