682
Opinion of the Court
and receiverships which often yield legal fees unjustified by the work required," M. Tolchin & S. Tolchin, To The Victor: Political Patronage from the Clubhouse to the White House 15 (1971); see also Wolfinger, Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts, 34 J. Politics 365, 367, 371 (1972) (similar), or the award of "gift[s]" to political supporters under the guise of research grants, Tolchin, supra, at 61, or the allocation of contracts based on "contributions resulting from the compound of bribery and extortion" and "kickbacks," A. Heard, The Costs of Democracy 143, 144 (1960), or the practice of " 'beer politics,' " whereby "wholesale liquor licenses issued by the state were traded for campaign contributions," id., at 144, or the extortion of political support and "campaign contributions" on pain of being branded a "Communist," R. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York 726 (1975), or the "favorable consideration in the courts or by public agencies" expected in one city by the clients of " 'political' attorneys with part-time public jobs," Wolfinger, supra, at 389, or the question reportedly asked by a party official of a businessman who was reluctant to contribute to a mayoralty campaign, " 'Look, you [expletive deleted], do you want a snow-removal contract or don't you?,' " id., at 368. These examples, cited by the dissent, many of which involve patronage in employment and appointments rather than in contracting, cf. Comment, Political Patronage, at 518, n. 4 ("[P]atronage systems have traditionally centered around the distribution of government jobs" (emphasis added)), may suggest that abuses of power in the name of patronage are not "highly unusual," post, at 710. It may also be the case that the victims whose speech is chilled and whose contributions are extracted by such government action are often " 'honorable and prudent businessmen.' " Post, at 689 (quoting Heard, supra, at 145). But the dissent's examples do not establish an "open and unchallenged" tradition of allocating government contracts on the basis of political bias—much
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