Have you ever read a warning label on something and realized, wow, that means someone actually did that truly asinine thing? Often laws, even election laws, reflect the same thing. Mike Pence has the distinct honor of having been the cause of one of these laws.
Back in 1990, Mike Pence, now Governor of Indiana, was a lawyer when he changed campaign finance laws irrevocably in this county. It wasn’t because of anything positive he did, though: he was the last guy to pay his mortgage and wife’s car payment with political donations without any consequences.
According to the Washington Post’s exhaustive article:
According to FEC documents, Pence spent a total of $12,867 [$23,556 in today’s dollars] from his 1990 campaign account for personal expenses, including seven installments of his $992 monthly mortgage and his wife’s $222 a month car payment. …
Pence was unapologetic at the time, telling reporters that he had taken a 30 percent pay cut to run for office and needed the money. ‘I’m not embarrassed that I need to make a living,’ he said.
Not just that though, the 31-year-old Pence felt that political donations to what reportedly was going to be a winning campaign for congress were his personal slush fund. He also paid personal golf tournament fees, his own credit card bills, and even groceries. But, at this time, his actions weren’t illegal because such a law was not considered needed.
No one had thought that a person so upstanding as to run for political office would actually steal, er, take from their own campaign to pay personal bills; that would be a crook and a liar, not a potential Congressman.
His excuse for these completely unethical, reprehensible and self-serving actions? After his loss, he would tell local reporters that it was “an exercise in naivete,” and because he took a 30 percent pay cut to run for Congress. Pence who was a well-respected lawyer in his thirties, at a time when such a law hadn’t been considered as needed for congressional candidates, claimed to have been too young, too inexperienced, or just too dumb to realize that it was bad to steal from his campaign. (Gee, still wonder why he is Trump’s VP pick, as if his misogyny wasn’t enough!)
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He walked away legally unscathed, but morally… well, even though he had been a basic shoo-in to win, the voters in the red-leaning Indiana district were stunned at the absolute incredulity and deception of his actions. You see, Pence was running on the platform that the Democratic incumbent, Rep. Philip R. Sharp was tainted by big money donations from special interest PACs (Political Action Committees) and this was long before Citizen’s United made them the powerhouses they are today.
Even his opponent’s campaign manager Billy Linville admits that he “may well have won the election,” if he hadn’t been caught in this “brazen act of hypocrisy.”
It was a brazen act of hypocrisy. It was a bombshell, for sure. . . . Without question, he may well have won the election if it had not been for that.
So, experts say he literally changed the face of campaign finance law when the FEC subsequently had to make it against the rules to spend money from a political donation for personal uses. Pence is representative of a new breed of politician: one who seems to put their own personal interests ahead of any others, including those of the country and one who needed to be told that it is immoral to steal.
According to the Washington Post:
Pence’s 1990 race also led to key changes in campaign finance policies. Experts say that subsequent rules passed by the Federal Election Commission barring the use of campaign funds for personal needs were the direct result of ethics concerns raised by Pence’s actions. …
The commissioners had been guided by a legal analysis written by an FEC staff attorney saying that the rules prohibited incumbents but not challengers from using excess campaign funds for personal use. … The commissioners — three Democrats and three Republicans — voted unanimously to begin a process to rewrite rules to ban the personal use of campaign funds by all candidates.
Trump’s campaign also saw nothing wrong with the kind of man that does immoral things because there is no law against them, therefore no legal consequences. Jason Miller, a Trump Campaign Spokesman said, Pence was “100 percent compliant with the law at that time.”
Of course, he was; morality and legality are often two different things. There is a breed of human who will blur those lines for personal glory, some become billionaires and others use it to rise to political power, but both are untrustworthy. It seems that on the Trump/Pence ticket we get both.
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After losing the election, Pence would turn on his own negative campaign tactics to try to get his “Christian” image back, and later said that negative campaigning is wrong, “a campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate.” However, he is now Donald J. Trump’s running mate, so that shows exactly what those words are worth.
Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images
