Virginia House Speaker Don Scott is adamant that the nearly $4 million in campaign funds he has accepted from Dominion Energy won’t affect how he views the Virginia utility’s attempt to merge with Florida-based NextEra. 

Scott reportedly told a Virginia Public Radio reporter last week, “If you can’t take their money, eat their food and tell them no, then you need to go home.” 

Scott is, by all accounts, a very smart man, but I just have to ask: is he kidding himself, or us? 

I can’t answer for the Speaker, but I think I have enough of a grasp of human nature to know that what he is saying is bunk. 

If someone gives you something – even if it goes to your political campaign and not into your pocket directly – it influences you. It has to. Humans are hard-wired for this. Giving and taking – cooperating with each other – is at the root of our success as a species.

SCC commissioner, former NextEra attorney declines to recuse herself from merger case

It’s why government ethics laws, including Virginia’s, have broad prohibitions on their employees accepting gifts that might influence them in doing their jobs. (Politicians have different rules.)  

No doubt some of us are more susceptible than others. Me, for example. Offer me something as trifling as a $3 item of corporate swag, and my feelings about you will grow a little warmer and fuzzier. Give me produce from your garden, and I am your friend for life. I know quite well that if I were to lose my mind and run for office, the only thing that would save my honor is my innate suspicion of anyone who tells me I’m great. 

Many legislators I have talked to who take Dominion money believe themselves to be made of sterner stuff. Money, flattery – they figure they can accept it as their due and never give anything back. Not a one of them admits to being influenced. If you point out that their committee votes align with Dominion’s interests more often than not, they will insist it’s because Dominion’s lobbyists are so good at what they do. 

I wonder how many voters buy that argument. I suspect they look at campaigns awash in corporate cash and feel only disappointment in their leaders, or cynicism about government altogether. 

Virginia is one of only five states that allow unlimited corporate donations to the campaigns of elected officials. Until just this year, shockingly, it didn’t even bar those officials from using their campaign money for personal expenses. (Florida, the home state of NextEra, limits contributions to candidates for legislative office in any election to just $3,000.) 

Defenders of Virginia’s status quo argue that there’s no harm as long as candidates disclose the donations, giving constituents the chance to vote out legislators if they are sufficiently outraged. Dominion hedges against this unlikely outcome by contributing to members of both parties. 

In any event, retribution is unlikely. Former Del. Tim Hugo, excoriated in the Washington Post back in 2013 for using campaign funds to pay a $9,000 personal cell phone bill, nonetheless sailed to reelection that fall. Hugo didn’t lose his seat until the 2019 “blue wave” election shifted his district to Democratic. 

Indeed, our campaign laws feel like a relic of the Old South’s reverence for personal honor. It’s as though adding limits would impugn the integrity of the gentlefolk who selflessly serve the public. 

According to the same nostalgic fantasy, campaign contributions are akin to philanthropy. In that bygone world that never existed, a corporation like Dominion would choose the recipients of its largesse based not on who can be expected to vote in its favor, but according to who it believes most capable of making laws benefitting the public.

But Dominion is not running a charity. It would not spend millions of dollars on legislators’ campaigns if it did not expect a return on its investment. Moreover, if donations did not produce the expected benefits, the company would stop making them. In the cold calculus of the real world, political spending equals influence equals profits. 

Dominion is also not concerned with ensuring that only smart, civic-minded people get into office. It confines its campaign spending to lawmakers who are already in office, with most of the money going to those in leadership positions or who are on the committees that have the greatest power to affect its bottom line. 

If giving money to campaigns did not make the company richer, you would expect Dominion to welcome campaign finance reform measures outlawing donations from public utilities. Prohibiting those donations would save the company tens of millions of dollars every year. 

But Dominion opposes the reform bills. The company claims its participation in “the political process” is on behalf of its employees and customers; it makes no mention of its shareholders.

Dominion’s lobbyists say the company favors a comprehensive approach to reform that addresses all donations, rather than singling out public utilities. Meaning, it won’t support this bill, but it might be okay with a different one that – oh, too bad! – has less chance of passing. Meanwhile, it intends to keep its favored legislators on its dole.  

Virginia’s loose campaign finance laws have survived years of reform efforts that came from members of both parties, only to be killed on orders of both parties’ leaders. But the Democratic Party of Virginia has stopped accepting money from Dominion, and today, most rank-and-file Democrats eschew donations from utilities. 

This puts Scott and several other leaders at odds with those they lead. With a Democratic trifecta now, there’s a golden opportunity for the party to prove to voters that it cares more about their interests than its own. 

This year, the need for reform is especially urgent. If NextEra acquires Dominion to become the nation’s largest utility without the General Assembly acting to limit campaign spending, nothing will stop NextEra from flooding campaigns with so much cash that all pretense of legislators’ independence will be lost. 

That shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone. 

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE