Friday, October 17, 2003
Throwing Money At the Problem
As political consultants have devised more and more ways to use money to influence election outcomes, it is becoming more common for multi-millionaires or billionaires to try to buy their way into political office. The upside to this is that those candidates often accept no other contributions (unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger as I noted in Tuesday's post), and so aren't beholden to anyone. But the problem is that this creates an unlevel playing field that keeps other qualified candidates from running, or worse yet forces them to cater to big money interests in order to compete with the millionaire candidate.
The common sense solution would simply be to limit the total amount each candidate can spend, whether they raise the money from their own pockets or from others. That way, all candidates would be on a level playing field.
But politicians sometimes don't use common sense. Instead, our U.S. Congress has passed a law that allows candidates to raise six times as much money from the biggest donors when they face a self-financed opponent. This just makes a bad situation worse, and makes it that much harder for any honest candidate to try to compete by raising small contributions from regular folks.
A story in today's New York Times highlights how this new law is playing out in Illinois. Perhaps the best line in the story is this:
Most campaign finance laws limit money into the system," said William Baroni, a New Jersey elections lawyer. "This is an odd law because the object is to increase money into the system."
The story incorrectly states that this bizarre provision to increase big money in politics has not been challenged in court. I am actually one of the plaintiffs that has challenged this harebrained scheme. The Supreme Court will be ruling on it shortly, although I wouldn't count on those 9 folks to help the rest of us take our democracy back. For the most part, the Court has taken the side of the fat cats and the politicians in these issues, rather than looking at things from the voters point of view.
As political consultants have devised more and more ways to use money to influence election outcomes, it is becoming more common for multi-millionaires or billionaires to try to buy their way into political office. The upside to this is that those candidates often accept no other contributions (unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger as I noted in Tuesday's post), and so aren't beholden to anyone. But the problem is that this creates an unlevel playing field that keeps other qualified candidates from running, or worse yet forces them to cater to big money interests in order to compete with the millionaire candidate.
The common sense solution would simply be to limit the total amount each candidate can spend, whether they raise the money from their own pockets or from others. That way, all candidates would be on a level playing field.
But politicians sometimes don't use common sense. Instead, our U.S. Congress has passed a law that allows candidates to raise six times as much money from the biggest donors when they face a self-financed opponent. This just makes a bad situation worse, and makes it that much harder for any honest candidate to try to compete by raising small contributions from regular folks.
A story in today's New York Times highlights how this new law is playing out in Illinois. Perhaps the best line in the story is this:
Most campaign finance laws limit money into the system," said William Baroni, a New Jersey elections lawyer. "This is an odd law because the object is to increase money into the system."
The story incorrectly states that this bizarre provision to increase big money in politics has not been challenged in court. I am actually one of the plaintiffs that has challenged this harebrained scheme. The Supreme Court will be ruling on it shortly, although I wouldn't count on those 9 folks to help the rest of us take our democracy back. For the most part, the Court has taken the side of the fat cats and the politicians in these issues, rather than looking at things from the voters point of view.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Yesterday was the deadline for federal politicians to report on how much dough they've raised in the past three months. This is a big deal, because candidates like to show off their big warchests right about now as a way of intimidating anyone who might think of running against them. The FEC hasn't updated their website to contain all this new information, but they should shortly. But, some candidates have made their filings available to the media. This USA Today story goes into some detail about President Bush's fundraising for his primary campaign. The story includes a link to the 100 folks who so far have raised $200,000 or more for the President. Keep in mind, all this money is just for the Republican primary, in which Mr. Bush is running pretty much unopposed. And, it's not like folks are unfamiliar with Mr. Bush or what he's done in the white house. Either you like him, or you don't, but will it really help you make up your mind to watch a bunch of TV ads that are aired by the candidates themselves?
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Endless Campaigns
A South Dakota newspaper reports here that Senator Tom Daschle has already spent more than a million bucks in his re-election campaign. This is more than a year before the election and before he even has an opponent!
Now, to be fair, Mr. Daschle has been targetted by the other party as someone they want to take out, so he's probably just trying to bolster his standing. But really, wouldn't politics be better for everyone if we had shorter campaign seasons? One way to accomplish that would be to set limits on how much campaigns can spend. That way, incumbents wouldn't be tempted to spend so much money so early on, thus extending the campaign season earlier and earlier.
To his credit, Tom Daschle has voted for a constitutional amendment that would set mandatory spending limits on campaign. Here is a link to the voting records of all US Senators on that amendment.
A South Dakota newspaper reports here that Senator Tom Daschle has already spent more than a million bucks in his re-election campaign. This is more than a year before the election and before he even has an opponent!
Now, to be fair, Mr. Daschle has been targetted by the other party as someone they want to take out, so he's probably just trying to bolster his standing. But really, wouldn't politics be better for everyone if we had shorter campaign seasons? One way to accomplish that would be to set limits on how much campaigns can spend. That way, incumbents wouldn't be tempted to spend so much money so early on, thus extending the campaign season earlier and earlier.
To his credit, Tom Daschle has voted for a constitutional amendment that would set mandatory spending limits on campaign. Here is a link to the voting records of all US Senators on that amendment.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Arnold Schwarzenegger's loans
I was interviewed on television yesterday about how Arnold Schwartenegger financed his campaign to become California's next governor. The story, in text and streaming video, is available here. The background here is that when Mr. Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy, he said he would not be taking any money from "special interests." He then proceeded to raise more than $11 million dollars from contributors, many of whom are major landowners, developers, and businesses who have a financial stake in who sits in the Governor's office. See this AP story for more details.
He then used $5 million of his own money to add to the pot, along with $4.5 million in loans to his campaign. These loans are from a bank, but he reportedly signed for them personally. So, any future campaign contributions that Mr. Schwartenegger receives will reduce his personal debt and mean more money in his own pocket. Plus, the money has already been spent and influenced the outcome of the race, but voters won't know who provides this money until well after the election is over.
It's wrong that Schwarzenegger used big money to help buy an election result, but this is no different than what Gray Davis had done before him. It wouldn't be fair to have asked Mr. Schwartenegger to unilaterally disarm during the campaign, but once he's in office he should pass reforms that would reduce the role of big campaign contributors in future elections.
I was interviewed on television yesterday about how Arnold Schwartenegger financed his campaign to become California's next governor. The story, in text and streaming video, is available here. The background here is that when Mr. Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy, he said he would not be taking any money from "special interests." He then proceeded to raise more than $11 million dollars from contributors, many of whom are major landowners, developers, and businesses who have a financial stake in who sits in the Governor's office. See this AP story for more details.
He then used $5 million of his own money to add to the pot, along with $4.5 million in loans to his campaign. These loans are from a bank, but he reportedly signed for them personally. So, any future campaign contributions that Mr. Schwartenegger receives will reduce his personal debt and mean more money in his own pocket. Plus, the money has already been spent and influenced the outcome of the race, but voters won't know who provides this money until well after the election is over.
It's wrong that Schwarzenegger used big money to help buy an election result, but this is no different than what Gray Davis had done before him. It wouldn't be fair to have asked Mr. Schwartenegger to unilaterally disarm during the campaign, but once he's in office he should pass reforms that would reduce the role of big campaign contributors in future elections.
Monday, October 13, 2003
This article from the Philadelphia Inquirer starts painting a picture of what its like for politicians to raise money, but really only tells part of the story. It talks about how US Senator John Corzine is taking time from his busy day to make fundraising calls. The article suggests that some of the big donors get access to Senators and that this may have impacted a recent bill that allows financial institutions to create spending profiles of their customers. That may well be, but the reporter glosses over the reason why Senator Corzine is raising the money in the first place -- to buy elections and positions of power. This is a guy who shattered all previous records by spending $60 million to buy himself a seat in the Senate. He's not even up for re-election yet, but he's raising money for his party so that he can move up in Senate leadership. What this means is that folks with money, and who are backed by those with money, are the ones who wind up in the US Senate. Those who don't, wind up unemployed. Just ask Bob Franks, the guy who was outspent by nearly 10 to 1 by Jon Corzine in the 2000 race in New Jersey, according to FEC records posted here.
I'm not trying to unfairly single out Corzine. He's just trying to work on the issues he believes in and doing so under the current rules of the game. But, when we think about changing the rules, lets worry more about how politicians use money to buy themselves seats than wringing our hands over how much time they're spending on the phone with fat cats.
I'm not trying to unfairly single out Corzine. He's just trying to work on the issues he believes in and doing so under the current rules of the game. But, when we think about changing the rules, lets worry more about how politicians use money to buy themselves seats than wringing our hands over how much time they're spending on the phone with fat cats.
