Political Shell Game

According to recent political campaign disclosure reports, more than $280,000 in contributions to five Orange County Republican legislators was passed on to GOP candidates in other primaries.

The transfers are not illegal, although there has been bipartisan pressure to make them so. Nor are they limited to the Republican Party. The practice, unsavory as it is, unfortunately is the way the high-priced political campaign game is too often played.

This election year will not be much different. Legislators, like state Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) and GOP Assemblymen Dennis Brown, Gil Ferguson, Ross Johnson and John R. Lewis, all of whom represent Orange County and made the heavy transfer of campaign funds during the primary, say that they were just supporting like-minded candidates in other districts.

We are not the only ones who doubt that taking money contributed by Orange County voters and transferring it to candidates running in districts hundreds of miles away can be justified that easily. The funds might well wind up in the hands of candidates whom a contributor would not support. That, as Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) suggests, violates a donor’s trust.

Many politicians, including those who say that they don’t like the practice, may continue transferring funds simply because “that’s the way the game is played.” But it doesn’t have to be played that way. The politicians make the rules. All they have to do to keep faith with contributors and put the brakes on power-brokering with campaign funds is to pass any one of the pending bills that would prohibit candidates from transferring funds to anyone else’s political campaign.