How Big Money Sways Policy Even When It Isn’t Spent

I made this point in Plutocrats United, and here it is in relation to opposition to the American-US Air airline merger, via ProPublica:

While labor was the friendly face of the merger, Tom Horne, the former Arizona attorney general, who is now out of politics, said that he experienced an uglier side of the campaign.

Horne, a conservative Republican, invoked Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in explaining why he joined the Obama administration in challenging the deal. Soon after the complaint was filed, Horne says his political consultant was told by a lobbyist that $500,000 would be spent on ads against Horne in his upcoming primary if he didn’t drop the suit.

A former Horne staffer gave the same account. The case was settled before the primary campaign got underway. American Airlines and the lobbyist denied they had threatened to attack Horne.

Horne said the promised political retribution shocked him. “Nothing remotely like that ever happened before or after,” he said. “I was in statewide office for 12 years.”

When the Justice Department moved to drop the case, Horne felt he could not continue to contest the merger on his own. His office didn’t have the resources to go up against two giant companies.

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