New law alters political arena
Last-minute lobbying by activists keeps the door closed on large corporate donations
Campaign reformers say it changed Hawaii's political landscape. Opponents say it was just a $1,000 misunderstanding. But one thing is clear: No one doubts the impact of Act 203, which is severely limiting corporate and union campaign contributions.
The law was written by the 2005 Legislature and took effect in January. It prevents corporations and unions from giving politicians more than $1,000 per election.
Now, some legislators are saying that limiting contributions from corporations to only $1,000 was not the intent of the bill. Last week, the Senate approved an amendment to 203, but the House dropped it.
What made the difference? When citizen activists heard the amendment would allow corporations to give candidates as much as they wanted, they rushed to lobby against it.
"Our intent was to stop it, but we didn't think it was possible. We really liked the campaign spending bill they passed last year," Jeff Mikulina, Sierra Club executive director, said.
While some legislators believe Act 203 has been misinterpreted, Barbara Wong, Campaign Spending Commission executive director, said the law is clear: Act 203 means corporations and other entities, such as unions, can give only $1,000 in total campaign contributions.
"The total amount a corporation or other entity can give is $1,000 in the primary and then another $1,000 in the general election," Wong said.
"It means the faucet is turned off. The members are going to have to go out to the grass roots and go door to door," House Speaker Calvin Say said in an interview last week.
Say acknowledged that it was the last-minute lobbying by citizen activists that turned his Democratic majority against the bill, and he did not have the votes to pass it out.
The tipping point came last Tuesday, according to Mikulina, when Rep. Sylvia Luke, Judiciary chairwoman, moved to kill the proposed amendment. There was pressure to move the bill back out on the floor for a vote, but Say and senators lobbying for the change failed.
Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, Judiciary chairwoman, who authored the original law and tried to get it amended this year, had disagreed with Wong's interpretation of the law.
"I have mixed emotions about this because I wrote the original campaign spending law that (former Gov.) Ben Cayetano vetoed. It banned both unions and corporations," Hanabusa said.
The incumbent House members, Hanabusa said, rely on donations from corporations for campaign money, and she said the act will have a big impact in local politics.
"I think the House races in particular will see a major change," Hanabusa said.
Both Say and Hanabusa noted that early in the session, election reform groups had started going into specific districts and holding roadside signs telling voters that House members had been accepting donations from tobacco companies. The new activism, lawmakers said, was unsettling to freshman legislators.
"As we understood the proposed change, it eliminated the cap on corporate giving, and it would allow corporations to give as much as they liked," said John Higgins, community liaison for Voter Owned Elections, formerly known as Hawaii Clean Elections. The 7-year-old campaign reform organization has been working to stop any changes to the new campaign law.
Scott Foster, the communications director for Voter Owned Elections, said that corporate interests contributed more than three-quarters of the more than $10 million Hawaii politicians collected during the 2004 political campaigns.
Now, both politicians and reformers say that politicians will have to find less expensive ways of campaigning because much of the corporate money simply will not be available.
According to Wong, the law is simple. If a corporation or a union had money in a political action committee before Act 203 took effect on Jan. 1, that money can be used for donations, up to the legal limits on donations to a specific race.
"If a corporation has money in its treasury and they tell us it was for a campaign or candidate, they have to show it was actually in a registered noncandidate committee," Wong said.
Campaigns that have been collecting money from unions and corporations since January, with the hope that the bill would be amended, now will have to return anything more than $1,000.
The returns could quickly run into the thousands of dollars. For instance, in 2005 the House Democrats' political action group, called Citizens for Responsive Government, raised $231,367.
A total of 114 unions and corporations gave to the Democrats' political action committees in 2005. Donors included the Hawaii State Teachers Association, R.J. Reynolds Corp., Hilton Hawaiian Village, HMSA and the Hawaii Super Ferry.
Now all those corporations are limited to one $1,000 donation, and they have to decide if it goes to the Democrats or with a candidate for the Legislature, Council or governor.
The only exception is if a corporation or union had money in its PAC in 2005.
That so-called "old money" can be spent without regulations, according to Wong.
Some unions realized that the law was changing in 2005 and dumped massive amounts into their political action committees.
The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, for instance, put in $200,000. That is twice as much as UHPA gave to candidates for the entire 2004 election period.
The Hawaii Carpenters Market Recovery Program, which goes under the name of the Pacific Resources Partnership, put in $150,000. In the 2004 election, the carpenters gave $100,300 to candidates.
The PAC for the AFL-CIO stashed away $180,923 in 2005. In comparison, COPE spent only $58,000 in election donations in 2004.
Some other large PACs with money to spend in this year's race include Realtors. The Realtors of Hawaii PAC had tucked away $254,791 by the end of 2005. In the 2004 elections, Realtors gave $130,000 in campaign donations.
