Something stunning was brought to my attention this afternoon.
Apparently, after learning that they didn't submit the lowest-priced response to our RFP, a hauler decided to do an anti-organization mailing ...
starting to sound familiar? This time it was Highland Sanitation, with a twist. They used their company's bills to Maplewood customers as a way to distribute Bob Cardinal's campaign literature, along with a letter from the hauler attacking the city council in general and me in particular. A resident told me he was surprised to open his Highland bill and find this letter and a flier “prepared and paid for” by the Cardinal campaign.
For now, I'm going to set aside the numerous false statements in the letter, which they
know to be false because they participated in the process, and even if they don't know what's in the other proposals they certainly should have kept a copy of their own for reference. Beyond the lies, this company-candidate collaboration for a mailing puts them in an "interesting" area of campaign finance law having to do with corporations buying candidates or elections to further their own profits, ahead of the public's health, safety, welfare, and financial interests.
You may have heard about that
Citizens United case, which laid out the right of corporations to make independent expenditures for or against particular candidates. Even after
Citizens United, there remains a bright line prohibiting direct contributions and coordinated expenditures – that's why you hear that blurb about “not approved by any candidate or candidate's committee” on attack ads put out by the faceless entities created to hide which corporations are funding them. They need to make clear that they're not making strategic decisions with the candidate they support to maximize the impact of their spending, and that they're not making their candidate directly aware of how much money they're spending to help get him/her elected.
It's still very, very illegal for a corporation in Minnesota to contribute
directly to a candidate's campaign. “Contribute” includes “in-kind” donations – say, paying to mail the candidate's literature directly to your own customer list.
Here we have a candidate whose platform is opposition to organized hauling. A hauler, seeing they're unlikely to land a city-wide contract, decides they'd rather make sure
no one gets it if it's not theirs. They notice a candidate who appears to put hauler profits or at least ideology ahead of resident pocketbooks. The hauler and candidate get in touch with each other, and work out a plan where the hauler will save the candidate a lot of money on postage by delivering his campaign literature in the hauler's bills. (Postage is a much bigger expense than printing when it comes to campaign literature.) Doesn't that smell just a little bit like the bottom a well-used trash bin?
How serious is this? Prohibited corporate contributions are taken very seriously, because of the enormous potential for corruption. Most campaign law infractions are misdemeanors or occasionally gross misdemeanors. This is one that goes into felony territory. (See
Minn. Stat. 211B.15 Subd. 6-7.) A company convicted of illegal corporate campaign contributions could be fined up to $40,000 and even forcibly dissolved; individuals at the company involved could face $20,000 fines each and/or up to five years' imprisonment.
Labels: Bob Cardinal, campaign 2011, organized collection
