The cost of keeping Virginia legislators in office is paid almost entirely by business interests and their lobbyists in Virginia. And those interests say it's just a cost of doing business.
A Virginia Public Access Project analysis of 18 months of itemized campaign contributions to legislative candidates last week found that businesses that lobby the General Assembly or the lobbyists and firms that represent them invest almost exclusively in incumbents, as opposed to challengers or open-seat candidates.
The analysis reveals that 99.61% of the cash given to incumbents came from that group.
By contrast, challengers running against legislators received just 0.04 of a percentage point of their contributions from those givers, and candidates vying for open seats got 0.34%.
In dollars and cents, that means sitting lawmakers got $7.40 million of the $7.43 million in contributions business interests gave in legislative races since Jan. 1, 2010, VPAP found. Challengers got just $3,200.
Money follows power - always has, always will - and business donations in Virginia, where there are no limits on political fundraising or spending, illustrate it vividly.
Incumbents prosper because they're already in power and they're surer bets than challengers, said Bob Gibson, director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.
"Lobbyists give to incumbents because incumbents have generally safer districts, thanks to redistricting, and the proven ability to be likely winners," Gibson said. And to people who depend on access to legislative power for a living, politics is not a seasonal sport, he said.
"Lobbyists and business interests have a full-time interest in the workings of government, between elections. This, they feel, enhances their access and ability to influence and provide information on the spur of the moment to lawmakers," Gibson said.
To overlook or offend those who make laws regulating individual enterprises or whole industrial sectors in Virginia is suicide, veteran lobbyists say.
"I think it's obvious that the people who are already elected and on the committees that regulate your industry are people you can't ignore," said Doug Gray, who lobbies for the Virginia Association of Health Plans.
Gray, a student of politics who wrote a master's thesis on campaign finance, said it's indicative of America's interest-group culture. And lawmakers have perfected the art of squeezing contributions from lobbyists and their clients, particularly in years like this when all 100 House of Delegates seats and 40 Senate seats are up for election.
Legislators deliberately call after hours and leave voice mails with "rather direct requests about supporting their campaigns," Gray said. "You go through, write down all the requests, and they expect a callback and a discussion of whether you might be willing to supportive of their efforts. Every week, that's what happens."
"If you're in the business community, the challengers tend to leave you alone. I think they've come to the conclusion that there are more than enough requests already coming in from these people who are already in office," he said.
Julie Rautio of the small Richmond lobbying shop Capital Results LLC, said that in Virginia, big giving creates expectations of more big giving. And thanks to VPAP, a respected independent tracker of political cash in Virginia, politicians know who's giving down to the penny.
"They can see that Giant Corporation A gave to the Republican candidate, and the Democratic candidate, as long as they're competitive, all they have to do is ask and they're probably going to get the same amount as well," she said.
Big corporations with big public affairs budgets can dominate political giving in Virginia easier than in other states where campaign contributions are limited, Rautio said.
"If you're a company and you want to be a top 25 donor in, say, North Carolina or West Virginia, you can probably do that for $25,000," she said.
But to play with the big boys in Virginia, you'd have to match the likes of the state's dominant electrical utility, Dominion, which has given $430,000 just in legislative races since January 2010, or the Virginia Bankers Association at $370,822, or coal mining interest Alpha Natural Resources at $252,907.
Sums like that can corrode the confidence of ordinary people that their voices are heard against the high rollers in the corridors of power, Gibson said.
"It may give you the impression - and it may be accurate - that you may be standing in line to see and be heard by a delegate or senator when someone who has made a large contribution has a first step in that line," he said.
That's the way Earl Cherry sees it. When he's not smoking some of Southwest Virginia's finest brisket at the Galax Smokehouse, he's chatting up the regulars about politics and other things.
"It just absolutely disgusts me," Cherry said in a telephone interview. "That goes against everything, on a state level and the federal level, that our founding fathers fought for. It makes me physically sick to even think that."
Virginia Public Access Project: http://www.vpap.org' By Bob Lewis AP Political Writer. Bob Lewis has covered Virginia government and politics since 2000. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
