This year, all the focus was on billionaires supporting presidential, Senate and House campaigns. In the future, they’ll put more emphasis on building from the ground up with local and state offices, including judgeships in states that have judicial elections. Buy a judge. Won’t that be dandy?

I’m a member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee (ACDCC) and I was appalled to find out that current policy and practice is for the ACDCC to take financial contributions from PACs and others earmarked to help a specific candidate that has been endorsed by the ACDCC. The party uses that money to send out a mailer on behalf of the candidate in question. The mailer will say “paid for the ACDCC”, and there will be no mention of who is actually funding it.

The point, of course, is for a person or PAC to be able to support a candidate without having to be seen as doing so. Let’s say you are the PAC of a union representing City Hall employees. Your union is in the middle of contract negotiations with the City. Mayor John Smith is running for re-election. You want to give him a big, big check to make him look kindly at you – but if you do that, or if you send out a mailer on his behalf, his opponents will pounce at him with allegations of bribery. What do you do? Well, you give the money to the ACDCC. Mayor Smith will find out where the money came from, of course, but it can’t be traced back to you, at least quickly enough for anyone to use it.

I find this extremely unethical, but I brought this up at our last Committee meeting and apparently I’m alone on having those feelings.