Dirty Little Secrets : The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics

by Larry J. Sabato

Political corruption in America is worse today than it has been since the Watergate era.  Americans know it, and the politicians have known it for years.  Urgent calls for reform have become standard fare, but nothing changes.  A Democrat President and a Republican Congress were both elected on the strength of their promises of reform. Neither has delivered. Americans contemplate the tottering remains of our ethically bankrupt political system with despair.

Fact: The Christian Coalition's 1994 voter guides appear to have been skewered to favor Republican candidates in key congressional races across the country, in direct contravention of federal election law.

The truth is, the politicians couldn't be happier dickering over the remains of the welfare state.  Because, as you'll learn in Dirty Little Secrets , there is probably not a politician in America who does not benefit directly, personally, and continually from the status quo.

Fact: The state Democratic party in Tennessee paid sums in excess of six figures to a number of groups and organizations for various political services in 1994.  The problem?  None of the groups actually exist, except on paper.

Our Politicians, from those in the highest reaches of the Republican and Democratic parties to those in the humblest state congressional districts, evade, massage, and even break the law in order to hold on to power. But instead of merely unmasking corrupt politicians in every region of the country, Dirty Little Secrets analyzes why corruption persists in American politics, despite scandal after scandal, and in spite of periodic bursts of reform.

Fact: On the eve of the 1994 elections, mock "pollsters" called up thousand of voters in one Wisconsin congressional district to ask whether their electoral decisions would be influenced if they knew one of the candidates was a lesbian.

Most politicians want to do the right thing. But they also want to be reelected, and the system is far stronger than any honest man or woman. The influence of money and the intricacies of the levers of power make it easier for politicians to ignore the law than to obey it. In Dirty Little Secrets you will read of the conservative movement's hidden manipulations in 1994, and learn the truth about Newt Gingrich's twenty-year program of political destabilization. The history of the corrupt House the Democrats built with the help of liberal interest groups stands revealed.  And Larry J. Sabato and Glenn R. Simpson expose the corrupt and illegal tactics both parties have used for decades to protect and promote their own power.

Fact: In 1994, in Alabama, one local election was decided by three hundred votes.  Seventeen hundred ballots cast in that election were illegally admitted absentee ballots, some of them submitted by dead people.

Sabato and Simpson's fresh reporting and thousands of hours of background research include interviews with influential politicians, consultants, and political operatives, Freedom of Information Act requests, and thousands of pages of obscure campaign reports. They prove corruption is not about bad apples or colorful local traditions. And they offer a completely original plan for reform--Deregulation Plus--that will frighten both parties and make the American electorate smile for the first time in years. Dirty Little Secrets pulls together the corruption story from all parts of the country so overwhelmingly that no one--from the White House to your house--will be able to deny that political reform must be one of the key issues of the 1996 election campaign.

Genres: Politics

430 pages, Hardcover

First published April 9, 1996

About the author

Larry Joseph Sabato is an American political scientist and political analyst. He is the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he is also the founder and director of the Center for Politics, which works to promote civic engagement and participation. The Center for Politics is also responsible for the publication of Sabato's Crystal Ball, an online newsletter and website that provides free political analysis and electoral projections.
He is well known in American political media as a popular pundit, and is interviewed frequently by a variety of sources.
Sabato grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, graduating from Norfolk Catholic High School in 1970. Four years later, he graduated from the University of Virginia. A 1974 Cavalier Daily poll showed more people could identify Sabato as student government president than could name Edgar Finley Shannon Jr. as University president. Sabato graduated Phi Beta Kappa as a Government major. He followed his undergraduate degree with graduate study at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs for one year. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1975, which brought him to study at Queen's College, Oxford. In less than two years he earned his doctorate in politics from Oxford.
Prior to his time as a political analyst, Sabato worked for nine years with Virginia Democratic Party politician Henry Howell. At the age of 15, Sabato joined Howell's first campaign for the Virginia governorship in 1968, and then worked on his successful run for lieutenant governor in 1971, and his campaigns for governor in 1973 and 1977.
Sabato is of Italian heritage.
Before becoming an academic at the University of Virginia, Sabato published works on the rise of two-party politics in the southern United States, most notably his 1977 publication of The Democratic Party Primary in Virginia: Tantamount to Election No Longer. In 1978, Sabato became a member of the faculty at the University of Virginia. Since then he has engaged in research and taught more than 14,000 students.
He is a University Professor and the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia.
In 2005, Sabato made a $1 million contribution to UVA, the largest gift ever given by a faculty member.
Sabato is the author of over twenty books on politics, including Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism and American Politics and The Rise of Political Consultants: New Ways of Winning Elections. He is the co-author of Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics with Glenn R. Simpson.
In January 2011, he published Pendulum Swing, which analyzed the 2010 midterm elections and the potential effect of Republican Party victories on the 2012 presidential, congressional, and state-level elections.
Prior to Pendulum Swing, Sabato authored The Year of Obama in 2009 and A More Perfect Constitution in 2007, which discussed his ideas for amending the U.S. Constitution. Other Sabato books include The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of the George W. Bush Presidency, Divided States of America: The Slash and Burn Politics of the 2004 Presidential Election, and Get in the Booth! A Citizen's Guide to the 2004 Election, and writes for Sabato's Crystal Ball. He has written textbooks used by high school and college American government classes, and has been a frequent guest analyst on cable news outlets and radio programs.
His book The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy was published in 2013. It focuses on John F. Kennedy's life, administration, and assassination and contains research from focus groups, polling, and interviews with colleagues and eyewitnesses. After analyzing evidence regarding the assassination, Sabato discredited the 1979 United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) conclusion of a possible second shooter, stating that it was "blown out the w