My colleague (and, I note, fellow why-don’t-we-read-lists-of-corporate-donations-in-our-free-time type person) Sean Holman put up this thoughtful post today, thinking aloud about the ways that corporations and unions will be able to get around any new limits on political donations.
I do tend to agree with one of his posters, that it’s very unlikely that a company or union could require any members or employees to donate. They could strongly encourage them and likely a certain band of the faithful would do so. Enough to match the $770,000 that CUPE alone contributed to Lower Mainland municipal campaigns in the last election? I don’t think so.
My quick two cents of analysis on this is that it’s likely to benefit the developers more. They’re more numerous than the half dozen unions that get involved in civic politics unions and they’ve got all kinds of people working for them — architects, marketers, lawyers, designers and so on — who might be sensitive to understanding which political party their boss and rainmaker thinks is more advantageous for them.
Some might say good to the severe curtailment of union donations. But I’m hearing a lot of anti-developer talk out there these days. For those who are worried about developers having sway at city hall, what will be the counter-balance then to ensure that, once again, it’s not all developer dollars talking?
I’m not one, by the way, who has much patience with those who think that city councillors’ votes are likely to be swayed by $1,000 from this developer or that one. I’ve never been able to understand the kind of mind that thinks a councillor would sell his or her vote for that kind of money — which they don’t even get, by the way. It all goes into some party fund to pay off the last election’s polling bills or the next election’s billboards.
What I do think is more likely to intrude into the mind of any party or councillor who wishes to be more than a short-lived shooting star in the political firmament is not the donation of a single developer. It’s the cumulative effect of a whole sub-group that donates.
When city council ponders whether to bring in some decision that annoys a single developer, do you think they’re that worried? No. There’s another $10,000 where that one came from.
What they’re more likely to hesitate over is a rule or policy that annoys the whole herd of developers who’ve donated to them. That $1 million won’t come around again so quickly. The same is true on the union side.