Corporate Politics

Keeping an eye on corporate political spending - by laverrueJeb Golinkin at the FrumForum thinks the Democrats are making too much of the Citizen's United decision:

Does anyone really think that the CEO of a Fortune 500 is going to be stupid enough to fund campaign advertisements? Think about it logically. It’s hard to imagine a more “Red” corporation than Wal-Mart. But consider the following facts: Each week, about 100 million Americans head to Wal-Mart to shop. A poll in 2004 found that 76% of voters that shop at Wal-Mart once a week voted for Bush. That’s an astonishing margin. But that still means that 24% of Wal-Mart shoppers voted for someone else (23% said they voted for Kerry). If you do the math, if 100 million customers make it to Wal-Mart next week, 23 million might be liberals. If Wal-Mart runs an advertisement supporting a candidate or makes campaign contributions to a candidate, it runs the risk that the New York Times finds out about it, puts a story on the front page, and as a result, 23 million of their customers may take their business elsewhere. Not only that, if they contribute, and then lose, they have pissed off the other party unnecessarily. Tell me, what good does that do?

A major corporation with major spending power would stand to gain very little from attempting to tip the balance of a few House or Senate races.

This logic makes superficial sense, except that the whole point of the legislation currently under discussion is to force corporations to disclose that they funded advertisements.  Since the right of corporations to spend on advertisements in political campaigns was established in a Supreme Court decision backed by the first amendment, Congressional Democrats can't pass a law to stop it from occurring.  However, they can make sure that corporations have to disclose in these ads exactly who is funding them.  

Mr. Golinkin is probably right that Wal-Mart stands to lose too much to directly fund Republican campaigns, but relying on the New York Times to highlight corporate political activity will allow plenty of leeway for undue influence.  Plus, if pretty much every corporation gets in the game because politics offers a fantastic investment opportunity (a couple of million bucks spent strategically can save billions when the Employee Free Choice Act never sees the light of day) then it will be hard to organize a boycott.  Politicians have to stand behind political ads, so should corporations.  

Producers already have undue influence over consumers because of the difficulty of collective action from the demand side, allowing corporations even more influence will distort the market outcomes in many subtle and not so subtle ways.  Pretending this isn't a possibility and that Democrats just want to exploit scary big businesses stereotypes is politics, not analysis.