Ward 1 City Council Candidate Ethan Ris' already unsupportable claims that he is somehow "of Providence" became even a bit more offensive last week, upon his first required campaign finance report filing. Between October and December, Ris netted $11,900, almost all of it raised at an inside-the-beltway fundraiser that his parents threw at his Maryland home over winter break.
The event was rife with corporate lobbyists with K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue addresses, who presumably work with Ris' parents.
In total, big-time Washington, DC lobbyists, consultants and lawyers donated at least $8,600. (Donations under $100 needn't be reported individually, so it's tough to be precise. The $8,600 figure does not include other out-of-state money raised from non-corporate interests.)
And who exactly is funding Ris' faux-grassroots, or "astro-turf," campaign to buy your Ward 1 Council seat? Let's take a look:
Linda Daschle, the wife of former US Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, has decided to throw $500 behind Ris' effort. According to a Washington Monthly article that explored a possible Daschle presidential run, "The landmines in Linda Daschle's professional portfolio will make Hillary Clinton's pork futures and law-firm billings look like mousetraps."
The article notes that Linda Daschle, like several other Ris donors, is a lobbyist for American Airlines, "which has had six fatal crashes since 1994 (not even including the World Trade Center flights)."
It continues, "Even as its planes have crashed, American has lobbied for years to water down safety and security regulations that might have helped foil the World Trade Center attacks. Yet thanks in part to lobbying efforts by Daschle - and support from her husband - American Airlines got a free pass in the recent airline bailout bill, escaping most legal liability for the hijackings and getting $583 million in cash grants - taxpayer money it will never have to repay." Linda Daschle also lobbies for a pharmaceutical company and defense contractors.
Steve McBee made a handsome donation of $250, with his cohorts donating several hundred more. They can afford it: According to the Center for Public Integrity, McBee's D.C. firm, McBee Strategic Consulting, spent $4.5 million in 2004 federal lobbying. The firm's clients include military contractors Northrup Grumman and Boeing, along with a slew of airports and airlines.
Several donors run Wexler, Walker and Associates, a D.C. powerhouse with scores of corporate clients, like Caterpillar, Eli Lilly, JP Morgan, Burger King and Nuclear Energy Institute.
The OBC group, once a top-5 DC lobbying firm, has fallen on hard times as of late, since its GOP-insider partner Nick Calio (President George W. Bush's roommate at Harvard Business School) left to work for the White House.
Maybe that's why OBC's execs are relegated to cutting $500 checks to first-time candidates for office in New England's second-biggest city.
In 2003 and 2004, the US Telecom Association spent $7.7 million lobbying the government to deregulate our nation's media and further consolidate its ownership in the hands of a few mega-corporations. In 2005, US Telecom's Senior Vice President, Edward Merlis, gave Ris $100.
The executive vice president of WorldComm's PR firm, APCO Worldwide, donated $500. The "About" section of APCO's website touts the profiles of some of its clients, like "A Fortune 50 American company seeking to shed its international reputation as a bully" and "two companies whose proposed merger is expected to be blocked by regulators."
Ris donor Bill Sweeney is the global government affairs director for the EDS consulting corporation, with $20.7 billion in 2004 revenues. David Lustig is the U.S. government affairs director for the multinational Unilever corporation.
Consultants at Burson-Marsteller, proudly the world's very largest PR firm, are weighing in in Providence neighborhood politics to the tune of hundreds of dollars. The executive vice president of the industry trade group, the American Association of Airline Executives donated, as did some folks from the Air Transport Association. Round that out with some dough from lobbyists for Lockheed Martin, Delta, Continental and JetBlue, and come November, perhaps Ris will have bought himself a seat on the Providence City Council.
Through our work on a variety of causes - organizing hotel workers who earn minimum wage, striving to restore the right to vote for convicted felons who've served their time and leading the Rhode Island effort for public financing of campaigns - we have come to understand the extraordinary structural electoral advantages already afforded the wealthy and powerful.
The interests of Ris' donors are not progressive - they're precisely what real Democrats and Greens should be working together to fight against. Ris' early alliance with corporate interests is especially disturbing in light of unprecedented development pressure in Providence, as multinational corporations jockey for local development rights, tax breaks and zoning changes.
It's unfortunately not shocking that politicians take money from all sorts of places. But having already allied himself with corporate lobbyists who couldn't care less about the formidable concerns facing Providence, how could Ward 1 voters possibly trust Ris to represent us? Even at this early stage in his political career, Ris has adopted the worst of the worst culture that Washington has to offer.
In his three years in office, incumbent David Segal has done so much for his community - Ward 1, Providence and beyond. He's done it by working his tail off for workers' rights, environmental justice, affordable housing, civil rights and civil liberties, even while planting trees, fixing potholes and funding neighborhood groups.
And, for the record, the $15,000 or so David Segal has raised while in office has come from more than 250 donors. Yes, a few contributions to his effort - mostly from family and friends - are from out-of-state, but upwards of 90 percent of his donors hail from little Rhody. And in 2002, he ran a true grassroots effort, spending about $7,000 - or half of each of his two closest competitors, far less than Ris has already raised and even much less than Ris raised from corporate interests alone.
David Segal's a uniter, not a divider. Check him out at www.VoteSegal.com.
