CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Influence Markets 69
indicted in 1994 for offenses including embezzlement of public and
campaign funds, and served over a year in prison (Morris, 1996). Other
cases have involved bribes passed off as campaign contributions, outsized
honoraria for speeches (now outlawed for Members of Congress), gifts to
politicians’ friends, family members, business associates, or even favored
charities, and gifts in kind such as vacations, flights on corporate jets, and
choice seats at sporting events. Private-sector job offers following an
official’s departure from government could be the ‘‘back end’’ of a quid
pro quo.
It’s good to be an incumbent
Federalism and relatively weak political parties in the US foster freestanding
election campaigns, each responsible for its own organization
and nearly all of its funding. Given the cost of campaigns and the policy
benefits at stake, and in light of the rapid growth of soft-money contributions
beginning in the late 1980s, it might seem surprising that
outright bribery is not more common. But donors are not as powerful,
nor are candidates and elected officials as vulnerable, as is commonly
thought. Money, by itself, usually does not determine election outcomes;
rather, it tends to flow to those, usually incumbents, who are
likely to win anyway. Total spending is generally driven by how much
challengers are able to raise, with incumbents easily outspending them
in response. Contributors (particularly PACs), seeing challengers as
unlikely to win, give them little ‘‘hard money’’ and create a self-fulfilling
prophecy: in 2000, 63 percent of all PAC Congressional donations went
to House incumbents, and just 8 percent to their challengers; 14 percent
went to Senate incumbents, and 3 percent to their challengers
(Ornstein, Mann, and Malbin, 2002). Such incumbent advantages
will likely increase under BCRA, which is aimed at creating an allhard-money
system.
Thus the average House incumbent spent $985,461 during the twoyear
2004 electora l cycle ; chall engers spent an avera ge of $283,134
(a drop of about 25 percent from the 2000 cycle). In the Senate, incumbents
spent an average of $6,137,988, and challengers $2,182,732 –
again, down by a quarter from 2000. (Senate spending is less comparable
from one election to the next because states’ populations vary,
and only a third of the seats are elected in each cycle.) Measured
against such totals, even the maximum hard-money donation from an
individual ($1,000, at the time of the 2000 race) or a PAC ($5,000) is
small change – and most individual and PAC donors contribute less than
the maximum.