Voters should rebel against super PAC campaign clout

For the first time since the infamous smear against Ben Cayetano’s 2012 mayoral campaign by Pacific Resource Partnership, a well-funded super PAC is investing heavily in a Hawaii election.

Be Change Now, which, like PRP, is controlled by the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters, this year has committed hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising to support state Sen. Josh Green’s campaign for lieutenant governor and recently announced it will become involved in U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa’s bid to unseat Gov. David Ige.

The funding is not yet as great as in 2012 and the message so far is more positive than the attack ads that falsely accused Cayetano of running a pay-to-play scheme when he was governor, but it raises similar concerns about one special interest — in this case some 8,000 carpenters — having an outsized voice in an election.

While individual and organizational contributions to political candidates are strictly limited by law, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United gave political action committees such as Be Change Now the right to spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates, as long as they work independently from the campaigns.

In 2012, PRP spent $3.6 million to help Mayor Kirk Caldwell defeat Cayetano’s anti-rail campaign, considerably more than the combined amount spent by the two candidates and all other PACs, showing the power of super PACs to effectively drown out other voices.

It led to a Campaign Spending Commission investigation and a lawsuit that PRP settled by apologizing to Cayetano and donating $125,000 to his charities — all after the election was over and the political goal was achieved.

The carpenters’ spending appears more modest this year — about $460,000 so far for ads in support of Green and about $80,000 for Hanabusa — but the first official spending reports aren’t due until Aug. 1 for the Aug. 11 primary election.

This magnitude of spending has major impact on a Democratic lieutenant governor primary that also includes state Sens. Jill Tokuda and Will Espero, Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho and former school board member Kim Coco Iwamoto.

The ads for Green have skirted the carpenters’ controversial priorities — rail and development — in favor of feel-good homilies about public education, women’s rights, homelessness and renewable energy.

Since the Citizens United ruling, many voters have felt powerless to fight back against the super PACs, while candidates claim they have no control over independent committees working on their behalf.

But we are not without options.

If we want big special-interest money out of politics, we can stop rewarding it and instead make it a political liability by simply not voting for candidates who gladly accept super PAC support instead of calling it out as the perversion of fair democratic elections that it is.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.