Senate President Bill Cole may well end up running against a billionaire self-funding his campaign in the race for governor this fall.
Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler and former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin are currently running against the same billionaire — businessman Jim Justice — in the Democratic race for governor.
Looking to his race in the fall, Cole, a Republican, would like it to be easier to raise larger chunks of money from other wealthy people.
Kessler, Goodwin and Justice, all Democrats, say that's a bad idea.
A Cole-supported bill (SB 408) that would have made such changes, was discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee two weeks ago. It would have allowed campaign donors to give West Virginia candidates up to $2,700 per election, rather than the $1,000 that is currently allowed. It also would have made those changes effective May 11, 2016, the day after this year's primary election, just in time for the general election this fall.
But Democrats in the committee amended the bill to push back the effective date until next year and to increase financial disclosure requirements on “dark money” groups that spend money on elections without saying where that money comes from.
Once Democrats got those changes in the bill (with the votes of two Republicans), the GOP leadership stalled the bill in the committee. It has not advanced since then.
Cole said he'd like to see the bill come back, in its original form, but that it's probably dead. He doesn't plan on moving forward with it with the Democratic amendments in place.
While the race for governor in West Virginia has yet to really heat up, campaign finance has emerged as a potent political issue nationally.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump brags about self-funding his campaign, saying he won't be beholden to special interests. (He has, to date, self-funded about two-thirds of his campaign.) On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' legions of small donors and lack of a super PAC have become a rallying cry.
At $1,000, West Virginia has some of the lowest contribution limits in the country. The push to increase the limit to $2,700 would match it with the limit for federal elections.
Cole said we should raise the limits to minimize the advantage of self-funders.
“The way it is now, if we leave the limits exactly where they're at, it's becoming a rich man's game, if you can write a big check yourself you can go get elected and, you know, that's not the message we ought to be sending,” Cole said in an interview. “What we just did is send a signal that if you're rich you can run for office and if you're not, you can't.”
(Cole, a car dealer who has his own plane and a second home at The Greenbrier, is probably rich by most people's definitions. Kessler and Goodwin, both lawyers, are also well off. It remains to be seen if any of the three will spend large amounts of their own money on the campaign, as Justice, the state's richest man, has already begun to do. The first campaign finance filing deadline is April 1.)
In addition to Justice, Delegate Doug Reynolds, a Democrat running for attorney general, is also likely to spend a significant amount of his own money on his race for statewide office. Reynolds' opponent, Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey spent more than $1 million of own money to get elected in 2012.
Last year, a similar campaign finance bill that would have increased contribution limits, but paired it with increased disclosure for “dark money” groups, passed the Senate but bogged down in the House. The language on increased disclosure requirements was basically identical to the language that Democrats were able to insert in this year's bill.
Cole said that increasing the contribution limits would limit the effectiveness of outside groups, negating the need for increased disclosure.
“The argument is, well, it's all the dark money,” he said. “But if we allow candidates to raise enough money themselves then we know what the message is, we know what the candidate stands for and it isn't somebody else framing that discussion.”
Kessler said that without the increased disclosure, it makes no sense to increase the contribution limits and it certainly shouldn't be done in the midst of an election cycle.
“We can't, under Citizens United, stop people from giving unlimited amounts if they want to, but we certainly, even under that decision, can require them to tell us who they are,” he said in an interview last week. “I'm tired of it being the Wizard of Oz, with the man behind the curtain trying to control the entire political process.”
Despite his opposition to similar language this year, Cole voted for last year's compromise bill, but Kessler said he thought Cole was a “silent opponent” of the bill, helping to stall it in the House.
“The folks that are supporting many of his agenda items, ALEC and Americans for Prosperity and Greg Thomas, when we passed that bill out of here they had the longest faces I've seen around this Capitol in 20 years,” Kessler said. “I'm convinced those folks were advocating to kill the disclosure portion of the bill last year, so the bill died.”
Justice said he would support increased disclosure, but not the higher contribution limits.
“It's total hogwash,” he emailed through a spokesman. “The feckless politicians who want to debate this are just wasting time and money.”
In supporting increased disclosure, he cited his self-funded campaign as a selling point.
“Secret contributions are driving West Virginians away from the polls because it makes people think that big money from out-of-state donors matters more than their vote. There is really no excuse to not have more transparency in the 2016 election,” he said. “Too many of our politicians are bought and paid for by the special interests; the voters won't have to worry about that with me.”
Goodwin said he'd oppose not only the higher limits, but any campaign finance bill passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“The United States Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United has handed control of campaign finance to the very rich. The current state of campaign finance law is such that it endangers our democracy,” he emailed. “The West Virginia Legislature is controlled by the same powerful interests that were behind Citizens United, so I'm confident that the Legislature is not going to do anything to improve the situation. Any campaign finance legislation that could pass this Legislature would only make things worse.”
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.