Monarchy to oligarchy?

Alliance for Florida's Economy Inc.'s brazen move to openly express its desire to influence the outcome of congressional elections takes lobbying to new level.

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By MARTIN DYCKMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 4, 2000

The 224 years since America shed the British monarchy have seen a perpetual struggle to protect our democracy from wealthy and powerful forces that show no more true respect for representative government than George III did. The latest grim news on that front is from Tallahassee, where Associated Industries of Florida, the state's self-appointed shadow government, has spun off a for-profit corporation to elect a "pro-business" Legislature and to secretly raise and spend staggering sums in the process.

Its published plans call for raising as much as $250,000 from each of 20 companies and spending at least $2.75 million to influence the outcome of as many as 16 House races at $75,000 each and four Senate contests at $300,000 per race. Unlike a conventional political committee, the organization, chartered as the Alliance for Florida's Economy Inc., won't have to report who contributes the money or how it is spent. Neither will the candidates who benefit from this so-called voter education.

But it's an open secret as to who at least one of the targets is. That would be Senate Majority Leader Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor, if his enemies can recruit an opponent witless enough to want to be seen dangling from their strings.

Last year, Latvala steered to passage the "tort reform" legislation that was among the most important bills in the history of Associated Industries. This year, however, he crossed the lobby by refusing to support a last-minute amendment that would have required employees, rather than insurers such as the Associated Industries Insurance Co., to pay legal fees in some workers' compensation cases. Latvala also angered other big lobbies that are allied with Associated Industries by blocking bills to give away sovereign lands, weaken growth management and kill impact fees some counties levy to support school construction.

Despite that, Latvala still scored 76 percent on the Associated Industries grading scale, 12th overall in the Senate and four points better than the Senate average. Why make an example of him? Simply to make the point that unconditional subservience is now the price of survival in Tallahassee. The more effective the legislator, the shorter the chain.

The scheme is as much of a threat to the major parties as to what's left of the independence of the Legislature, as the Alliance means to intervene in primaries far beyond where lobbies usually venture. Principals in the Alliance, which is jointly owned by Associated Industries and Tidewater Consulting Inc., include Tidewater head Tom Slade, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, and Barney Bishop, a former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party.

In Washington last week, legislators of both parties wisely perceived the danger of such unrestricted, unreported political spending and voted to close the Section 527 loophole for certain non-profit corporations. Though the same principles are at stake, the Alliance for Florida's Economy has nothing to do with that. Instead, it exploits the void created by a federal court decision that held Florida's political committee registration law to be unconstitutional because it applied to organizations having only an incidental interest in politics. The Legislature was supposed to fix that this spring by requiring registration and reporting only by entities whose "major" purpose is to "expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate or issue." This clearly would have applied to the Alliance, whose only purpose -- other than, perhaps, generating ad placement fees for Tidewater Consulting -- is to influence elections.

But a strange fate awaited the bill. The House passed it with time to spare, but the Senate waited until the last two days of the session to take it up. Then Sen. Ron Silver, D-North Miami Beach, insisted on an amendment allowing legislators to keep more unspent campaign money for their office slush funds. That meant the bill had to go back to the House, which adjourned three hours later without acting on it. Though everyone hastened to blame that on an oversight, some may now wonder whether it was arranged. The Alliance had filed its corporate charter in February, before the Legislature met.

There's been nothing so brazen since three bigshots in industry, citrus and dog racing put $450,000 into Fuller Warren's 1948 gubernatorial runoff with the intent of owning a governor. The resulting scandal contributed to the passage of Florida's who-gave-it-who-got-it campaign finance law, which for years was the best in the nation. To make it so again must be the resolve of every candidate who means to earn the public's trust this year. We have heard the firebell in the night.

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