Donors: Big firms are generous to incumbents

If you want a good example of how Utah legislators raise their campaign cash from special-interest groups and lobbyists, look no further than a Salt Lake City Democratic Senate race and a number of GOP legislative contests in Utah County.

Sen. Fred Fife, D-Salt Lake, got all his campaign money this year from special interests, while his intra-party challenger, Luz Robles, got little.

The pair face off this Saturday in the Salt Lake County Democratic Convention for the Senate District 1 seat, held by Fife for the past four years.

Other tough intra-party fights will take place Saturday when the Utah County Republican Party meets in its convention.

A computer-aided search of those candidates by the Deseret News shows GOP Utah County incumbents on average got $4,984 so far this year from special interests, while the GOP candidates challenging those incumbents got, on average, only $267 from special interests.

"Special interests always want to give to a winner," says Kirk Jowers, head of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. "And incumbents are proven winners. In Utah, particularly, where corporate giving is allowed, that is the lowest-hanging fruit for incumbents. So they take that easy money instead of working harder to raise money from individuals and constituents. Challengers can't get the special-interest money, so they have to go to individuals."

Fife, a former Utah House member, raised $1,850 for his convention battle that involves around 90 delegates — all the money from special-interest groups that regularly have dealings with the Legislature. Fife raised no money from constituents and donated $850 himself to his race.

Robles, on the other hand, raised $28,900, much of that coming in hundreds of small, individual donations from $5 to $20. Many of Robles' donors are Hispanic. There are but a few donations by the corporations and lobbyists that dominate campaign giving to Utah's 104 incumbent part-time legislators. Robles also got several thousand dollars from relatives.

The giving so far in 2008 elections shows lawmakers raising thousands of dollars from special-interest groups while their challengers beat the bushes for small individual donations and/or self-fund their campaigns. As in recent legislative elections, that trend is a hallmark of Utah politics, various studies by the newspaper has shown.