Political Forecast

UPDATE (Mon., Jan. 30): State 29 updated his original post this morning, clarifying his original position on restoring felon’s voting rights from this post from November of 2004 — from an older contributor to the blog. They’ve certainly qualified their position a bit, especially in subsequent posts where they’ve railed on the executive order because it even allowed sex offenders to restore their rights and that’s a potential problem because they can walk into schools to vote. That’s a legitimate concern. But I just came up with a brilliant idea — why not force them to receive an absentee ballot by mail if they want to vote then? That means they have to request it via postal mail or pick it up at the county auditor’s office (away from children) — and it also helps keep up a current address on the offender so the public can be appropriately notified of where the offender lives and it could used in conjunction with the Iowa Sex Offender Database.

Anyway, here is the meat of what State writes in his update:

“We don’t think it is ethically proper for a statewide candidate for public office to be accepting $40,000 from any individual. Period. That’s way too much money.

We don’t think it is ethically proper for statewide candidates to be accepting large amounts of money from individuals residing outside the state border. We’re not saying that all out-of-state contributions should be banned. The limit should be greatly reduced.

We don’t think statewide candidates should be accepting money from convicted criminals, especially those found guilty of insider trading and fined a million dollars. That’s just wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Ok, we know you want to see campaign contribution limits, especially for folks out of state. We’ve gotten that message loud and clear from you in the past. What I want to know is how it is “wrong, wrong, wrong” for someone to take a campaign contribution from a convicted criminal. I’m pretty sure that if you look through any other candidates’ contributors’ backgrounds, as least one of them has some kind of criminal conviction on their record. If we’re going to restore their right to vote, like evidently State does want to do in most cases, why not maintain their ability to contribute, too? It’s not like those who accept their contributions become part of the “convicted felon lobby” as David Yepsen might put it.

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State 29 asks for a response to this:

“From a reader:

Scott K. Ginsburg, friend to Chet Culver, gave $40,000 to his Iowa Governor Campaign. Mr. Ginsburg was banned for life by the SEC for Securities violations and fined $1 million by a U.S. District Court.

We confirmed that the Culver campaign received $40,000 from Dallas businessman Scott K. Ginsburg. $10,000 disclosed here (PDF). $10,000 and $20,000 contributions disclosed here (PDF).

So I will.

State is pissed because no one in the local media is making a big deal out of this and no one is attacking Culver on it. However, the media is reporting this — Tom Beaumont did in Saturday’s Des Moines Register:

“There was also Scott Ginsburg of Texas, who owns a string of luxury car dealerships in the Dallas area and worked for Culver’s father.

Ginsburg, a Sioux City native, gave the younger Culver $40,000 last year, making him one of the campaign’s top donors.

What Culver’s campaign aides didn’t know until they were notified by The Des Moines Register was that in 2002, Ginsburg was found to have violated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule on insider trading and was assessed a $1 million civil penalty.

“Although he made a mistake, he is as entitled as anyone to participate in the political process in his home state,” Culver campaign manager Patrick Dillon said.”

Now, I admit that this is a huge oversight. But it happens. People — whether they have a criminal record or not — have a right to give to political campaigns, don’t they? What is the big deal about this besides trying to bring negative publicity to the Culver Camp and make them seem like they’re doing something wrong, when in fact, they aren’t.

Patty Judge accepts money from big corporate ag lobbyists — legally under Iowa’s ridiculous lack of contribution limits — and it has to become a major issue because someone is trying to make the case that she’s being bought off. Chet Culver accepts money from a convicted insider trader so that automatically makes him a bad guy, plus Bill Knapp has helped him out too. Oh no. Ed Fallon gets money from a Drake University adjunct professor — does that mean we have to rail against liberal bias on campus or Drake’s mission to offer a better focus on diversity? State’s railed on both of those before (click the links).

Sure, all of these bring up some legitimate concerns — clean elections laws, campaign finance reform, education issues, etc. But when the point of bringing all of this is up is just to reiterate a cynical viewpoint of how politics is worthless unless your backing the best and most morally sound candidate. You can’t change politics if all you do is complain about how shitty it is currently and how they should change because you say so. Do something about it. Run yourself, introduce resolutions in the caucuses, etc. There are steps one can take without just sitting back and being an armchair commentator.

As for State, first he wants to make sure felons never get their right to vote back because of what Roger Bentley did to Jetseta Gage. I don’t know what the problem is, because the guy is clearly going to jail for a long time and will probably never get back out. Of course her abduction, assault, and murder was a tragedy. Should that dictate how the politics of this process play out now, though?

Now State wants to keep felons from contributing to political campaigns — at least if they’re from out of state.

What’s next — do we just start summarily executing felons? It makes things cheaper and easier, I guess.