Regular readers may have noticed that I’ve been a lot less, shall we say, relentless when it comes to Howard Dean lately. It’s not that I like him any better or are warming to his campaign; in fact, just the opposite is true. I am, however, trying to go a little easier on Dean, just in case he’s the nominee.
I’ve had some opportunities lately to bash Dean, but have chosen not to. When Dean wanted to extend Osama bin Laden the presumption of innocence, I didn’t mention it. When the AP blasted Dean for repeated warnings of poor safety at Vermont’s lone nuclear power plant, I bit my tongue. When the New York Times ran a front-page story reporting that Dean awarded a contract to a state HMO led by a Dean aide who used to lobby for that same HMO, I didn’t say a word. When the Boston Globe noted that Dean embraced a series of no-bid state contracts as governor, I left it alone. When the AP discovered that Dean had a practice of cutting aid to localities in Vermont, causing them to increase property taxes, I kept it to myself. When I learned that Dean championed a highly questionable scheme called “captive insurance” that led to corporate breaks for a series of big businesses — including Enron — I just put it aside.
Hoping that my silence on these controversies offers me a little leeway, I have to admit that I’m troubled by reports on Dean’s speaking fees from corporate interests as governor.
As the AP reported late last week, Dean accepted thousands of dollars in speaking fees from corporations and special interest groups in the 1990s, while accepting over $60,000 for his charity fund from insurance companies that had business with the state and benefited from a tax break Dean championed.
I realize there’s nothing illegal about this, but it certainly looks bad. In the interests of intellectual honesty, I try to consider these controversies by replacing the Dem’s name with Bush’s. Would I go berserk if Bush did the same thing? Would I be willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt and assume there was nothing unethical about the arrangements?
The most disturbing of Dean’s fees came from a drug company called Astra Holdings. When Dean agreed to accept $4,000 to speak to an Astra conference, the company had just wrapped up a high profile sexual harassment case, which ultimately led to a $10 million federal penalty.
Apparently, Astra, which was also under investigation for embezzlement, had a habit of pressuring dozens of female employees to have sex with company executives or face dismissal. Despite the controversy, Dean accepted the company’s money and delivered a political speech at a corporate conference in 1998. As far as I can tell, Dean did not mention the sexual harassment charges in his speech.
It gets worse. Dean got paid to deliver another speech to an Astra conference the same year, this time for $5,000. He was even scheduled to deliver a third paid speech, but quickly cancelled the appearance when reporters in Vermont questioned the propriety.
Dean’s campaign, known for its quick quips, hasn’t explained why Dean accepted so much money for the group at a time when the governor must have known about Astra’s sexual harassment case.
Complicating matters is the question of why Dean was accepting speaking fees from Astra and other companies in the first place. While Vermont law doesn’t prohibit its governor from accepting these fees, it’s considered inappropriate, especially when speaking to corporate interests that have business with the state. Indeed, the Vermont governors before and after Dean refuse to accept special interest speaking fees to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
In fact, most governors nationwide don’t accept payment for speeches while in office. Some states, including Ohio and Tennessee, have even passed laws to prohibit office holders from accepting speaking fees, while Congress also bars federal lawmakers from accepting honoraria.
The contributions Dean collected from insurance companies on behalf of his charity aren’t much better. In one instance, Dean wrote to an insurance lobbyist on his official stationary to tell him about the status of a state tax break for the industry and to simultaneously thank him for a personal gift.
In 1993, that same lobbyist wrote to Dean to say that two insurance companies were sending gifts to Dean, which the lobbyist called a “package,” after Dean met with them to discuss the bill that would provide new tax breaks. Dean signed that bill into law later that year.
In other words, Dean meets with insurance executives and lobbyists to offer them tax breaks, the same lobbyist contributes to Dean’s re-election campaign while the insurers donate thousands of dollars to Dean’s charity, and Dean then signs the tax breaks that benefit those same insurers. There’s no obvious evidence of wrongdoing, but, again, what would I say if Bush did this?
And it certainly doesn’t fit in with Dean’s image. As the Center for Public Integrity’s Charles Lewis said, “It’s not something you would expect the reformer, outsider candidate would have in his background.”
I know Dean is supposed to be a teflon candidate, and his supporters insist he can do no wrong, but I’d certainly like to hear an explanation from Dean about these activities.