Politicians should still expect a call from Bobby
When Bobby calls, politicians in power pay heed — and pony up.
As president and chief fundraising officer of the Ontario Liberal Fund, Bobby Walman knows how to extract money from corporate donors — and exhort politicians to raise even more.
The governing party’s veteran bagman, he assigns secret fundraising targets to key ministers, ranging as high as $500,000 a year. As detailed in Tuesday’s Star, most of the funds come from corporate and union stakeholders.
Responding to the Star story, Premier Kathleen Wynne told reporters she will reform Ontario’s outdated campaign finance laws starting later this year, noting the changes would be phased in over time. It has been 10 years since the federal government banned all corporate and union contributions, which are now illegal in four provinces.
Until further notice, however, it’s business as usual in Ontario politics.
One cabinet source described “getting a call from Bobby,” after which Walman met with him and political staff to set a fresh six-figure target.
“The numbers are never written down, but Bobby keeps it for his own reference — you’re given a guideline, and then told that it’s never quite enough,” said another source who has interacted with him for years.
The pressure can be relentless, as much psychological as political: “There’s still another two months left in the year and you can raise another $50,000 — we’ll help you,” the source recalls Walman saying.
John Gerretsen, a former Liberal cabinet minister under Wynne and her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, said Walman was a constant presence when setting “targets” for politicians in power.
“Oh Bobby . . . oh gosh, yes . . . Bobby would first of all make a presentation to cabinet about how the party needed money,” Gerretsen recalled. “And then Bobby would contact the individual cabinet ministers, mainly through senior staff persons.” It was a command performance. “And so you’d meet with Bobby,” Gerretsen continued. “You’d get your staff people, your political people, to work on a fundraiser.”
Apart from a stint working in the premier’s office for McGuinty and then Wynne as director of stakeholder relations in 2012-13, Walman has run the party’s campaign fund since 2008. And while he asks much of politicians in power, he doesn’t like being asked questions by journalists.
Telephoned last week, Walman insisted he was too busy to talk until next month, then acknowledged he had no intention of providing answers. He did not respond to a subsequent email repeating the questions about targets or quotas for cabinet ministers.
“You can write whatever you’d like, but I’ve got to go,” he said. “I don’t actually talk to reporters.”
Liberal party president Vince Borg, Walman’s boss, speaks highly of his chief fundraiser’s knack for finding the sweet spot in an increasingly difficult field.
“It’s not easy,” Borg said in an interview. “Campaigns get more expensive and you can’t broaden the base.”
But one of Borg’s predecessors as Liberal party president, retired MPP and cabinet minister Greg Sorbara, said the system he once oversaw no longer makes sense. Responding to Tuesday’s column, Sorbara described corporate fundraising as “an itch that needed to be scratched” — and reformed. Ontario’s campaign finance laws are “an old model, and it’s time for the model to be recast.”
While Wynne is now talking up reforms, many of her ministers were still defending the existing laws up until a few days ago.
“The current system has very strong checks and balances in place in terms of transparency, in terms of accountability,” Yasir Naqvi, a cabinet minister and former party president, insisted in an interview earlier this month.
But with Ontario’s campaign finance regime, transparency can be illusory — and akin to opacity. The problem is that existing contribution limits are essentially limitless, thanks to built-in loopholes.
Officially, corporations and unions can contribute nearly $10,000 a year, but they can donate further $9,975 tranches for each campaign period (general elections and byelections), plus additional thousands to riding associations and candidates.
Even these legal reporting requirements are misleading. Subsidiary firms (or affiliated union locals) are able to repeat the same sequence of donations all over again, allowing large corporations to easily exceed six figures. Other corporate donors can easily hide behind numbered companies.
Moreover, even companies that are fully compliant do not ever disclose precisely what event the donation was for. Were they merely sending in an unsolicited cheque, or gaining an exclusive audience with a minister for selected stakeholders in exchange for their money?
Full disclosure can be a pretence, because it’s usually impossible to connect the dots — hence transparency as opacity. Sometimes, however, the public and the press get tan- talizing glimpses into the private salons where politicians solicit funds. For example, Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli raised $100,000 (with Wynne) at a 2013 fundraiser organized by the nuclear industry — part of his annual target of up to $300,000.
Health Minister Eric Hoskins attended a fundraiser last year organized by the Liberals with the Ontario Long Term Care Association promising exclusive “face time.”
But there are few such glimpses. The minister’s office did not respond, as promised, to questions about his recent fundraising, notably a $1,000-a-ticket function headlined by Hoskins at the University Club last month.
Also upcoming: A $10,000-a-plate fundraiser on May 3 where Wynne is double-teaming with Reza Moridi, the minister responsible for higher education and innovation. His annual target is about $250,000.
It’s not just ministers who walk a fine line, but their political aides who must strike a delicate balance. Many politicians slough off fundraising on their young, inexperienced staffers who are sent out to sell $500 or $1,000 tickets to stakeholders one day, then asked to organize meetings with those same special interest groups another day.
“Does anyone think that’s not transactional?” one of Wynne’s advisers asks rhetorically.
Former Liberal finance minister Dwight Duncan said that even after his decades in politics — as both a staffer and a politician — maintaining a fundraising firewall is illusory.
“I don’t care how honest you are, I don’t care how good your intentions are. If someone gives you money, it’s going to influence your view, because we’re only human.”
Tomorrow: The high price we all pay for corporate and union contributions to politicians. Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn