"The rule of thumb on these things is usually one token dollar to the Democrats for every $3 or $4 kicked back to the GOP."

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Thin line between political fundraising and bribery
By Bill Cotterell, August 9, 2014

A Tallahassee Democrat reporter who covered the Florida Legislature’s 1992 gifts-and-trips scandal would shake her head and wonder why legislators couldn’t figure out what moms tell their daughters at an early age:

When a guy asks you out to dinner, she said, it’s not your nutrition that interests him.

Looking back, there’s almost a quaint charm to the way about two dozen legislators pleaded no contest and paid $500 fines for borrowing a lobbyist’s credit card to take family and committee staff to dinner, accepting a set of golf clubs or jetting off to a plush hunting lodge to drink booze and shoot quail. After trying various spending caps and shifting the disclosure requirement from the recipients to the donors, legislators finally came up with a total “gift ban.”

It forbids lawmakers to take so much as a hamburger or cup of coffee from a lobbyist, or anyone employing a lobbyist. That felt good, indicating that legislators finally grasped that adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Periodic attempts to relax the ban have met with public umbrage, and legislators back off hastily.

What the gift ban does not ban, though, is bribery.

The lobbyists just have to launder the money through the political parties now, rather than publicly grabbing a legislator’s bar tab.

The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald reported last month that U.S. Sugar spent more than $95,000 since late 2011 on at least 20 weekend hunting trips for powerful state leaders, including Gov. Rick Scott, at the fabled King Ranch in Texas.

And what did the company get in return? Why, nothing but good fellowship and a chance to spend some time outdoors with some really swell guys. Oh, and the Legislature passed a little bill that saves the sugar industry millions on Everglades cleanup costs.

But that might have happened anyway — just like when you give Publix $4.15 and the store lets you leave with a gallon of milk, it’s not necessarily a quid pro quo. It’s not like you actually said the words to complete the sale.

The newspapers later reported that Scott appointed a King Ranch sugar executive to the board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the agency overseeing the Everglades. The governor’s people responded that the man was recommended by some environmentalists.

The sweetener to all of this is that U.S. Sugar has given more than $534,000 to Scott’s re-election campaign. Overall, the company has sprinkled more than $2.2 million on Republican candidates in the current election cycle.

The gift ban applies only to treats for individual legislators. A lobbyist can go Dutch at lunch with a lawmaker, while handing over a stack of checks from corporate clients.

In essence, if you’re a House or Senate member, you can dine with a lobbyist and take $5,000 or $10,000 or more in separate donations from each of the lobbyist’s clients and their associates — so long as you pay for your own meal.

But that doesn’t apply to the political parties.

The King Ranch trips, along with Texas hunting licenses bought for legislative leaders, were paid for by the Republican Party of Florida, which can take unlimited money from donors — even during legislative sessions, when lawmakers themselves can’t.

The RPOF refuses to discuss fundraising, with a code of Omerta that makes the bosses of the five Mafia families look like those Chatty Cathys on “The View.”

If the Democrats ever regain power in the Capitol, they’ll do it, too. But for now, they’re not worth bribing. The rule of thumb on these things is usually one token dollar to the Democrats for every $3 or $4 kicked back to the GOP.

Maybe “kicked back” is too strong a term. There’s one key difference between political fundraising and bribery. Bribery is illegal.
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