Idaho Governor’s Cup looks like an expensive pay-to-play networking event. But is it?
The annual Idaho Governor’s Cup fundraising event is a tremendous success.
It helps to “keep the best minds in Idaho,” by awarding renewable, $3,000 scholarships to worthy Idaho students who will be attending Idaho colleges and universities.
And it’s getting bigger and better every year. The event gave out $33,000 in scholarships in 2008. By 2017, it awarded $399,000 in scholarships to 36 deserving and grateful students.
The fundraiser has humble beginnings in 1974 as a small golf tournament started by then-Gov. Cecil Andrus. Today, it’s a multiday event with more than 1,600 participants and alternates between Sun Valley and Coeur d’Alene.
So what’s the problem here?
To give out $399,000 in scholarships, it cost $827,361 to put on the event that year, meaning organizers spent more than $2 for every dollar they awarded. The four-day event includes meals, drinks, fly fishing excursions, shooting events, social events and, of course, golf.
Because it’s so expensive to put on, it’s also expensive to attend.
If you’d like to attend, it costs as little as $125 for three hours of evening events, which Idaho Statesman reporter Audrey Dutton did, with the help from a grant from the Idaho Press Club, to get an inside look at the event.
To do more than just a three-hour stint, though, it costs $1,500 if you want to go shooting, fly fishing or golfing or just $1,300 to attend social events. Sponsorships go from $4,000 all the way up to $35,000. Some companies or lobbyists will invite or sponsor select people, including legislators, raising the concern that those companies are buying influence, a valid concern.
I spoke with state Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, and state Rep. Mat Erpelding, D-Boise. Both have attended the Governor’s Cup. They paid their own lodging and travel, but their expenses for the events were paid by someone else. Erpelding went several years ago on the invite of AARP. Woodward went this year and said he wasn’t even sure who it was who sponsored him to attend.
I asked Erpelding and Woodward directly about whether they have any concerns about an event like the Governor’s Cup providing undue influence on the legislators who attend.
“I just don’t see that picture in Idaho,” said Woodward, who said he spent more time getting to know fellow legislators, such as Sen. Mark Harris, R-Soda Springs, and Sen. Steve Vick, R-Dalton Gardens, with whom Woodward went shooting. Woodward, a first-term senator, said because the session is so busy, he didn’t get a chance to get to know fellow legislators during the session, so the Governor’s Cup was a good opportunity to do so.
Woodward and Erpelding said legislators are always getting information from various groups, constituents and special interests, whether it’s at the Governor’s Cup, biking with someone in the foothills of Boise, attending a trade association’s meeting, going out to dinner with a constituent or business owner or simply running into someone on the street or in the halls of the Capitol.
“I don’t see a lot of difference between going shooting with a lobbyist (at the Governor’s Cup) and me going for a bike ride with a lobbyist, because it’s time spent with a lobbyist,” Erpelding said. “Could be the shooting experience costs $1,500, and the bike ride was free, but you’re still spending time with someone who has an agenda, and the real challenge for legislators is to discern what is an honest agenda and what is influencing you and to decide if that influence is what’s best for Idaho.”
Networking event
One lobbyist I spoke with said the event is more of a networking event, a place to see and be seen, and not just to hobnob with legislators but to schmooze with high-powered businesses, firms and potential clients. On the scale of influence, he said there are plenty of other opportunities to do that with legislators that probably prove more effective than the Governor’s Cup.
Ken Dey, the director of government and public affairs for Simplot and who is also a board member for the Governor’s Cup, said he has attended the Governor’s Cup three or four times.
He said Simplot uses its sponsorship solely for people who work for the company and doesn’t sponsor legislators or government employees to attend the event. Simplot is listed as a Premier Sponsor, which has a price of $35,000 for 16 participants.
Dey said he didn’t know how it worked if companies wanted to sponsor a legislator. He referred questions about the logistics of the event to the event’s executive director Sarah Bettwieser, who did not respond to a request for comment.
I also asked Dey if there’s anything to the criticism that the event is an opportunity to purchase influence or pay for access to legislators.
“That’s something that’s never been a concern for us,” Dey said. “The sole reason we participate is for the benefit of the students.”
He pointed out that without the event, there would be no scholarships at all.
Which is true, and the amount that’s raised, and the fact that it’s a renewable scholarship, not just a one-time amount, is notable.
In some ways, it’s similar to other fundraisers, such as Fundsy, Festival of Trees or the Boys and Girls Clubs of Ada County’s Wild West Auction, at which you’ll often find legislators and the governor, with an opportunity to chat them up.
Of course, spending $125 for a ticket to the Boys and Girls Club dinner is a lot lower price for entry than the Governor’s Cup.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships range in price from $4,000 for a hole sponsorship that includes two participants, all the way up to a premier sponsorship for 16 participants at a cost of $35,000.
The website lists four premier sponsors this year: Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Mountain View Hospital, Simplot and Syringa Networks.
At the “major sponsor” level, there are four sponsors, at $25,000 each: Blue Cross of Idaho, Potlatch Deltic, Micron and Itafos, a fertilizer manufacturing company with headquarters in the Cayman Islands.
Other sponsors comprise a who’s who list of Idaho companies: Midas Gold, Intermountain Gas, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Power, Idaho Forest Group, and companies that have contracts with the state, such as Optum, Corizon and the GEO Group Foundation, which is the charitable giving arm of the GEO Group, which has a contract with the state to house several hundred Idaho prisoners in Texas.
Totaled up, the sponsorships alone raise $932,000.
Political networking
But with less than 31 percent of the proceeds going to the beneficiary in 2017, and the rest going to pay to put on the event, a big concern is whether the Governor’s Cup is simply a tax-advantaged political networking opportunity.
A long-held rule of thumb among nonprofits says that the cost of a fundraising event shouldn’t exceed 30% of net proceeds, according to the accounting firm BBD.
So the argument goes, participants spend $1.3 million for a four-day networking event, and $400,000 for scholarships is a nice side benefit.
It also seems that the scholarship is used as a kind of shield against anyone who dares criticize or question the Governor’s Cup.
Meanwhile, other fundraisers are able to generate significant amounts of money without spending so much, such as the Killebrew-Thompson Memorial event, which in 2016 cost about $288,000 and reported about $572,000 in charitable donations. The nonprofit that puts on the event awarded $860,000 that year in grants, according to federal tax records.
Erpelding, who’s attended only once as a legislator, told me he honestly did not find a lot of use in the event. He also said he felt concerns over pay to access are overblown.
“Influence is dependent on relationships, and if legislators have naive relationships with lobbyists, then they’re going to make naive decisions,” he said.
Undue influence
After talking with Woodward and Erpelding, I felt confident in their ethics and their clear-eyed view of the event. But can I say that about every legislator in Idaho?
I also can’t help but imagine the scenario of a legislator sitting down at a committee hearing to take public testimony on a bill. Before him sits a woman, an average resident, asking for legislation. Then comes a lobbyist opposing that legislation. The legislator spent three days skeet shooting with him at the Governor’s Cup, got to know him, heard about his family, his background, had dinner with him, perhaps had drinks. Wouldn’t the legislator have an affinity for and be more likely to side with that lobbyist than, say, the average resident testifying on the bill?
At the very least, it seems to create the impression that there’s a system of influence, and if you can’t afford the cost of a room at the Sun Valley Lodge plus $1,500, then you’re just out of luck for the opportunity to go fly fishing with your favorite legislator.
The late Gov. Cecil Andrus, the man who started it all, reportedly told Wayne Hoffman of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, that he was displeased with what the Governor’s Cup had become. Gov. Butch Otter made the event his own, and to his credit, grew the benefit for college scholarships.
The negative side effect is that the costs have grown, and the event is open for abuse and at the very least the appearance of abuse as an expensive system of pay to play and influence-peddling.
New Gov. Brad Little now has his own opportunity to make the event his own. He doesn’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but he could do a lot to make the Governor’s Cup more transparent, more accessible and less like an expensive club for rich contributors.
