December 8, 2000
by Greg Coleridge & Mike Ferner
“Corporations should get out of politics.” A familiar quote from Ralph Nader? No.
It is BusinessWeek magazine’s recommendation in a recent cover story citing a litany of corporate abuses and warning of a backlash. For 50 years, Ohio corporations were indeed kicked out—prohibited from making any political campaign contribution.
Citizens, through their elected legislators, made it clear that government was not for sale. For five decades, Ohio’s courts upheld this notion. With millions of dollars in corporate political contributions deluging Ohio, now is a good time to remember that it wasn’t always this way.
The key to keeping corporations out of Ohio politics was the widely held opinion that corporations had no rights, only privileges that citizens gave them through their legislators. People had a sharp sense that corporations’ great economic power equaled great political power, and knew to be constantly on guard.
Ohioans first kicked corporations out of politics with a bill in 1908 to “prevent the corruption of elections and political parties by corporations.” Three years later, the state legislature required every corporation filing a report to the state to submit an affidavit stating that it did not engage in political activity during the preceding year. But the legislature established political action committees in 1987, allowing contributions to be clearly linked to corporations and winking at the prohibition against corporate giving.
The “rights” corporations have gained to buy candidates and ballot-issue elections are our biggest threat to democracy. As elections become more expensive, corporate influence and power increases, and democracy suffers. Voters are expected to believe the myth that corporations can fund the political process and somehow government will serve the public interest.
The formula for political democracy in Ohio—and the nation—includes kicking corporations out of politics by outlawing all forms of direct and indirect corporate contributions. We did it once. We can do it again.
Coleridge and Ferner are co-coordinators of the Ohio Committee on Corporations Law and Democracy.
