News-Record.com

In a couple days, the North Carolina General Assembly will head back into session. To celebrate, the folks at Democracy North Carolina circulated a list of the biggest PAC contributors to the honorables.

From the Democracy North Carolina news release (link):

As the General Assembly prepares to convene, a new study shows that 25 special-interest groups – each with their own wish list for lawmakers – donated a record $5.1 million directly to state legislative candidates in the 2006 election. The groups include Realtors and beer wholesalers, bankers and dentists, lawyers and utility executives, dentists and auto dealers.

The $5.1 million total is almost double what the same groups gave legislative candidates just four years ago in the 2002 election, said Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina, the nonpartisan watchdog group that conducted the analysis. Eleven of the political action committees (PACs) contributed more than $200,000 each; only two gave that much in 2002.

The NC Realtors PAC, which topped the list in both election cycles, contributed $615,715 to General Assembly candidates in 2006, a leap from $235,200 in 2002. The Realtors PAC gave at least $3,000 to 107 of the state’s 170 legislators.

The data backing up this release is contained in this chart from Democracy NC (link). For the most part it confirms what passes for conventional wisdom around these parts, but I did have a few thoughts:

• As Bob Hall notes in the release, most legislators will tell you that campaign contributions don’t influence their votes. The problem, of course, is that no one believes businesses groups give $5.1 million just for the fun of it. From Hall’s release:

  “Groups complain about being shaken down for donations, but they use their role as money supplier to gain an advantage for goals that often conflict with another special interest or with the larger public interest,” he said. “Too many people act like this is a ‘pay to play’ system.”

  Some groups, like nurse anesthetists, have dramatically increased their giving, sometimes to offset the perceived leverage their opponents gain through their large donations.

• It is no surprise to see the real estate industry PAC at the top of the list. Laws and regulations that affect the real estate and building industry are a heavy proportion of the work that gets done here in any legislative session.

• I was a little surprised to see The North Carolina Association of Educators on the list and that they beat out such lobbying luminaries as the N.C. Beer and Wine Wholesalers and Sprint.

  Why? Because one of the major policy discussions that has been going on here for the past few sessions is how to raise the salaries of teachers so they are competitive with other states and so that people can afford to live on the salaries given entry level teachers.

  Or is that all principal money?

At any rate, this is a list worth keeping in mind as policy decisions unfold during the session.