Democrats and Republicans will party hard on soft money
Both political conventions are counting on lobbyists and corporations to foot a big part of the bill.
WASHINGTON — When delegates travel to the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions late this summer, they'll enter a cocoon of corporate largesse. Democrats will fly to Denver on reduced-fare tickets provided by United Airlines. Many will be picked up in plush new vehicles donated by General Motors that run on fuel made from "waste beer" donated by Molson Coors Brewing Co.
Like their GOP counterparts, they'll communicate using state-of-the-art technology provided by Microsoft, Google, Qwest or AT&T. And they'll party at corporate-funded events surrounding a carefully calibrated convention that has become, basically, a multimillion-dollar infomercial underwritten by corporations and lobbyists whose influence both presidential candidates decry.
But for Democrats, at least, this may be the last year for such massive corporate funding. Presidential candidate Barack Obama says he wants things to change.
In a statement provided Tuesday to The Times, Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said: "Moving forward, one of Sen. Obama's reform priorities will include changes in the way party conventions are funded to assure they can be run without dependence on soft money," the loosely restricted corporate and union donations that constitute most of the funding for conventions.
That contrasts with GOP presidential candidate John McCain, who also has sought to cast himself as a reformer where money in politics is concerned. He sees no urgent need to revamp the way conventions are funded.
"John McCain believes that it is drastically more important to reform our country's energy policy, tax code and the wasteful way the federal government treats taxpayer money than it is to try and provide further prohibitions on an entity [the convention host committee] that is already barred from political activity by law," said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds, responding to Obama's statement about funding conventions.
Both candidates pointed out that the convention funding system was in place long before they became their parties' presumptive nominees.
Each party's host committee is charged with raising more than $40 million, and the members of those committees and their informal advisors -- including the governors and other elected officials from Colorado, where Democrats will gather, and Minnesota, which will host the Republicans -- have met repeatedly with corporate donors, offering them perks in exchange for donations as high as $5 million.
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