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Kudos to the Maine Wire for its illuminating interview of Leonard Leo, a conservative judicial activist with Maine ties. We’ve been critical of a past attempt to diminish Leo’s voice and presence here in Maine, urging people to instead engage with ideas and people they disagree with rather than shut them down entirely.
The interview provided great insight into the mind of someone who has helped shape the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, and who has a wealth of experience with so-called dark money groups that can shuffle around political cash with little transparency. There has been an unfortunate proliferation of dark money across the political spectrum, with Democrats vocally criticizing its use while also embracing it themselves.
Amid a sea of cynicism and obfuscation, it was refreshing to hear Leo talk at length about the subject. We also happen to disagree with his defense of anonymous giving. Quite strongly.
Here’s a relevant section from that interview. Maine Wire editor-in-chief Steve Robinson rightly pressed Leo on the issue of dark money — an issue that the Maine Wire has covered as it relates to Arabella Advisors and its liberal dark money network that has been active here in Maine.
“Our country has a rich history of anonymous giving, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War. The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the gay rights movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s, all of those movements were in important part — or in significant part, sometimes — supported by anonymous giving,” Leo said. “And there’s a reason for it, right? There’s a reason for it. And the reason is because the power of ideas, the power of the ideas ought to matter more than the peculiar personalities of the people who are supporting them. We should judge what we want to do in this country by the intellectual and moral force of an idea, not by the quirky personality, or looks, or wealth, or whatever of the people supporting it.”
“Look at the underlying idea,” Leo continued. “Does it make sense? Is it morally justifiable? Is it intellectually supportable? And that’s why people give anonymously, so that people can focus their attention on the ideas.”
There’s a hole here in Leo’s argument so big you could steer Harlan Crow’s yacht through it. Leo has left out a critical consideration: Is the idea driven by the interests, particularly financial, of the people furthering it? If we’re going to have lofty exchanges about the morality of ideas, let’s not leave this part out.
In his lengthy history lesson about anonymous giving, Leo seems to look past the possibility that people today are skeptical about dark money, not because of personalities or some inherent opposition to wealth and wealthy people, but because they want to know whether the political ideas that donors are supporting also protect and further that wealth. Leo would seemingly have us believe that billionaires on the political right and left enter the political fray with varying levels of anonymity not to shield themselves or their activities from scrutiny, but so that their personalities don’t dilute the strength of their ideas. We’ll believe in the benevolence of billionaires once they’ve dedicated more of their sizable resources to fighting world hunger instead of promoting their own interests.
We’re not strangers to “both sides” arguments. We frankly make them ourselves from time to time when we see elements on both sides of the political debate engaging in similarly concerning behavior. But while Leo would apparently have the U.S. both-sides itself into dark money oblivion, we happen to think it’s wrong and damaging to the public interest when either side of the political aisle engages in it. Americans deserve to know who is trying to influence their votes and institutions, and no amount of self-serving sophistry from a dark money participant like Leonard Leo is going to convince us otherwise.
