When Is Ethics Reform Not Ethics Reform?

I had hoped to have a brief sabbatical before resuming this space, but, alas, Choctaw Bob decided to call a special session of the new Republican Legislature, so at least one entry will be fueled by fruitcake and eggnog.

All you have to do in Alabama this week is pick up a major daily newspaper, (note the Publian throat-clearing on that page) or turn on the TV news, to hear how the Wonder of Ethics Reform has been ushered in by the new Republican monopoly on political power in Alabama. You would think no one ever testified under oath to Congress that Bob Riley pocketed millions in Choctaw casino money. Why, it probably all really went to those ethics-reform-killing Democrats who got voted out last month!

The Republican-Newhouse chorus of praise for restrictions on “lobbyist” expenditures depends, for its political effect, on the public’s failure to understand how lobbying really works. The rather simplistic public view - strongly supported by the editorial slant of the largest news outlets - shows most votes in the Legislature being determined over the tenderloin filet with Béarnaise butter at Sinclair’s or the chopped lobster over angel hair at SaZa’s. I won’t discount the impact this gustatory largess has on legislators (although both of the foregoing delicacies are within the per-meal limits of the new law), and its restriction will improve the moral atmosphere. But the real work of the lobbyist lies elsewhere.

The disproportionate influence of lobbyists in the Alabama Legislature stems from a number of factors. Perhaps the most underrated comes from their access to information not otherwise available to legislators. While legislators in many states have access to research staffs and personal staffs that are comparable to those in Congress, Alabama lags behind. The understaffed and underfunded Legislative Reference Service and Legislative Fiscal Office simply cannot provide anyone, including legislators, with much of the information needed to evaluate legislative proposals. Enter the lobbyist, or the interest group they represent. No one has performed this function as notably as the Alabama Education Association. No small part of the influence of Paul Hubbert and his employer comes from their mastery of the complicated budgetary and economic data necessary to balance a budget. In the coming GOP quadrennium, there will be new fights over how to deal with shortfalls in the education budget, but one thing will remain constant. If Governor Bentley’s staff says the Education Trust Fund will be X dollars in the black next year, and Dr. Hubbert’s staff says it will be Y dollars in the red, legislative leaders will be working from the latter presumption, even if they dare not admit it.

As much as lobbyists influence legislation by direct pressure, they earn their keep by simply tracking it, and counting the noses of supporters and opponents. Smaller groups, which don’t have a full time executive or staff in Montgomery, count on retained lobbyists to notify them if a bill impacting their members has been introduced, and then let them know where it is in the legislative process. Even the larger groups on Goat Hill - the AEA’s and the ALFA’s - largely use their lobbying staffs to send blast faxes or emails to members from Boaz to Brewton, to tell them it’s time to call their legislators about House Bill B. That sort of pressure, more than any martini, moves votes in the State House. Even, perhaps especially, in the case of big-ticket legislation, it’s the heavy-hitting principal, not the lobbyist, who makes the trek for deal-closing face time with a swing voter. John Archibald of The Birmingham News figured this out, when he noted (in attacking GOP Senator Scott Beason’s hypocrisy on “ethics reform”), that Beason didn’t wear a wire to talk to some briefcase-toting lobbyist lackey. He (allegedly) wore it to talk to Milton McGregor.

Of course, if you really want to move votes in the legislative process, donate. Fund those re-election bids. And while the “ethics reform” session put a few speed bumps in the path of redirected money, it came far short of erecting any roadblocks. Even the slight additional disclosure required under the PAC-transfer ban is likely to be of limited effect. Remember again AEA’s cannonade against Bradley Byrne during the GOP primary and runoff campaigns.

Even if Bill Maher got the source of the ads wrong, everyone in Alabama knew their origin. AEA’s sponsorship was the worst-kept secret in the history of Alabama politics. As with any step taken to dissuade future attackers, that bankrolling had to be an open secret to be effective. While the transfers to the “True Republican PAC” gave Tim James and Bentley a fig leaf behind which to hide, media buys of such an effective size can only come from a handful of places, and the old cui bono rule makes it easy to short-list the suspects. More to the point, despite the fact that everyone with a pulse knew the ads originated from AEA, they worked. Byrne went down in flames. In the meanwhile, the GOP “ethics” bills won’t particularly impede business interests funneling cash to “religious” groups, some 527 language in the bills notwithstanding. Those “religious” groups, in turn will continue to lobby for Christian stances, like corporate tax breaks, and will identify GOP nominees to their voter-members as “more aligned” with “Christian” positions.

The so-called “ethics reforms” may give the GOP some talking points, and may leave those unfamiliar with the daily grind on Goat Hill with the idea that things are now fine, but they really will not make any material change in how the people’s business is conducted at 11 South Union Street.

What we are left with is the inescapable conclusion that this session had nothing to do with ethics. It had everything to do with passing anti-AEA bills, banning teachers from running for the Legislature, and banning public entities from deducting AEA and ASEA political contributions from paychecks. (I am still waiting for the explanation of why it’s more unethical for a Democratic teacher to vote on an education budget, than it is for a Republican insurance agent to vote on a bill impacting the insurance industry.) Those bills would have been at serious risk of a Bentley veto come January, as well as being maneuvered behind budgets in a regular session. The 52-49 final House vote passing the payroll deduction bill shows that there was insufficient support to pass the bill in a regular session, with a governor more sensitive to employee rights.

Of course, as this blaring headline from The Birmingham News shows, the GOP and its media apologists have not wasted the opportunity to trumpet the “historic” accomplishments of Ethical Bob and his newly-empowered GOP Legislature. With few exceptions, the news coverage has repeated the Republican lie that Democratic Legislatures had “refused” to reform ethics, when in fact, Democratic proposals stronger than those on offer last week were passed by Democratic Houses, and filibustered or blocked by GOP minority blocs in successive Democratic Senates.

Perhaps - and it is our task as Democrats to help them do so - what the Republicans have done is to overreach in their giddy victory dance, and wakened a sleeping giant. In the early 1970’s, George Wallace, looking for some cash to spend as he chose, proposed a raid on the Education Trust Fund. Before this time, AEA had largely been a group of starving, underpaid professionals who gathered in Birmingham during spring break every year to get out of Scottsboro or Eufaula. Under the leadership of the recently-installed Dr. Hubbert, AEA rose with a unified voice, and hundreds of teachers jammed the halls of the Capitol, buttonholing every member of the Legislature. Not only was Wallace’s raid dead on arrival, before running for re-election in 1974, Wallace was careful to pre-empt AEA opposition by giving teachers a $1,000.00 a year across-the-board raise. (This would be close to $4,500.00 in 2010 dollars.) In recent years, while AEA has wielded unsurpassed clout by virtue of its focused financial support and lobbying effort, it has faded somewhat as a voting bloc. Some teachers look at their currently-comfortable paychecks, confuse themselves with members of the Mittelbourgeoisie, and vote Republican in response. Others heed the call of business-shill “clergy,” and vote Republican because Democrats aren’t trying hard enough to execute women trying to obtain abortions. Where the Republican attack on public education will be launched - reduced tenure rights to intimidate teachers, or diversion of scarce dollars to lower-paying charter schools - is not certain. That it will be launched is certain. Sooner, rather than later, any person with the wit to attain the baccalaureate which is a vocational prerequisite for teachers will realize these Republicans mean to do their wallets harm. The impact of 50,000 truly-ticked-off, college-educated-articulate men and women, with starting salaries of $36,000.00 from which to contribute, and all summer off work, can never be underestimated.

Autopsy Report - The Career of Bradley Byrne

Truthfully? This one was over when Baldwin County reported its results, and favorite son Bradley Byrne had only 51.9% of the vote there. (Only a nominal improvement over his 46.9% there in the primary.) When neighboring Mobile only gave him 51.3%, the champagne corks started popping at the Bentley victory party at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

The final chapter in one of the most implausible nomination stories in recent decades may take awhile to sort out, but the unofficial returns offer enough information to make some early conclusions. Let's go to the map to look at how the GOP gubernatorial runoff played out geographically, with the map of the June 1 primary below it for comparison purposes. The first thing that sticks out is that Bentley's strongest vote in the runoff came from those counties where he led the ticket in the first primary, including a whopping 86.1% in Tuscaloosa. Byrne's support, likewise, was strongest in those areas where he led the ticket in the first round. As I noted in analyzing those results before, the fingerprints of the GOP establishment are visible even on this simple a graphic rendition. Byrne's largest area of support, geographically, came from the establishment's base along I-85, including the home turf of Boss Mike Hubbard in Auburn. Byrne's support in the more historically Republican I-65 corridor faded a bit in the runoff, as he made only slight gains in Mobile and Baldwin Counties, and saw Bentley pass him in the critical GOP bastions of Autauga and Shelby Counties. Byrne's weak increases in his share of the total were also reflected in those counties carried by James and Moore in the first primary, most of which went to Bentley in the runoff.

There are two principal models for how Bentley won out there in the chattering classes and on the coffee circuit. The first posits that Bentley has greater appeal to moderates and independents, and that their greater role in the runoff electorate was decisive. The second posits that Bentley primarily won by getting James and Moore voters to switch to him in the runoff. The comparison of the two maps makes this look plausible, but there are more precise ways to test from currently available data.

First, let's compare turnout (expressed as a percentage of all registered voters casting votes) in the GOP runoff, with the percentage of the county vote obtained by Bentley:

This is almost a perfect shotgun-spread pattern, reflecting virtually no correlation. This is reflected by the computer-generated trendline, which is not quite parallel to the X axis, but close. The received wisdom in this race was that GOP insiders and regulars favored Byrne, and that larger turnout, which made them a smaller share of the voting pool, would benefit Bentley. To test this a little further, let's look at the correlation of the increase/decrease in turnout, with the increase in Bentley's share of the vote. (As expected, Bentley did not lose vote share in any county.)

As the descending trendline indicates, there was actually a tendency for Bentley's increase in vote share to be less in those counties where the turnout increased. What this all seems to indicate is that increasing the universe of voters in the runoff, at the county level, clearly gave Bentley no advantage, and arguably hurt him. This seems to weigh heavily against the idea that Bentley's showing came from reaching out to independents (or Democrats) whose presence would have pushed turnout upward in a given county.

One near-corollary of the "larger voter universe" theory was that Democrats, particularly those inspired by AEA, would skew the race in Bentley's favor, and any number of pundits and blog commentors, on both sides of the AEA fence, have stated this as a self-evident decisive fact. Do the numbers bear this out? Not really. Let's take a look at Bentley's take in a few select counties.

County	Bentley	Bentley %	Byrne	Byrne %
Statewide	260,887	56.1%	204,394	43.9%
Macon	221	55.0%	181	45.0%
Dallas	1,102	53.5%	958	46.5%
Lowndes	337	47.6%	371	52.4%
Russell	550	47.5%	608	52.5%
Barbour	338	46.3%	392	53.7%

Some of these counties have heavily black populations. All share, in common, a strong Democratic voting history. If a Democratic/AEA "sneak attack" were going to show up anywhere, it would be in those counties where organized GOTV mechanisms of the ADC and New South Coalition are in place, especially in light of the interlocking leadership of AEA and the ADC. But we simply don't see that in the above table. Neither, though this would be less probative due to other variables, do we see it in the more racially balanced counties in the table. Note also the extremely low overall vote in Macon County, which would not be that low if the invasion had materialized.

This is not to say that AEA did not have a tremendous, even decisive, impact. It did. But the data don't support a conclusion that it was effected by flooding the GOP polling places with members. Rather, the AEA impact came in its massive spending - at least $1,500,000.00, and probably much more when all the reports are in - on ads blasting Byrne.

Most negative paid media is primarily intended to persuade voters who are expected to vote. (Though there is some data showing it has a beneficial effect to the employer, in depressing the target's turnout, or in increasing the user's turnout.) The ads rolled out by AEA-backed PACs were certainly of the persuasive variety. Typical, and best-known of the bunch, was the famous "windvane" ad that accused Byrne of believing in evolution, and being uncertain about whether every word of the Bible is literally true:



What kind of effect did this have? Let's go back to the numbers. Specifically, let's look at Bentley's share of the vote in the runoff, as correlated with two data sets: the percentage of James's vote in the June 1 primary, and Moore's vote on the same day:

Hopefully, the computer-generated trendlines help make this data a little more clear. What we see here is a reasonably strong correlation between Moore's share of the primary vote and Bentley's share of the runoff pie. Perhaps a little surprisingly, we see a negative correlation between the James vote and the Bentley runoff tallies. In the immediate aftermath of the primary, most observers reckoned that James voters, angry about the slugfest they'd endured with Byrne in the primary, would trend toward Bentley. However, as the recount process initiated by James moved forward, reports began to emerge of friction between James and Bentley supporters as they tussled over the second runoff spot. Perhaps this bad blood spilled over into the runoff results. Another relevant factor is the diversity of the counties in which James led in the primary. A look at the June 1 map above will recall that his counties were well spread across the state. Many were in or near the Black Belt, are sparsely populated, and have GOP primaries that are even more sparsely attended. Some were more substantial, such as Lauderdale County, where Bentley did well with 56.1%. While the correlation is pretty solid, this diversity of location and size may overstate the significance of the negative correlation if one is not careful.

Yet it is with the Moore primary voters that the AEA media buy probably had its greatest effect. At the risk of oversimplifying, a Moore voter will go out of her way to tell you that evolution is rubbish, and the Bible is literally true. A James voter would say the same thing, but would probably need to be asked. The James voter would be much more likely to take a sip of his post-lawnmowing cold beer while answering your question; the Moore voter has an existential crisis on realizing there was a splash of rum in the Christmas fruitcake. The ads' focus on Byrne's Episcopalian lapses from Alabama orthodoxy would have resonated much more with Moore than with James voters. (Though there were doubtless a few of that sort in the James camp.) No one doubts the savvy of AEA's political shop, and this exact effect was probably no accident. Indeed, it was very likely the result of one of Dr. Johnson's carefully crafted message-testing polls.

This is a Democratic blog, and I have so far spent this entire post in the dismal universe of Republican swampland. Emerging, like Dante on Easter morning, to the brighter light of things Democratic, let's take a minute to think about what this all means about the prospects of our next Governor, Ron Sparks. It is not by accident that I refer to him as "next Governor" after all of these statistical meanderings. Because if I see anything from all this deconstruction of the Republican runoff tallies, it is that we do have a clear path to victory this November. The official GOP Party Line, as was emerging on the pages of The Birmingham News before Bradley Byrne's political body was cold, is that Bentley is a moderate, folksy character who can reach across party lines, dooming the Democrats to another gubernatorial defeat. What I hope you have seen, gentle reader, is that Bentley's runoff win came from a rearrangement of the same old furniture within the Republican house. It's a rearrangement that leaves many disenchanted James (and a few Byrne) supporters, especially of the less religious-fanatic variety, open to a Democratic message of regulated, taxed gaming as an alternative to higher taxes. More important, for all the GOP spin about buzz and excitement in their runoff, turnout in that non-event fell from the 19.0% of the primary, to a paltry 15.9% in the runoff. Even in Bentley's native Tuscaloosa County, with all the excitement generated by his showing in the primary, and the political viability conferred by it, turnout only rose from 16.2% in the primary to 19.0% in the runoff, and his gross vote increased by a mere 6,632 - not a lot for one's "hometown urban base" at the height of one's buzz. Thus, the Republican hard core who voted Tuesday are far outnumbered by the Democratic base and independents who didn't join that runoff. And therein lies the way to Democratic victory.