Haley’s Treasure

Think of the Jack Abramoff scandal — bribes, kickbacks, pay-to-play, et cetera, ad nauseum.

OK, now imagine if Abramoff had actually been a high-ranking elected official instead of a mere lobbyist. 

That image is, in essence, what Mississippi voters are stuck with right now.  Haley Barbour, the state’s governor, is in a world of hurt as disclosure after disclosure emerges about his corrupt ties to a lobbying firm in D.C. 

The Jackson Free Press recently compiled and summarized the myriad components of the scandal, but the short version is this.  After Barbour finished his term as head of the Republican National Committee in 1996, he helped start one of the largest lobbying firms in D.C. — Barbour, Griffin & Rogers (BGR).  No problem there.  But once Barbour was elected governor in Mississippi, he announced that he had “severed all ties” with BGR and was receiving no money from it whatsoever.  And revelations soon arose that Barbour was, indeed, still on the BGR payroll. 

So Barbour backtracked a bit, claiming that he was receiving only “retirement” from the firm.  And, since the payments were supposedly fixed at a set rate — that is, not dependent on BGR’s performance — he had no incentive to use his public position to help the clients of his former business partners.

One problem: a spokesman for BGR simultaneously claimed the firm wasn’t paying Barbour anything — no retirement, no nothing.  Whoops.

Well, it turns out they’ve both been lying.  Bloomberg News obtained a copy of Barbour’s income sources (he’d refused to divulge them publicly despite rulings by the state Attorney General that he was legally obligated to do so), and it turns out he owned over $786,666 in the parent company of BGR and was part of its profit sharing plan.  That means he did have a financial incentive to help the firm.

Barbour also receives “retirement,” as he (eventually) said, but BGR has no retirement plan for any of its other employees or partners.  All told, Barbour’s income from the lobbying firm has amounted to $300,000+ a year while he’s been governor.  That’s more than twice what the people of Mississippi pay him to represent their interests as governor.

So fine, Barbour’s been lying.  But can he pull a Shoeless Joe Jackson and claim the money hasn’t influenced him?  Sadly, no.

One of BGR’s biggest clients is Big Tobacco, and as governor, Barbour has vetoed two very popular anti-tobacco bills that would have raised Mississippi’s tobacco tax (the second lowest in the nation).  He also recently dismantled a nationally acclaimed state program that was using tobacco settlement dollars to reduce teen smoking.

Moreover, Barbour has now admitted that his office intervened to expedite the liquor license and rebuilding permits for casinos that had hired BGR to lobby for them.  And, after Hurricane Katrina, a number of companies that sought his gubernatorial assistance in awarding them construction contracts just so happened to be paying tens of thousands of dollars to his lobbying firm.

So it looks like Jesus’ line, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” is pretty apropos here.

Anyway, the list goes on and on, and you can read more here, here, and here. 

Most of the coverage so far as been local, but one hopes that national media and the Internet community will start shining some light on this subject soon.  I mean, it seems pretty significant when a governor is literally on the payroll of special interests — and not just in campaign contributions, but in direct deposits to his bank account.

As it happens, Barbour’s running for re-election this year.  Corruption aside, his representation of the casinos has alienated a lot of Southern Baptists in Mississippi.  His Democratic opponent, John Arthur Eaves, is a born-again evangelical who has been making strong inroads among Christian voters, touting a socially conservative, economically populist message.  Eaves is also pretty popular with African-Americans, a community that’s proportionately larger in Mississippi than in any other state in the nation.

Pundits had been predicting a Barbour victory, but the scandals and Eaves’s appeal are throwing all that into air.  This will be an interesting race to watch. 

Update: The New Republic has done an excellent investigation of this story.

Jesse welcomes comments at jesse [at] faithfuldemocrats [dot] com.