Carroll County State House race heats up

The challenger for the District 18 seat in the Georgia House of Representatives said incumbent Rep. Mark Butler’s acceptance of funding from political action committees and other organizations outside of the district constitutes the potential for a conflict of interest.

Gerald Pilgrim, a local real estate agent and the sole challenger to Butler, R-Carrollton, in the upcoming Republican primary, said that because Butler has received the vast majority of all contributions in the last six months from groups outside of Carroll and Haralson counties, he is effectively bound to special interests that may conflict with the interests of his constituents.

“Unfortunately, it takes money to run a campaign, and when you’re depending on people outside the community to raise money, when they come knocking they are expecting you to answer the phone for them. My job is to ensure that I’m looking after the interests of Carroll and Haralson counties,” Pilgrim said. “Instead of knowing it’s someone from Virginia supporting you, it’s a lot better to have someone from Bremen in your corner.”

Soon after declaring his candidacy last summer, Pilgrim released a statement establishing that he would not accept contributions from political action committees, and according to his most recent campaign finance report taken from the Web site for the Georgia Ethics Commission, he has kept his word. All but one of the 34 contributions to his campaign, totalling just over $20,000, have come from residents or organizations in the district, and none of the contributions have come from a registered PAC.

Butler, on the other hand, has relied both on PACs and organizations outside Carroll and Haralson counties for bankrolling his re-election bid. Of the 50 contributions he has received since the beginning of August, totaling about $25,000, only one has come from a person or group inside the district, and that contribution, from MWC Construction in Carrollton, was for only $310. Much of the money collected by Butler in this most recent disclosure report has come from national businesses and organizations, including Aflac, Publix Supermarkets and Wal Pac, a PAC out of Suwanee representing Walmart Stores Inc.

But while almost all of these organizations are based outside of Carroll and Haralson counties — some even give addresses on the report from as far away as Virginia and Pennsylvania — Butler said they still represent the interests of local voters.

“One of the things that maybe [Pilgrim] doesn’t realize, he says it’s outside money. I know he’s really down on political action committees but while he’s putting them down, he’s actually putting down his constituents,” Butler said. “The money for those committees comes from the people who work and live in the district. They’re associations that represent doctors and construction workers and teachers, and they represent employees that work at different places in the district.”

Butler said that while incumbents do receive a good amount of funding from PACs and larger organizations that are more hesitant to donate to challengers, he has not once voted for legislation because he previously received a donation from someone supporting it.

“My opponent feels like if someone gives you money, you owe them something. That’s brave of him to admit that for himself. In my case, that’s not so,” Butler said. “You can’t buy favors. ... I have never operated that way over the last seven years, and that’s proven by my track record.”

Donations to candidates from outside their elected area is a common practice, and it does occur more often on the national level than in state races, said Dr. Robert Sanders, a political science professor at the University of West Georgia. It becomes a potential issue of concern for the voter when a candidate benefits personally from an involvement with a contributor or when a candidate aligns themselves with a contributor against the best interest of his or her constituents, and such conflicts are often a matter of personal perception.

“The key question to ask is, who are these donations from? It’s not an uncommon practice but it becomes a problem when there’s something to be gained personally by the candidate and if there’s a conflict of interest for those people in that area,” Sanders said. “It might not necessarily be a conflict. It depends on if it’s harming the people in the district.”

Sanders said that while the contributions from health care lobbying groups outside the state seem a little out of place for a relatively rural state race, these groups may be hoping to get a foot in the door at the state level with the ultimate goal being to influence policy on the national level. Among more than a dozen contributions from those in the health sector, Butler has received one-time donations over the past six months from Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. of East Hanover, N.J., and Universal Health Services Employee Good Government Fund in King of Prussia, Pa., both for $1,000.

“If someone’s for or against policy, they’re going to go to the grass roots, and when I say grass roots, I mean a local representative in a rural district like this,” Sanders said. “It’s going to translate into something that’s positive on the state level, and it could become positive on the national level. I’m not saying that’s the case, but you could see that making sense.”

He said such arrangements do not inherently suggest any conflict as much as they mirror the reasons why any organization supports a candidate.

“These groups pay money to support candidates. It’s going to filter up to state policy, and it’s going to filter up to national policy,” he said. “It’s not that uncommon.”