Ian Lind has exposed the FLOOD of money being spent by the National Association of Realtors to elect Ed Case. The Realtors spent
$602,017 on Case in August alone! This is WAY BEYOND a matter of him getting some donations from a PAC, which would have been limited to $5000.
How can Ed (and his supporters!) denounce Danny Akaka for getting PAC contributions when the Realtors are flooding the election with this kind of "independent" expenditure?
I do not have to fake my shock and outrage at this effort to buy the election. I do find it interesting that it takes a lone wolf, ex-reporter, ex-Common Cause executive director to dig up this information instead of the paid mainstream journalists from the two papers. Fortunately, Ian's blog is one of the most visited blogs in Hawaii. Let's see how long it takes for the paid journalists to take up the story.
Here an excerpt from Ian's story and a link to the rest of it:
FEC data shows the National Association of Realtors Political Action Committee spent a whopping $602,017 in August for television ads and direct mail in direct support of Case's campaign. This included $385,000 paid to the Fenn Communications Group for television ads, and $216,417 paid to Terris Barnes & Walters for a direct mail campaign in favor of Case.
That's more than the entire $597,575 raised by the Case campaign through the end of June 2006. This one PAC, in essence, more than doubled his money and did it by acting "independently" of the Case campaign.
Link: Ian Lind's Blog, Sept 11 post
It's one thing for a candidate to get some money from a special interest. You figure its influence will be diluted by other sources of money. But this amount is so outlandish that I DO find it shocking.
We need public financing of elections. In the mean time, we gotta reject someone so obviously beholden to this special interest.