Kate Sheppard asserts that this story is a dispute over environmental policy, and I’m sure there’s something there, but I think she’s missing the other part of it, which is that it’s also a campaign finance story in a year when two of the top Democratic presidential campaigns have been prominently pointing to their positions on campaign finance issues to argue that they represent change and a break with business as usual in Washington.
Recall that John Edwards has made it a major plank of his presidential campaign that he does not take money from lobbyists or PACs, and that he seeks the transformation of our present campaign financing system to a more transparent and publicly-supported one in order to reduce the power of lobbyists and PACs. Recall also that Edwards has been on an anti-PAC crusade since his 1998 Senate race.
And yet here you have a situation where a former Edwards low-dollar donor (Glenn Hurowitz donated $250 to Edwards in June) was touted by the campaign as one of its “National Environmentalists for Edwards Leaders” while also heading a PAC, founded Sept. 24, according to the FEC, dedicated to criticizing one of Edwards’ primary field opponents. And we won’t know who is bankrolling that PAC effort until January.
(Full disclosure: Over the summer, Hurowitz also contributed three pieces to TAP Online.)
