What do North Carolinians and Egyptians have in common? Not much comes to mind, but after our state’s most recent legislative session, we can add one thing to the list: Political dissatisfaction. And while any comparison between anti-Morsi activists (who ousted the Egyptian president in July) and Moral Monday protestors is nearly a joke, the seeds of dissent in our state have been planted and nurtured by our elected representatives. So how did it come to this? What has happened in the past weeks can be traced back to the most recent election cycles in our state.
As usual, voters have been electing whichever official (they think) is best. And equally routine, representatives have been outwardly advertising that they cater to the preferences of voters in their district, while simultaneously working in their own agendas. But corporations are able to vote in their own way by shopping for policies behind closed doors through campaign donations. In turn, those dollars are used to justify their candidate in the public eye (and axiomatically, their desired policies). In other words, they have the power to mold candidates and voters equally in their favor.
This has been the case, not only in our state, but in the entire country ever since 2008 when the Supreme Court decided that both individuals and corporations can legally make outright campaign contributions. While some say the effectiveness of campaign finance is exaggerated, the fact that candidates dedicate so much of their time to fundraising efforts is no coincidence—they know it works. And when you begin to look at the piles of cash spent on election years in this state, the relationship between wealth and power becomes more than conspiracy. According to followthemoney.org, almost $80 million were donated to campaigns for various offices in North Carolina’s 2012 election cycle (excluding presidential).
This challenges the narrative of fair and equal representation that is constantly used to justify our political system. While a single citizen has the right to cast a ballot (or in the case now, an individual in their county of residence with a driver’s license), there is no way of knowing how much of that decision can be attributed to their own reasoning, or rhetoric generated by campaign dollars. Ultimately this undermines democracy, while smearing the relationship between bad policy and accountability
My punch line: The blame for the narrow-minded policies that were enacted in our state’s most recent legislative session falls just as much on the companies that financed the policymakers as it does anyone else. To be more specific, these are some of the main players behind all of the outrage: Reynolds Tobacco (owner of American Spirits and other brands), BB&T, Bank of America, Piedmont Natural Gas, Duke Energy, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Time Warner Cable, Wendy’s/Arby’s Group, State Farm Insurance, Nationwide, SAS, Alex Lee, Inc. (owner of Lowe’s Foods), Wal-Mart, Variety Wholesalers and many more. Some of these companies have directly (or indirectly, through the North Carolina Republican Party) donated tens of thousands of dollars to the campaigns of North Carolinian legislators who either sponsored or co-sponsored some of the infamous bills of the most recent legislative session. For the sake of word limit, this list is incomplete, but there are many websites that document these transactions.
Moral Monday protesters have been doing us all a service by kicking up the dust that this issue deserves, but you don’t need to be holding a sign to protest. In a free market, you vote every time you make a purchase. It’s true that many of these companies are large, international and have a big consumer base, but in a state of more than nine million residents (many of whom are dissatisfied), we must be able to chip away at the bottom line somehow.
