From the New York Times

EDITORIAL OBSERVER

Buying a High-Priced Upgrade on the Political Back-Scratching Circuit
By ADAM COHEN

The letter from the Republican Party to Bristol-Myers Squibb is as subtle as
a sledgehammer. The Republicans expect a $250,000 contribution. The payoff?
Jim Nicholson, then the Republican National Committee chairman, encloses the
Republican health care package and asks for suggested changes. "We must keep
the lines of communications open," he tells the drug giant ominously, "if we
want to continue passing legislation that will benefit your industry."
The Bristol-Myers shakedown is part of the record in McConnell v. Federal
Election Commission, the challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance
law now before the Supreme Court. It is one of a stack of documents
detailing just how corporate executives and billionaires convert six-figure
contributions into meetings with members of Congress, and a role in writing
legislation. It is, by now, no great surprise that this goes on. But these
documents still shock, by how blatant the deals are, and how willing the
participants are to write it all down.
Much of the record in the case remains secret — the parties agreed to this
to expedite a Supreme Court ruling — but under pressure from
McCain-Feingold's defenders, parts have been made public. Every American
should read what are known as the "Internal Political Party Documents" (they
can be found at www.campaignlegalcenter.org, under the header
BCRA/McCain—Feingold) and be prepared to be outraged if the court strikes
down McCain-Feingold's modest attempts to fix our broken democracy.
On the surface, many of the documents summon up a world of wealthy bonhomie.
"It was great seeing you in New York at the Plaza," the Republican National
Committee finance chairman, Mel Sembler, tells Global Crossing's
co-chairman, Lodwrick Cook. "I'm glad Kim's coming out to Aspen," Haley
Barbour, who heads a group of the Republican Party's top donors, writes to
Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management. But it doesn't take long to turn to
business. Mr. Barbour tells Mr. Moore that a top party official
"particularly appreciated picking your brain on the Mexican peso deal" and
"literally passed on what he heard that day to [Senate majority leader Bob]
Dole and [House Speaker Newt] Gingrich."
If anyone was wondering, the documents make clear that money buys access. At
the bottom of a typewritten letter thanking Phil Anschutz, the billionaire
businessman, for a $100,000 contribution, Mr. Nicholson scrawls: "I hope
your meeting with Trent Lott was productive. Thanks Phil!" On a Democratic
call list is a note to ask Denise Rich, whose ex-husband would later be
pardoned by President Bill Clinton, "to give 80K more this year for lunch
with" the president.
And access gets results, as the contributors are the first to admit. "Many
thanks for putting me in touch with Governor Ryan of Illinois," Mr. Cook of
Global Crossing writes Mr. Nicholson. "He was very receptive to my request
to move things along in terms of our issues with that state." The Edison
Electric Institute's vice president reports back on a successful dinner the
Republican Party set up with a key congressman and his wife, saying "We
could not have asked for more."
And favorable government action, the documents assume, should be paid for. A
Democratic call sheet advises asking Panhandle Eastern for $10,000 and notes
that its vice chairman met with President Clinton about deepwater drilling
rights in the Gulf of Mexico, and that the Clinton administration was
"instrumental in getting this issue through Congress." A Republican call
sheet says a retired chairman of Enron, who now wants to build an oil
pipeline in the Arctic, "discussed the energy issue" and is sending $25,000.
Mr. Sembler's chatty note to Mr. Cook was a reminder that he had agreed to
increase his donation from $100,000 to $250,000 when a pending merger went
through. "Thankfully this has now been approved," the R.N.C. finance
chairman writes, "so I am taking the liberty of enclosing an invoice for the
additional upgrade."
These documents support specific parts of the legal arguments by the
McCain-Feingold law's defenders. Notably, they belie the claim that the
political parties operate independent of federal candidates and
officeholders, and therefore should not be regulated by federal law. They
also offer a disturbing explanation for why certain issues, like Arctic
drilling, won't go away on Capitol Hill, and others, like gun control, get
so little traction. Most important, they show how large campaign
contributions are rotting American democracy at its foundation.
If McCain-Feingold loses in the Supreme Court, it could be an epic defeat
for efforts to clean up American government. When advocates of reform lost
in Congress, they returned in the next session, and eventually they
prevailed. But if the justices hold that the basic building blocks of
campaign finance legislation violate the Constitution, as they might, it
could wipe out any hope for reform for decades.
At oral argument last week, it seemed that the justices were sharply divided
— and that, as is so often the case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may
singlehandedly decide what kind of a nation we will be. When historians look
back on the Rehnquist Court, they will no doubt begin with its decision in
Bush v. Gore, stopping the vote-counting in a presidential election. That
case was decided in the heated atmosphere of a crisis, but this one will not
be.
If the same five justices who stopped the Florida count rule that even
minimal, bipartisan campaign finance reform is unconstitutional, they will
be writing their legacy — as the court that allowed American democracy to
slip away.