I live in the 1st Congressional District of Connecticut and my Congressman is Democratic Representative John B. Larson. Larson was first elected in 1998 and has served ever since. After doing some research into the top donors and PAC contributions to Larson's campaign I was somewhat surprised by the small sum of money (in comparison) that Larson had. Larson's top donors were all under $20,000 and the PAC contributions only totaled $292,250 (Open Secrets). As surprised as I initially was, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Larson has been serving in the same district for over 15 years so he doesn't need to do much to get his name out. He is also a democrat in a primarily democratic district. This districts is also a small district comprised mostly of Hartford County. Hartford County is mostly farm land, suburban communities, and the city of Hartford. It's a rather low maintenance area where name recognition is enough. Therefore, it wouldn't require a lot of campaigning or money for Larson to win re-election.
As I furthered researched the donors, lobbyists, and PACs that contributed to Larson's campaign I found an important connection. First of all, two of the top five donors to his campaign were the insurance companies, Aetna and AFLAC, respectively (Open Secrets). This showed an important and positive connection between Larson and his constituents. Hartford is the insurance capitol of the world and a large portion of adults in suburban Hartford County work in the insurance industry. As a result, it makes sense that Larson would receive donations and endorsements form them. The second largest donor to Larson's campaign is Ernst & Young, one of the largest accounting firms. This became understandable as I further researched Larson's bill sponsorship. When I looked at PAC contributions I found that Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate was the top industry to contribute to Larson. I also found that 90% of the PAC contributions were from businesses (Open Secrets). None of this is surprising, because Hartford is an epicenter for all of these industries.
It also doesn't come as a surprise that Larson's bill sponsorship and votes in the House closely align with the donors and lobbyists that support him. First of all, Larson is a member of the House Committee on Ethics and the House Committee on Ways and Means. Larson is also a member of two subcommittees, Select Revenue Measures and Social Security. When I looked into the bills the Larson sponsored I found that 32% of the bills involved taxes (GovTrack). It makes sense that he would be connected to taxes as a member of the two subcommittees. But it also makes sense when you look at Larson's district and his donors. Big business is a big donor and the insurance and finance industries lend a lot of support to Larson. Therefore, taxes and revenue are an important issue to Larson. The next three top areas of bill sponsorship were government operations, energy, and armed forces and national security (GovTrack). These issues also align with Larson's donors and voting history. Larson's third biggest donor is Lockheed Martin, which is the nation's top defense contractor. This perfectly illustrates the relationship between lobbyists and members of Congress. Lockheed Martin donates to Larson's campaign and in return he supports national defense (which makes Lockheed Martin more money) (Open Secrets).
When I looked at specific bills Larson sponsored I found that a number of them combined energy and revenue. For example, most recently, on September 18th Larson introduced the Fuel Cell Tax Extenders Act of 2015. When I looked into Larson's voting record I found a number of recent votes on similar issues involving energy and taxation of fossil fuels. In the last couple of days the House has voted on a number of provisions that involve the export of crude oil, energy, etc. On all these votes, Larson's votes were consistent with his support of alternative energy measures. I found it very interesting that Larson had such a commitment to energy and so I did a little more research. I didn't find any large donors or PACs that explicitly explained Larson's constant support of this. In many ways it was refreshing to not find anything. It showed me that my representative was committed to something because he cared about it, not because a rich lobbyist told him to care about it.
The research into John Larson's donors, bill sponsorship, voting history, and committee membership gave me a much broader picture of my representative than a bio on his website ever could. It's nice to think that representatives are responsive to the make up of their constituencies (and often they are). But regardless, even good members of Congress must be responsive to their donors as well. They can't run a campaign and get reelected without money and sometimes that means members shape their platforms and commitments to align with donors. Their isn't a member of Congress that isn't influenced by lobbyists and donors. I consider John Larson to be a good representative that works hard to represent the needs of my district. But he too is influenced by lobbyists. So the question that remains, is how do we change this? How do we make the members of Congress responsive to constituents first, and lobbyists second?
https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00000575&type=I
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/john_larson/400233
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