The Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance released a proposal last week that would limit the campaign donations of labor unions and associations to $1,000 per candidate. Rules set in 1988 allow unions to donate up to $15,000, which far exceeds the caps set on all other entities.
Individuals can donate up to $1,000 per candidate, and political action committees, commonly referred to as PACs, can spend up to $500. This new regulation would equalize the disproportionate influence labor unions are capable of wielding over individual representatives.
Pam Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe that campaign finance limits should be the same for all organizations and any exceptions should be made for a clear reason.
“The public can’t have confidence in our law if it looks like one set of players is favored above the others,” he said.
In 2018, unions and associations gave more than $129,000 to individual candidates in donations that exceeded $1,000. If the new regulation is adopted, this would limit donations to prominent elected officials like Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Martin Walsh.
While it is important to strengthen labor unions in an era of ever-increasing corporate power, corporations are restricted under current Massachusetts campaign finance law. Corporations are restricted from making any contributions directly to individual candidates or political parties.
Reforming the current law would likely disadvantage Democrats. In 2018, all of the 11 local candidates who received a donation from a labor union or association that exceeded $1,000 were Democrats. But this does not excuse the blatant loophole in current campaign finance law.
Politics become corrupt when people stop judging what is fair and judge only what is good for their party. Democrats and Republicans alike should support this proposal to reform the imbalance in campaign finance law.
This would be fair if other PACs and corporations were held to the same standard. While I want money to be kept out elections, we saw many issues with corporate influence in our last state election and hamstringing the unions to not represent workers interests is not in the public interest.