Supreme Court ruling on campaign cash adds fuel to populist fire

1/21/2010 - Fox31 - Eli Stokols - Colorado candidates sounded off Thursday following the Supreme Court's landmark decision that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

Just two days after an unknown Republican state senator rode a wave of populist outrage to capture a Massachusetts Senate seat held by Democrats for more than half a decade, Colorado candidates staking out the same anti-establishment terrain sounded the alarm over the decision that, they believe, will corrupt democracy by further flooding the political marketplace with corporate cash.

"If you like the way Washington works, you're going to love this decision," said U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, the former House Speaker making long-shot primary challenge to Sen. Michael Bennet on the Democratic side.

"Special interest groups poured $1 billion into the last election. Today's ruling just opened the floodgates for billions more. The Supreme Court said that corporations and other interest groups can spend as much as they want on independent expenditures. It's as if the justices took a look at America's political system and concluded that special interests don't have enough power."

The outrage over "business as usual" fits with Romanoff's new anti-establishment turn.

In a statement, Sen. Michael Bennet, who come Friday will have served a full year in the Senate, expressed his own "displeasure" with the Court's decision.

"Allowing corporate influence to flow unfettered into federal campaigns will only undermine the confidence the American people have in their government, and serve only to stack the deck further in favor of special interests at the expense of hardworking Americans," Bennet said. "At a time when Washington is already too out of touch with the American people and too in tune with special interests, this decision sends exactly the wrong message."

Republican Senate candidate Jane Norton did not respond to a FOX 31 request for a statement on the decision.

"People make the instant connections between Republicans and corporate America so they see this and think it's a good day for Republicans," said political analyst Eric Sondermann. "And that's not completely true. Democrats have become quite good at accepting campaign donations from corporations too. But, it's still not something you're going to hear from Republicans, that they're happy about more corporate influence, when their grass roots is making a lot of noise about their own voices being heard."

But one Republican, who, like Romanoff, can more easily disparage corporate contributions because they're not getting any, is expressing his own displeasure with the Court's ruling.

"It's more money into the system and it's going to corrupt it," said Dan Maes, the Evergreen businessman whose gubernatorial bid on the Republican side would be getting even less traction than it is currently without the ardent support of Colorado Tea Party and 9-12 groups.

"The people are sick and tired of big money, wherever it comes from," Maes said. "Any candidate that starts getting a stockpile of money from corporate America is not going to be looked at well by people who are looking for something fresh and new."

But, having raised just more than $5,000 in the last quarter of 2009, Maes knows his grass-roots followers are going to have to put their money where their mouth is if he's going to have a prayer of staying in the race opposite Scott McInnis, who's raised over $1 million in the last six months.

It's possible, however unlikely, that this Supreme Court decision could spark enough populist outrage to bring in the windfall Maes needs.

"The timing of the decision is only going to intensify the kind of politics we have now," said David Sirota, a progressive author whose 2008 book, The Uprising, foreshadowed the dawning populist revolt. "It intensifies the idea that our politics are really being dominated by big money interests and an elite in Washington DC. This ruling actually says that that's fine and is actually going to get worse."

Sirota thinks that the decision will resonate with disaffected Democrats and Republicans alike.

"This gets at the contradiction of the Tea Party movement, which is both anti-corporate and libertarian," Sirota said. "This decision may appeal to that libertarian impulse, but it's also super pro-corporate.

"In reality, the individual Tea Party activist, like the progressive activist, like the average citizen, will have a much smaller voice in the political process because of this."

In Sondermann's view, that's nothing new.

"I don't know if you'll see a night and day difference," he said. "It's not as if the airwaves aren't already saturated with a lot of garbage."