Va. Gov. Terry McAuliffe Took $120K From a Chinese Billionaire — but the Crime Is That It Was Legal
Jon Schwarz
The Intercept
When news broke that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe was under investigation by the Justice Department and that his campaign had taken $120,000 directly from a Chinese-owned business, it may have seemed like an open-and-shut case.
McAuliffe ran and won the governorship as a Democrat in 2013. He received $120,000 in donations — $70,000 for his campaign and $50,000 for his inaugural — from West Legend Corp., a New Jersey construction materials company controlled by Chinese billionaire Wang Wenliang.
The sheer size seems improper. Yet Virginia permits unlimited, direct contributions by both individuals and corporations to candidates for state offices — e.g., governor, the state senate and general assembly.
That’s why West Legend, with its $120,000 contribution, was only the 57th biggest donor to McAuliffe during his two campaigns for governor. (He also ran and lost in the Democratic primary in 2009.) Coming in first at $6.7 million was the Democratic Governors Association PAC. Next was Independence USA, a Super PAC funded by Michael Bloomberg to promote gun control, with $1.7 million. Notable individual donors include longtime Clinton supporter Haim Saban ($572,636), Facebook’s first president Sean Parker ($500,000), BET founder Robert Johnson ($495,000), and Bill Clinton ($110,000). Among the other corporations that gave to McAuliffe are tobacco giant Altria ($243,667), Hospital Corporation of America ($177,500), and Genentech ($150,000). All this helped McAuliffe outraise his 2013 Republican opponent nearly 2-to-1.
So you can say the way politicians harvest money from donors is appalling. You can say it’s particularly gruesome in Virginia. But as of now, if there’s evidence that McAuliffe broke any of the rules of an ugly game, we haven’t seen it yet.
Ugh.
= new reply since forum marked as read
