Politicians are known to have big egos, but few in Kentucky have seen such institutional confirmation as Sen. Mitch McConnell in recent years. In addition to obtaining the typical assortment of earmarks requested by powerful members of the congressional leadership, McConnell has worked hard over the years to obtain what one might call private earmarked funding for an unusual project combining the personal with the political: the University of Louisville McConnell Center for Political Leadership, which has received more than $9 million from leading McConnell boosters.
Plain and simple, it’s a self-aggrandizing ego trip that mixes promotion with an opportunity for corporate interests give to a pet cause of a powerful politician.
Making matters even more unseemly, the University of Louisville at first attempted to keep the donors names a secret.[1] According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, some of these secret donors have included such corporate heavyweights as Ashland Inc., the RJR Nabisco Foundation, Toyota, and military contractor United Defense Industries (the subsidiary of scandal plagued and McConnell earmark recipient BAE Systems) – all of which gave the center at least $500,000 each. Other donors have included UPS, United States Tobacco Co., Toyota, Microsoft, and General Electric.[2] It’s no surprise that executives and PACs representing these different corporations have also given handsomely to McConnell’s campaigns, and he’s rewarded them many times over with legislative action or inaction.
The effort by the university to conceal the source of the McConnell Center’s funding ultimately failed when the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the University of Louisville Foundation's donors were a matter of public record and that the very attempt to keep the names private created suspicion. “[C]ertain donors may not simply wish to conceal their identities,” the court observed, “but rather may wish to conceal the true purposes of their donations.”[3]
The court, apparently, knows the senior senator all too well.
1. “McConnell Center Donations Disclosed,” The Lexington Herald-Leader, December 15, 2004.
2. Ibid.
3. “Secret Donors No More,” The Lexington Herald-Leader, August 23, 2008.
