Chris VanDeHoef has crossed the i’s and dots the t’s of
newspaper consumers in Connecticut who suspect that the press showers favors on
left of center Democrats.
According to a piece in CTMirror,
founders of a new SuperPAC committee that will be showering favors upon
Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate Chris Murphy “include Chris
VanDeHoef, a lobbyist who is executive director of a media trade group, the
Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association, and Kevin Graff, who became a Hartford
lobbyist after stepping down last year as chief of staff of the state Senate
Democratic majority.”
Joining the Murphy mutual admiration society is Jeffrey
Garfield, who retired in 2009 after more than 30 years as top dog at
Connecticut’s Elections Enforcement Commission.
Reporter Greg Hladky in CT.com,
a site affiliated with the Advocate chain of newspapers, took Mr. Garfield to
task for embracing a disease formerly scorned by both Mr. Garfield and Mr.
Murphy. It may be important to mention that the Advocate chain is not in any
way associated with the Koch brothers, who are to conservative politics what
George Soros is to left wing politics.
Mr. Hladky is not surprised that Mr. Garfield had accepted “this
somewhat peculiar assignment.” During his long run as the state’s election law
“watchdog,” Mr. Garfield had demonstrated a fondness, Mr. Hladky writes, “for
treating top state Democratic and Republican leaders gently and with great
consideration for their lofty status. Thousands of dollars in apparently
illegal lobbying contributions to political action committees run by
high-ranking legislative leaders were often dismissed by Garfield as ‘clerical
errors.’”
The object of the affections of Mr. Garfield’s new SuperPAC
to help re-elect Mr. Murphy, is not handled gingerly in Mr. Hladky’s piece.
Mr. Hladky notes that Mr. Murphy has made a career of
denouncing the Supreme Court “Citizen’s United” decision that opened the door
to SuperPACs, a ruling “that unleashed these free-wheeling, non-candidate
political action committees, allowing them to be massively financed by
corporations, billionaires, unions and any other well-heeled entity this side
of the Gamma 5 quadrant. These PAC-monsters can then spend unlimited amounts to
influence the election process, all the while effectively keeping the
identities of their financial sugar daddies secret.”
Actually, the efficient cause of the SuperPACs was not the
Supreme Court decision but the McCain-Feingold-Shay's-Meehan Campaign Finance
Reform Law that restricted donations to political parties and occasioned thehigh court’s ruling on a constitutional question.
Mr. Murphy has said, “I’m a believer in ultimately overturning Citizens United
and publicly financing campaigns so that people ultimately decide elections,
rather than a handful of donors or billionaires.”
The notion that Citizens United will be overturned is little
more than a campaign fantasy because the High court’s judgment is grounded in
sound constitutional principle from which the court cannot retreat. A reform of
campaign finance regulations that once again would allow money to flow, perhaps
anonymously, into cash starved political parties rather than to incumbent
politicians who have become their own undefeatable political parties would at
least be possible. But since finance regulations and public financing of
campaigns tend to benefit incumbents such as Mr. Murphy, the congressman is not
likely to support practical measures to redirect the flow of campaign money
from SuperPAC outliers to political parties.
Mr. Hladky notes that Mr. Murphy was technically correct
when he said that the beneficiary of the new SuperPAC – Mr. Murphy himself –
cannot control the content of the product. Were this the case, the pretense
that the SuperPAC was not connected with the Murphy campaign would be exposed
as a transparent fraud. Mr. Murphy’s artful disinterest reinforces instead an
opaque fraud. Mr. Murphy, rather than his likely post-primary opponent, Republican
nominee for the U.S. Senate Linda McMahon, will benefit greatly from the
exertions of executive director of the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association
Chris VanDeHoef, and former chief of staff of the state Senate Democratic Majority
Kevin Graff and Jeffrey Garfield, for more than thirty years the head of Connecticut’s
Elections Enforcement Commission.
Mr. Murphy, who is not a bad softball player, here has
tagged three important bases – media, state Democratic Party legislative
honchos and an important election enforcement group – on his way to a home run.
This new old boy’s network is enough to make a cynic of the
most cheerfully complaisant party functionary in what is fast becoming a one
party state. Even Mrs. McMahon’s most persistent critics appear to be alarmed.
“If nothing else,” Mr. Hladky remarked, “his whole weird
deal may be worth it just to hear McMahon’s flacks trashing Murphy for taking
advantage of SuperPAC money ‘from special interests and fat cat lobbyists.’”
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