CincyPAC Slammed: Fair or Foul?

Sep 30, 2011 by Ben Sherman

If you enjoy a good political back-and-forth, complete with overtones of “elitism” and references to Soviet Russia, I may have a story for you. On 25 September, an email went out to the CincyPAC mailing list with a link to a blog called CincyPACkOfElitists. The author, Aja Roberto, essentially posted a letter of resignation brimming with accusations regarding how CincyPAC chooses who it endorses for City Council. From the post:

I was horribly disappointed, though, with how the process evolved. The originally agreed upon process in which dues paying members like you had a 100% say in the PACs endorsement eroded, thanks to petty partisan politicking by several board members, many of whom have pledged their support to specific candidates. I am sad to report that the membership vote in the endorsement process will count for a paltry and inadequate 45% of the overall endorsement score that is used to choose CincyPAC endorsed candidates. In other words, an unelected Board of 12 has decided that they know better than you, and will weight their vote in the process more heavily.

 

I was even more disappointed when a board member suggested that we keep our algorithm secret from our membership and the candidates seeking the endorsement. Even more discouraging was the suggestion that we count the votes first, and once the results were known by the board, the weight of the members vote could be changed to influence the final result.

Ms. Roberto goes on to advise her readers that their money would be better spent on individual candidates, and referred to the remaining Board of Directors as a “Soviet-style group of ruling elites”. This reference was pounded home by a graphic of a Soviet hammer and sickle replacing the final “C” in CincyPAC (a sure sign of a reasoned, level-headed argument, right?).

CincyPAC, as one might expect, has a somewhat different view of their process. From the response posted on the CincyPAC website:

The organization’s endorsement process was thoughtfully and thoroughly crafted to vet candidates on their positioning as it relates to our six core values. The CincyPAC board voted and approved changes to the endorsement process this year to maintain and enhance the integrity of the process.

 

After the process was approved, we distributed an eleven-question questionnaire to all Cincinnati City Council candidates on August 29. Candidates who filled out the questionnaire and submitted prior to our September 5 deadline were invited to participate in an in-person, videotaped interview with further questioning related to CincyPAC core values. Candidate endorsements were distributed after tabulating results for membership vote (45 percent), question and answer scoring (35 percent). The board vote made up for 20 percent of the endorsement decision process.

 

Since 2009, CincyPAC has always offered a weighted endorsement process, with membership receiving the largest percentage of the determination. The organization does not allow membership to be the sole deciding factor in the endorsement process as a safeguard to ensure the process cannot be manipulated by an organized effort. We operate as a PAC with established core values, and endorse candidates who represent the YP voice and interest.

That may not be a specific denial of Ms. Roberto’s accusations, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s more a case of CincyPAC not deigning to answer charges they consider to be non-credible rather than one of them avoiding the question. The reason I think that’s the case is that Ms. Roberto is apparently co-hosting an upcoming fundraiser for COAST, a political group which is demonstrably dishonest. This is also relevant to a response that Ms. Roberto posted to CincyPAC’s statement, where she again accused the remaining directors of being “biased” and “partisan”. If COAST’s public statements are any indication, and presuming Ms. Roberto subscribes to a fair number of the viewpoints of the group that she’s hosting a fundraiser for, she is likely just as “guilty” of being biased and partisan as any member of the Board of Directors currently sitting. At the very least, it draws into question any accusations of extreme bias coming from her corner.

That being said, I think Ms. Roberto does make a fair point about the Board’s weighting of their endorsement selections if in fact the membership was led to believe their vote was/would be the primary deciding factor. I attempted to contact CincyPAC to get their position on this and received no reply, but according to their own math, unless the questionnaire is somehow compiled or voted upon by the membership, the CincyPAC Board does at least influence, if not control, 55% of the vote. That makes their assertion that “membership recieves the largest percentage of the determination” questionable at best. However, I also feel that CincyPAC makes a fair point about why they do things the way that they do. If a PAC committed to particular “core values” has an endorsement process that is mostly or completely based on the votes of members, there’s very little (if anything) to prevent a large-enough group of people  with $25 to burn from co-opting the group and pulling it away from those values, and that would most certainly defeat the original purpose of the PAC.

It’s also worth noting that CincyPAC did give money to three Republicans in 2009. Murray, Ghiz, and Zamary (frankly, I was shocked to see Ghiz on the list) each received $250 of the $1700 that was spread out among seven candidates. Their contributions for 2011 have either not yet been made or are not yet accessible from the City’s website, but their endorsements for this year only include one Republican, Catherine Mills. Mills has connections with the group, and as Griff at Cincinnati Blog observes, those connections could have as much or more to do with her endorsement than her positions on CincyPAC’s core issues. Yes, they did go from three Republicans out of seven down to one, but that could simply be due to the current composition of the group as opposed to what it was 2009, or the fact that, frankly, most of this years Republican candidates seem to have gone out of their way to oppose many of CincyPAC’s stated values. At any rate, it certainly doesn’t prove “bias” on the part of the Board.

How much does all of this matter in the grand scheme of Cincinnati politics? It’s debatable, but probably not a great deal right now. CincyPAC’s statements make it sound like they want to become a driving force in government in the city, but they’re not there yet. As I noted above, I have no idea what kind of money they’re kicking around this year, but as of the ’09 election, they’re still being dwarfed by union and corporate PAC’s in terms of contributions. That’s certainly to be expected, as those groups wield massive massive memberships and checkbooks, and CincyPAC was right on par with other citizen/special interest PAC’s at the time (including COAST). On the face of it, there’s no reason they can’t grow to be a force in the future, and I think they’re worth following if you’re interested and/or invested in the city.

In that vein, though, I should point out that while I was doing research and talking to people about the story, the impression that I got from almost everyone familiar with the group was resoundingly negative. “Exclusive social club” was a phrase used more than once, and the sentiment that “diversity” was being talked about more than it was being pursued was repeated several times from both sides of the proverbial aisle. Obviously, this doesn’t even remotely resemble a scientific survey, and the sample size was super small (seven or eight people that I spoke to personally, plus numerous tweets on the topic). It means nothing on it’s own, and to be clear, I’ve never met anyone who was associated with CincyPAC in person, and I’m not a member, so I have no opinion on whether those sentiments are indeed accurate or not. It’s entirely possible that I just happened upon the people that were dissatisfied and thus the most vocal about it. If I were CincyPAC though, I think that I’d at least be trying to determine whether or not I have an image problem, and be working on ways to solve it quickly if I did. I hope that they’re able to work it out if they do. They support values that, at least in my opinion, the vast majority of urban voters can and will get behind. They just need to find a way to cater to a large enough group of people. If they can pull that off somehow, I believe it would be of immeasurable benefit to our city.