Scoppe: The man who wanted to buy a House

POOR HOWIE Rich. All he wants is a nice little House he can call his own in South Carolina. Money’s no object for the New York real estate magnate, who has shelled out nearly a quarter of a million dollars so far this year. But the owners just aren’t in a selling mood.

Two years ago, when Mr. Rich and a handful of associates put out more than a half billion dollars, the owners of the S.C. House (and Senate) sent him mixed signals: Three of the 11 incumbents he backed in the primaries lost, but two of his challengers managed to unseat House members, and his candidates won seven of 12 open seats.

But in last month’s House primaries, he was 8-10, which is even worse than it sounds, since all but one of the eight were incumbents.

Despite all the talk about voter outrage, the fact is that few positions are safer than incumbent legislator; a bad year for incumbents is when, oh, 10 percent lose. This year, only five House members lost in the primaries. Four of them were Howie Rich candidates — including one of his two candidates who had taken out an incumbent two years ago by hiding tens of thousands of dollars he accepted from Mr. Rich until after the election.

Now, supporting four of the five losers might not be a big deal if Mr. Rich had supported four out of five winners. He did not. He backed just 11 of the 26 incumbents who faced opposition. Put another way, 14 of 15 incumbents not supported by Mr. Rich won their primaries (93 percent), while just seven of his 11 incumbents won (63 percent).

Of the seven non-incumbents Mr. Rich bankrolled, only one won — and that one was Rick Quinn, the former House Republican leader who made a come-back in an open seat.

If you’re new to this issue, or if you had been lulled by the absence of his name in the headlines into believing or at least hoping that Mr. Rich had packed up his carpetbag and gone back up north, a bit of a refresher is in order.

Like a streetlight attracts moths, Gov. Mark Sanford attracted Howie Rich to South Carolina, with his campaign to pay parents to send their children to private schools. Mr. Rich first gained notice in 2004, when he spent at least $30,000 — probably more, because no one had yet figured out that about 30 limited liability corporations doling out money in our state are controlled by Mr. Rich, or identified the entire network of his fellow travelers scattered across the country. By 2006, blogger Ross Shealy and reporters for this and other news organizations knew better what to look for, and found $155,000 that he and his allied corporate entities and a few associates gave to about 30 candidates. In 2008, the Rich legislator-buying machine put out more than a half million dollars in the primaries; I’m not aware of anyone having gone back and counted up the spending after the general election. (This year, Mr. Rich and his "businesses" have spent about $220,000, while associates have chipped in about $30,000 more.)

What makes Mr. Rich’s involvement in our politics so disturbing is not the issue he backs — there are other groups also supporting public school “choice” — but how he does it:

•  He uses his paper companies to evade our campaign donation limits, which are supposed to prevent any individual or business from being able to exert too much pressure on an elected official through the wallet. The limits are $1,000 for legislative candidates and $3,500 for statewide candidates, but Mr. Rich’s minimum this year seems to have been $2,000. His standard donation is five $1,000 checks to incumbents who have no opposition; 10 maximum donations is common for candidates who had opposition in the primaries. One candidate received $24,000.

•  He hides his involvement by waiting to donate during the 20-day blackout period that follows the final pre-election campaign disclosures. Even when he gives earlier, he manages to pick candidates who somehow forget to report those donations until after the vote. (His penchant for secrecy is at times comical. Rep. Mike Pitts had no opposition in the primary, and therefore didn’t even have to file a pre-election report, yet he received four checks during the blackout period.)

•  He spends more on our elections than the big players in our state, and he often provides the bulk of the money an individual candidate receives. I don’t know of anyone who has researched this lately (the state’s campaign disclosure database does not make it easy to search across donors or candidates or elections), but my spot check of major lobbying groups turned up no one whose spending came close to Mr. Rich’s.

The S.C. Education Association has spent $192,000 during this “election cycle,” but that covers donations for 2010 as well as 2008, along with lobbying expenses and some teacher feel-good expenditures. The auto dealers’ PAC has given out $145,000 in the 2008 and 2010 elections, the S.C. Manufacturers’ Association PAC $122,000 and SCANA $88,000. House Speaker Bobby Harrell’s PAC has given out $82,000 this year, mostly in $1,000 donations to Republicans in the House and Republicans who won the June primary.

Whatever you think of the agendas of those and other big donors, they all have a legitimate stake in our state’s future: They represent businesses and individuals who live here, work here, pay taxes here, employ our neighbors. Mr. Rich’s only investment in our state is campaign donations, which he somehow believes makes his attempts to dictate how our lawmakers spend our money pure and wholesome.

Mr. Rich has a disturbing effect not just on those he bankrolls but on those he doesn’t. Many House members are used to collecting only a few thousand dollars per election; the idea that one person could pour $30,000 into an opponent’s campaign is frightening.

That could be one reason he gave money to a handful of legislators back at the start of the year: Though he forfeited the ability to hide his donations, he might have frightened away potential challengers. According to Mr. Shealy’s review of all of this year’s campaign disclosure reports, Mr. Rich bankrolled seven House members who are unopposed for re-election, and two who have (token) opposition in the fall.

He also expanded his bipartisan outreach, donating to four Democrats running for the House in black-majority districts (all lost), as well as Sens. Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson — the former an unabashed advocate of private “choice” tax breaks and the latter an enigmatic figure who insists he supports public schools while flirting incessantly with the defund-the-schools cause.

Mr. Ford received five $3,500 donations in his losing bid for governor — all during the blackout period; he also reported receiving $3,492.15 from a Rich-affiliated PAC in South Carolina. The only other statewide candidate who reported receiving money from Mr. Rich was Treasurer Converse Chellis, who received four $3,500 donations, all during the blackout period, in his losing campaign against a candidate I would have guessed was the Rich flunky in that race.

Although it’s safe to say that Mr. Rich did quite poorly with the House this primary season, it would be at best wishful thinking to read much into his limited involvement in statewide races. There obviously was no need for him to get involved in the GOP governor’s race; his minions secured pledges from all four candidates to support paying people to abandon the public schools, and sent out mailers to primary voters to put those pledges on record.

I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t pour money into Rep. Nikki Haley’s campaign for governor, which he needs to win just to maintain the status quo, and likely into the campaigns for some of the candidates for other constitutional offices as well — though we probably won’t find out about it until well after all the votes are cast and counted.