Summa Abramoffica.
For a lot of you this will cover old ground. But there have been a number of questions on this. So let me try to briefly sort out some of the main points and make a couple key distinctions.
Did Jack Abramoff give money pretty much equally to both parties? Or did he only give to Republicans?
You can hear people saying both on the web and the airwaves. And in almost every case the seeming contradictions stem from the fact that the people talking — either intentionally or otherwise — are comparing apples and oranges.
Did Jack Abramoff give money to Democrats? To the best of my knowledge Abramoff never contributed any money to Democrats. And that’s hardly surprising. Abramoff is a life-long professional Republican. How much money do you figure James Carville has contributed to Republicans over the last two decades. Or Paul Begala? It’s almost a silly question.
When you hear about Republicans and Democrats getting ‘Abramoff money’ what’s being talked about aren’t personal contributions from Abramoff but contributions from entities he worked for as a lobbyist. So, for instance, Abramoff lobbies for Indian tribe X. Indian tribe X contributes to politician Y. Hence, politician Y got ‘Abramoff money’.
(Often these calculations figure in only the tribes and not other groups and individuals Abramoff worked for; but that’s another story.)
Now, is that logic fair? Is that ‘Abramoff money’?
As a political matter, it probably makes sense now for every pol to unload that money — a conclusion most of them, as you can see, are coming to on their own.
On the merits, though, it’s more difficult to make generalizations.
We know from some of the publicly released emails, that Abramoff in many cases used his clients’ bank accounts very much as if they were his own, often giving them specific amounts and recipients for political contributions. In many cases, too, he had them make donations that had little or nothing to do with their own interests (defined in lobbying terms). For instance, what interest did a couple of Abramoff tribe clients have giving money to the New Hampshire Republican party a day or two before they pulled their phone-jamming scam?
There are other cases though where a given politician was associated with Indian rights issues either before Abramoff came on the scene or because of the state or district they represent. There are members of Congress in both parties who fall into that category and are, to some extent, being unfairly tarred.
For these reasons, pure dollar amounts can’t tell the whole story without getting more deeply into the context.
More generally, I think you’ll see over the course of the next year that these federal ‘hard’ money contributions — either from Abramoff or his clients — aren’t where the real game was being played. The real action was in money funnelled or laundered through various DC-based non-profits or de facto cash payments to members of Congress or their staffs.
Stay tuned.
