For many years, legislators, lobbyists and major campaign contributors have defended California's system of financing political campaigns by arguing that contributions do not buy votes--only increase access to those who cast them. While the system, the defenders concede, may offer some advantages to major contributors, those advantages--merely the better chance to make one's case--are not the stuff of which political corruption is made.

This defense has always been weak, if not wholly specious. Even if its premise--that contributions only buy increased access--were granted, the line separating access and outright influence has always been thin. In politics, access is power.

As legislative deadlines approach, for example, lobbyists line up outside legislative chambers in the hope of getting 10 minutes with the overwhelmed legislators. They hand their business cards to the pages, who carry the notes onto the floor. There, the legislators decide who they will see and who will get the "Sorry, it's just too busy now" response. Even when there's no hint of an "I contributed--now you vote" arrangement, the ability to get two minutes to "explain" your position on this or that bill is real power.

For these reasons, the recent conviction of former state Sen. Paul B. Carpenter--the second guilty verdict growing out of the FBI's Sacramento sting operation--sends some precedent-setting signals. By convicting Carpenter of selling access--as opposed to just votes--the jury was drawing new lines in the political sand, defining as unacceptable what many may have once considered acceptable. At minimum, the jurors were suggesting that elected officials must take greater care not to favor--even in terms of personal availability--contributors over non-contributors.

Even if such a warning becomes more an ethical standard than an enforceable law, the Carpenter conviction may serve to focus media and public attention on some of the most pervasive, if less visible, forms of political corruption.

Most corruption stories zero in on the search for a "smoking gun"--lobbyist gives legislator $5,000 in exchange for legislator's vote. But most examples of political corruption take far more subtle, but no less dangerous, forms than the smoking-gun analogy suggests. They involve the constant bending of ethical boundaries by large numbers rather than the unquestioned crossing of the lines by small numbers.