What Is "Pay to Play" and Why Does it Matter?

Some politicians or political contributors, seeking to distance themselves from "pay-to-play" politics that has come under increasing fire, parse the definition of pay-to-play way too fine — and, in so doing, often cop to the charge, but only by way of protesting too much. I am reminded of a certain ex-president's similarly narrow definition of sex.

You will hear protests from both a contributor and an elected official that "nothing changed hands," or that no one got any contract or job for their contribution. This suggests that pay-to-play only applies to the most grotesque, slam dunk cases of personal financial enrichment. That's incorrect. As summarized in a well-referenced Wikipedia article, "While the direct exchange of campaign contributions for contracts is the most visible form of Pay to Play, the greater concern is the central role of money in politics, and its skewing both the composition and the policies of government."

I don't have to know that a tax commissioner received any personal enrichment to feel that there's something wrong about that commissioner accumulating a million-dollar political war-chest largely from attorneys who practice before him. Or that that clout, and that warchest, then elevate that official to leader of a county party organization. Barter of money for money is only one species of pay-to-play; trading money for access, influence, or power is more common and more insidious.

Pay-to-play is not just getting the zoning break: it's getting on the zoning panel. It's not just getting a politician to back your bill; it's sitting at the small dinner instead of standing elbow-to-elbow at the big fundraiser, so you can have that politician's ear for a half hour while ordinary people get the 15-second handshake. Paying with a capital P is what gets you, politically, into the rehearsal dinner instead of merely the back pew for the wedding. It's access. It's being on the short list, the speed-dial, the dais instead of in the cheap seats, and having your calls returned instead of routed to a flunky's circular file.

Why do we care? Because the fundamental premise of procedural justice is that output is related to input. Skewed access skews decisionmaking on everything from what bill to support to what candidate to back. Pay-to-play is a sibling of "Where's Mine?" and "One Hand Washes the Other," the cousin of "We don't want nobody nobody sent," and, because it picks up the tab, it is the rich uncle of the top-down politics that Barack Obama condemned.

Originally posted on Prairie State Blue Jan. 31, 2008


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