The Case for PACs

byHerbert Alexander

Excerpted from Public Affairs Monograph

  1. PACs increased participation in the political process. The reform efforts that spawned PACs were designed to allow more voices to be heard in determining who will become our nation’s elected officials. Thanks in part to PACs, that goal has been achieved.

Although it is difficult to determine how many individuals now participate in the political process through voluntarily contributing to political action committees, some useful information is available. The survey of company PACs by Civil service, Inc., found that in the 1979-1980 election cycle more than 100,000 individuals contributed to the 275 PACs responding to the survey, and that the average number of donors to those PACs was 388…

Surveys taken between 1952 and 1976 indicate that from 8 to 12 percent of the total adult population contributed to politics at some level in presidential election years, with the figure standing at 9 percent in 1976. According to a survey by the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan, however, 13.4 percent of the adult population-about 17.1 million persons-gave to candidates and causes during the 1979-1980 election cycle. Survey data suggest that the increase registered in 1980 is due to the increased number of persons giving to interest groups.

  1. PACs allow individuals to increase the impact of their political activity. PACs and their interest group sponsors not only encourage individual citizens to participate in the electoral process, they provide them with a sense of achievement or effectiveness that accompanies taking part in political activity with like-minded persons rather than merely acting alone.
  1. PACs are a popular mechanism for political fund raising because they respect the manner in which society is structured. Occupational and interest groups have replaced the neighborhood as the center of activities and source of values and the ideologically ambiguous political parties as a source of political action. Individuals seem less willing to commit themselves to the broad agenda of the parties; they are interested mainly in single issues or clusters of issues. PACs, organized on the basis of specific occupational or socio-economic or issue groupings, allow individuals to join with others who share their values and interests and to undertake action to achieve the political goals they perceive as most important to them.
  1. PACs and the interest groups they represent serve as a safeguard against undue influence by the government or by the media. By energetically promoting their competing claims and views, such groups prevent the development of a single, official viewpoint or a media bias. They demonstrate the lively pluralism so highly valued and forcefully guaranteed by the framers of the Constitution.
  1. PACs have made more money available for political campaigns. By helping candidates pay the rising costs of conducting election campaigns, PACs help to assure the communication of the candidates’ views and positions and thus clarify campaign issues. They also encourage individuals without wealth to run for office.
  1. PACs have contributed to greater accountability in election campaign financing. Corporations are legitimately concerned about public policy, but prior to the FECA they were uncertain about the legality of providing financial support to candidates who would voice their concerns. That many corporations resorted to subterfuges to circumvent law is common knowledge. By sanctioning the use of PACs by corporations, the law has replaced the undisclosed and often questionable form of business participation in politics with the public and accountable form practiced by corporate and other business related PACs today…

HOW PACs CAN RESPOND

PACs enjoy a growing constituency, but, in view of current anti-PAC publicity and endeavors, PAC supporters must engage in a concerted educational effort regarding their methods and goals if PACs are to avoid being restricted in their ability to participate in the political process. That effort should include, certainly, responding with specific and accurate information to criticisms made of PACs and making plain the many values PACs bring to the political process.

Educational efforts also might include using the methods of PAC opponents to the advantage of the PAC movement. For example, PAC opponents frequently correlate PAC contributions and legislative outcomes and conclude that the contributions resulted in specific legislative decisions. PAC critics publicized widely the fact that maritime unions contributed heavily to some members of the House Merchant Marine Committee who favored a cargo preference bill introduced in 1977 and supported by the unions. They implied the committee members were influenced by the contributions to report out a favorable bill. PAC supporters did little to discover and publicize the committee members’ other sources of funds. The American Medical Association Political Action Committee, for example, contributed to every incumbent on the House Committee, yet AMPAC and the medical practitioners who support it had no vested interest in the cargo preference bill or in other legislation considered by the committee. Nor was much publicity given to the fact that the two committee members who received the greatest financial support from the unions represented districts in which there is a significant amount of port activity and that consequently they would understandably be responsive to maritime interests.

When critics use simplistic correlations to demonstrate undue PAC influence on the decisions of legislators, PAC supporters should endeavor to present the whole campaign finance picture: What percentage of the legislators’ campaign funds came from the interest group or groups in question? Did those groups also contribute to other legislators whose committee assignments gave them no formative role in legislation of particular interest to the groups? Did groups with no special interest in the legislation in question contribute to the legislators’ dealing with it at the committee or sub-committee level? What factors in the legislators’ home districts or states might have influenced the legislators’ decisions? What non-monetary pressures were brought to bear on the legislators?

It might also be useful for PAC supporters to publicize “negative correlations” which would demonstrate that PAC contributions often do not correlate with specific legislative decisions.

PAC supporters also should question the unarticulated assumptions at the basis of much of the anti-PAC criticism.

  • Money is not simply a necessary evil in the political process. By itself money is neutral; in politics as in other areas its uses and purposes determine its meaning.
  • There is nothing inherently immoral or corrupting about corporate or labor contributions of money, any more than any other private contribution of funds.
  • All campaign contributions are not attempts to gain special favors; rather, contributing political money is an important form of participation in a democracy.
  • Money is not the sole, and often not even the most important, political resource. Many other factors affect electoral and legislative outcomes…
  • Curbing interest group contributions will not free legislators of the dilemma of choosing between electoral necessity and legislative duty. Even if PACs were eliminated, legislators would still be confronted with the sometimes conflicting demands between doing what will help them remain in office and serving what they perceive as the public good.
  • A direct dialogue between candidates and individual voters without interest group influence is not possible in a representative democracy. Politics is about people, their ideas, interests and aspirations. Since people seek political fulfillment partly through groups, a politics in which supportive groups are shut out or seriously impaired is difficult to conceive.

There is a danger, clearly, in our pluralistic society if groups are overly restricted in their political activity. It is useful to recall that …the most significant movements of the last two decades-the civil rights movement, the Vietnam peace movement…-originated in the private sector, where the need for action was perceived and where needed interest organizations were established to carry it out. These movements would not have taken hold without the ability to enhance their political power.