Once upon a time the South was invaded by Northern opportunists who manuevered into political office and bought up Southern plantations with the advantages of the spoils of the Civil War.  They managed to inject Northern views and influence into the South at a time when the defeated Confederacy was vulnerable and unable to mount the financial resources to resist candidates with Northern money.  These opportunists were derisively called “carpetbaggers” after the luggage they carried and had barely unpacked before they ascended to political office.

Today we see carpetbags full of campaign donations making their way north from the south to turn the political tide in northern states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to an article in today’s New York Times [“One-Party Rule: A National Strategy Funds State Political Monopolies” January 12, 2014].  The Times traced funds from big donors in Texas, such as Bob Perry and David Koch, to a p0litical action committee set up by the governors association, and then to the Michigan Republican Party.  Nearly $8.5 million in donations reached Michigan in this way, turning both legislative chambers and the governorship Republican in a state traditionally divided between the west coast conservatives and the southeastern liberals.  With this political clout the Republican legislature has passed Right-to-Work laws, banned gay partnership benefits, and increased the opportunities for charter schools in a state already leading the nation in charter schools.

Adding to the genius of this diversion of funds was the transfer of Michigan Republican donations to the governors’ association to be distributed in states where campaign financing was less restricted, specifically Maine and Florida. Thus political contributions in Michigan, Maine and Florida were maximized to the full extent of each state’s campaign finance laws. You have to admire the Republicans’ ability to manipulate campaign financing laws across the country to benefit their local causes and politicians.

However, the same Times article documents how gay-rights donors were organized to sway elections in Minnesota, thus allowing Minnesota to enact a same-sex marriage law in May, 2013.  In this case gay rights support was mobilized in Minnesota to elect a Democratic governor, a Democratic Senator and a candidate for the House.  Again local campaign finance laws were used to the advantage of political interests from outside the state.

What is common to Michigan and Minnesota is a divided electorate that was influenced to allow one political party to dominate the other.  There’s nothing illegal or necessarily unethical about donating to support your political interests, but it is clear that democracy is undermined by such practices, even as the anti-slavery Republicans dominated Southern politics for a season following the Civil War.  Regardless of their political agendas, the carpetbaggers were seen as meddlers in political contests and did not represent the South. States instituted candidate residency laws to counter the untoward influence of outsiders in their politics.

With several million dollars crossing state lines, political donors have made their impact in states outside their voting residence.  That doesn’t seem right, even if it is legal.  When the money is used to support causes we believe in, we may feel reassured that the ends justifies the means, but it is easy to see how we are victimized by campaign donors who get laws passed we don’t believe in.  Today a Republican legislature in Michigan is micromanaging the teacher preparation curriculum and indirectly closing down public schools to be replaced by charter schools of unproven value. That does not seem like policy that should be dictated from outside the State of Michigan, but it has been.

Those who advocate for states’ rights should be questioning this trend. Their assumption is that the state understands its own needs better than the monolithic federal government.  If states should have more discretion about how their people are governed, then out-of-state donors should not determine who does the governing.  It is hypocrisy to insist on Block Grants at the federal level on the assumption that the states know best how to meet their own needs, then to try to dictate how those needs are determined by campaign carpetbagging. The ends do not justify the means.

It is only when the election dust has cleared and a new party has gained ascendance, that we realize we have been carpetbagged.  Now that we have one-party rule in Michigan, we see how the delicate political balance we have enjoyed over the decades since George (the Moderate) Romney was governor has been destroyed by southern money, by absentee power-brokers.  It feels like a violation of our sovereignty. We feel what the defeated South must have felt in the wake of the Civil War.

It was legal but wrong in 1870, and it is legal but wrong today. State voters should determine state government, not the power of political donors who believe everyone’s business is their business.