How The Contest Works

I'm going to be running a contest for the next 11 days. I'm going to choose five members every day from the list of 55 members, and with your help, we'll look into their history of campaign donations from those who made deals with the Baucus "Fauc-Us" Caucus.

Here's the list of the five members today for us to look into, and shine some sunlight into their closets:

Rep. Xavier Becerra CA-31

Rep. Steve Cohen TN-09

Rep. Jim Moran VA-08

Rep. John Larson CT-01

Rep. Tammy Baldwin WI-02

And I'll be posting a poll every day on each of the five members I choose--Who's the worst Democratic sell-out to the special interests?

At the end of the 11 days, we'll have three days of semifinals where the crowd-sourced research is presented for the worst sell-outs from each day. And then the seminfinalists advance to one glorious day of finals in which the worst sell-out gets the grand prize package for being compromised by the special lobbying interests:

A dedicated web landing page collecting all of the crowd sourced information about their relationships with lobbyists and their voting history Educational calls into every Democratic household in the district letting them know the member won't take a stand to defend the public option Post cards to every Democratic home in the district, directing them to the website and letting them know the member's history with lobbying interests An automated call-in number for people (seniors) who can't login to the website

We’ve chosen five Democratic Representatives for our research into how much their vote can be bought for by private insurers, hospitals, PhRMA, and device makers to possibly cave in for the final bill without a strong robust public option in it. We’ve been hearing plenty of Democrats say that they “support” the public option, but that they’d support the passage of any bill even if it doesn’t include the public option.

How To Kick Ass In The Research For The Contest!

This is where you come in for the research, and I’ve chosen Rep. Xavier Becerra as an example to do research on how much his vote can be influenced for the final bill possibly without a public option. Here are the websites where I started my research on Rep. Xavier Becerra:

OpenSecrets.org a. Scroll down the alphabetical list to select “Becerra, Xavier”and click on “Campaign Committee and Leadership PAC Combined” for the 2010 cycle when you open the page for Rep. Becerra. b. You can see that Rep. Becerra’s received over $122,827 from private insurers, hospitals, HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, and device makers. Many of these associations OPPOSE a strong robust public option in the final bill. c. If you click on the tab “PACs”on the Becerra page, you’ll see that he’s received over $32,500 from the Insurance and $94,650 from the Health sectors. Click on the fields for “Insurance” and “Health.” d. You’ll see that when you click on the “Insurance” field that Rep. Becerra has received over $2,000 from AHIP, and $2,000 from BCBS. When you click on the “Health” field, you’ll see that Rep. Becerra has received over $8,000 from hospitals, and click on “Health Services/HMOs” to see that he’s received over $3,500 from WellPoint, Inc. e. If you click on the tab “Donors”on the Becerra page and select “Campaign Committee and Leadership PAC Combined” for the 2010 cycle, you’ll see that he’s received $10,000 from the American Hospital Association, and $5,500 from Blue Cross Blue Shield. FEC.gov a. Click on the “2009-2010” Election Cycle, and click “All” for the Display field. b. Enter in “Becerra” in the Name field, and select “All” For State, and for the Office display, select U.S. House since Xavier Becerra is a Representative in the House, select “Democrat” for the Party field, and select “All” for the Candidate Status. Then click the “Send Query” button, and it’ll take you to a new page with Becerra’s full name. Click on that name. c. When you click on the full name of Xavier Becerra, you’ll see a list. I want you to click on the two underlined sentences on that page, the “Non-Party (e.g. PACs) or other Committees” first and then “Individual Contributions.” d. When you click on the “Non-Party (e.g. PACs) or other Committees,” you’ll see a long list of donations from political action committees. Here’s what I found for Rep. Becerra below from PACs for private insurers, PhRMA, hospitals, and device-makers: $1,000 from the Altria Group, Inc PAC $5,000 from the American Hospital Association PAC $2,000 from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP PAC) $1,000 from Bayer Corporation Political Action Committee $2,000 from BlueCross BlueShield Association (BluePAC) $3,000 from DaVita Inc PAC $1,000 from Eli Lilly and Company PAC $1,000 from Patton Boggs PAC $3,500 from WellPoint Inc, WellPAC e. Then go back and click on “Individual Contributions” and you’ll see that Becerra has received over $3,400 from the CEOs of the Molina HealthCare, and Molina Health Care, when you google “Molina Health+public option,” you’ll see that Molina HealthCare opposes the creation of a public option. These CEOs are in Rep. Becerra’s district, and you have to wonder how much their donations go in making sure that Rep. Becerra will vote for a mandated bailout of the private insurance industry without a public option in the final bill. f. And another interesting fact, when you scroll down the list and start googling the names of these donors, all sorts of interesting things come up, like the fact that William Wynne, who donated $500 to Becerra, is a lobbyist with Health Policy Source, a lobbying firm, and that he used to be the health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee. How much is that $500 worth in making sure that Rep. Becerra support the efforts of the Blue Dogs to weaken the House Tri-Committee to look like the Senate Finance Bill, which is the best wet dream for AHIP?

If you see anything else about Xavier Becerra that isn't listed above on these two websites, and you've found more interesting individuals with ties to lobbying organizations for AHIP, BCBS, Aetna, and UnitedHealth, please let me know in the comments below with Rep. Becerra's name in the title of your comment!

And let's start hitting the ground today with the crowd-sourcing effort on the other four Members of Congress! Remember, they really hate having sunlight being shone on their contributions from special interests, and if they start complaining about our efforts, then perhaps they should do more to back up their verbal support for the public option by making sure that the final bill contains it.

Here's one other action item for Kossacks in the Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. area:

Please RECOMMEND this diary so that members of the Dkos community can join in with our contest for the worst lawmaker today!

And don't forget to donate to our public option fund at FDL since Nyceve, Jane, I, and others are working hard night and day on this issue for us all!

UPDATE: You can check the Party Time to see fundraisers for these five members of Congress. Rep. Becerra had a political fundraiser held for him on May 7th, 2009. One of the lobbyists that hosted the "wine-tasting" reception for him is called Dale Snape, and Mr. Snape represents IMS Health, a HMO organization, that opposes the public option.

And here's today's poll. The winner advances to the semi-finals!