As campaign season begins in earnest, voters are overwhelmed by the noise of the candidates. In our own race between incumbent Rep. Mia Love and Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, The Salt Lake Tribune reports that McAdams has taken $252,000 from special interest groups while Love has taken $791,000 from different groups. As voters, we don’t have to listen to the noise from candidates about how they value district concerns. We can look at their contributors and tell them what they value.
A deeper look at these special interest contributions tells us exactly that. The money to Love comes largely from business interests such as well over $50,000 from Big Pharma (like high drug prices?), big oil, gas and coal (like her vote to strip Bears Ears and Escalante?), dietary and nutrition supplements (she wants to make these eligible for SNAP), medical device companies (she voted to repeal the tax on these devices) and over $38,000 from gun rights groups.
McAdams’ money largely comes from labor groups, education groups and environmental groups. This is a simple observation. The advantage of campaign disclosure is that we can look at candidate contributors and know with certainty if they share our values.
Frank Brannan, Salt Lake City