MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON?

5/4/10

Today’s (i.e., Wednesday, 5/4’s) Wall Street Journal ran an outstanding article on self-financed candidates for congressional seats (“Running Races on Their Own Dimes,” page A8). As the article states,

“Dozens of car dealers, Internet millionaires, real-estate developers and doctors have leapt into the fray. A few of them, including Mr. (Steve) Clark (a Texas telecom executive), have bet the bulk of their savings to win a seat in Congress.”

This plethora of such self-financed candidates is a very favorable development for the future of the Republic, but not for the reasons outlined by those interviewed in connection with the article.
Note that, when the article listed the trades of these self-financed aspiring pols, “big time corporate execs who paid themselves huge sums of money out of all proportion to their largely undetectable (unless substantially negative) contributions to the success of their companies due to the inattentiveness or innate conflicts of their lap dog boards of directors” was not included. No, those financing their campaigns are, for the most part, small business people who worked hard, bet heavy, acted responsibly and intelligently, and won big. They are, in sum, the kind of people who made America great and remain our last, best bulwark against the doom which almost certainly awaits our once stellar Republic. Note that they are not snot-nosed youngsters with thoroughly unjustified messiah complexes who, upon graduating from law school, went to work on the staff of a Congressperson until something opened up in the state legislature where they preened and posed for the cameras until something opened up in Congress where they spent the rest of their lives, all the while, if they were GOPers, singing fulsome praise for the private sector they worked so hard to avoid.

We need more people in Congress who have shown enough initiative and savvy to be able to make the dough necessary to self-finance a campaign and who have had to live with the obstacles the aforementioned professional politicians have thrown in their paths. Then perhaps we will have a Congress that includes more people whose skills extend beyond self-promotion and popinjayism and who know the real impact of the fundraising disguised as legislating that goes on atop the Hill.

On the other hand, I am not as sanguine as is Jeff Longstreth, campaign manager for Cleveland car dealer Tom Ganley who is running for the 13th District House seat in Ohio, on another beneficial aspect of self-funding. Mr. Longstreth contends

“When Tom (Ganley) gets to Washington, and we are confident he will, he won’t owe anyone anything.”

Well, perhaps not immediately. But note that most of these self-funders, including Mr. Ganley, are, understandably, loaning, rather than giving, money to their campaigns. Should they win their races (And I, perhaps obviously, share Mr. Longstreth’s hope that Mr. Ganley and others like him will win their races.), they will be raising money to pay back those loans, only from the much fortified position of an incumbent Congressperson. Then these guys will surely owe their contributors something. Perhaps given the character most of these aspirants have shown building their businesses, they will not, like so many of the current crop of parasites that inhabits Capitol Hill, become beholden to the people who financed their campaigns, or, if they do, that obligation will not extend beyond the ideological.

As a good friend and avid reader likes to say, we can only hope.