One month ago, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on illegal PAC contributions made to the John Oxendine campaign for Governor.  Over $120,000 of illegal contributions, subsequently returned by the Oxendine campaign, came from 10 PAC’s run by a single person.
 
Today, on its front page, the AJC attempts to “Oxendine” the gubernatorial campaign of Attorney General Thurbert Baker.  But even by the AJC’s own account, the contributions by the “SAAG’s” are legal, and while they report the total amount of SAAG donations made to Baker, the AJC fails to report the amount returned by the campaign, or the proportion those donations represent over Baker’s 11 years in office.

Indeed, the story in the AJC today tries to makes it sound as though a serious breech of ethics has occurred.  The lede of the AJC article:

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker’s office has paid more than $173 million in the last five years to private lawyers to handle state business, and many of those attorneys or their firms have contributed to his re-election campaigns.

And yet, a closer examination of the record reveals the relative insignificance of the donations in question.  Not only is the total amount of SAAG donations made to the Baker campaign a small amount in relation to the total amount of money raised by Baker, the AJC omits the amount of SAAG contributions actually returned by the Baker campaign.

Since running for Attorney General in 1998, Thurbert Baker has raised over 6.4 million dollars.  The AJC article reports SAAG contributions given to Baker since 2001, during which time Baker raised over 5.3 million dollars for his campaigns for re-election.  The total SAAG contributions over that time period represents slightly less than 4% of the total contributions raised by the Baker campaign.

Perhaps more importantly, the Baker campaign has a long standing policy of returning those contributions:

Baker said in an interview that he has a policy against taking contributions directly from lawyers while they are doing state work. When those attorneys do give money, he said, it is returned. The policy is intended to make it clear that there is no link between donors and lawyers who get state business, a Baker spokesman said.

So in the aggregate, the Baker campaign has received less than 4% of its contributions from SAAG’s, and it has a long standing policy of returning those contributions.  Yet, the AJC does not report the scope of contributions made by SAAG’s not returned by the Baker campaign.  This is the best they can muster from their reporting:

However, the AJC found multiple instances where SAAG lawyers contributed in the same years they were collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in state fees. Campaign reports do not indicate that the money was returned in each case.

While the AJC sensationally reports the $200,000 of contributions by SAAG's, they fail to account for how much the “multiple instances” not returned actually represent.  The AJC does not deny that contributions have been returned, only that in “each case” some may have fallen through the cracks of the Baker campaign. 

For what it’s worth, the Baker campaign has said it will review these contributions, and return them when consistent with their own policy.  It should be noted that this policy goes over and above the existing law to prevent any perception of influence.  Even if the Baker campaign didn't return a penny, it would still be in compliance with existing law.  That's not something the Oxendine campaign could credibily assert.

In short, while the AJC has rightly exposed campaign contributions given to the Oxendine campaign that were clearly illegal, the best the AJC can do to balance that story is to highlight an insignificant sum of legal contributions given to past Baker campaigns.   Donations that, in fact, the Baker campaign has returned in the past and pledged to do in the future.  The larger question revealed today is why the AJC felt this non-story merited the same front-page Sunday paper status.

Campaign Disclosures of Attorney General Thurbert Baker (Year-End Reports):

$334,675 - '08
$3,074,793 - '06
$1,952,715 - '02
$1,007,709- '98 

 

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