I can officially say that it is cold in Kaaawa this morning. The thermometer says 60 degrees. In our house, with open windows and light wind wandering through, that’s cold, and I had a bit of trouble rousting myself at the normal early hour. Hence today’s late post.
Last week’s byline strike at the Advertiser has now drawn global attention. This from The Guardian (UK):
Step forward you militant bloggers of the Honolulu Advertiser and take a bow as the world’s first digital newspaper strikers.
Returning to the issue of public financing of elections, Advertiser writer Kevin Dayton got the right of it when he quoted Kory Payne, organizer for Voter Owned Hawaii, in a Sunday story:
Kory Payne, community organizer for Voter Owned Hawaii, said the idea is popular with voters and lawmakers know that.
“The interesting thing about this issue is that everybody likes to say publicly that they support it, and they like to say publicly that they voted in favor of it, but when it comes to pushing for it behind the scenes where the real deal making goes on, then it’s hard to find real champions,” Payne said.
I hope Payne and others think about that for a minute. In my view, the idea is popular, but their chosen vehicle, in this case HB 661, doesn’t fare as well..
Kauai blogger Andy Parx has taken issue with my comments here yesterday on HB 661, and I appreciate the dialogue. Let’s take a look at Andy’s rebuttal.
Andy believes that “private contributions” are inherently a political evil, and that getting rid of them is the only way to “rid the system” of special interests.
But giving money to the candidate that you favor is one way to participate in the political process. In its prior decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that spending money to get a political message across, and giving money to a candidate or other entity to make that communication possible, are forms of constitutionally protected free speech.
The court has allowed restrictions on contributions and expenditures only where that right clashes with another fundamental right, such as the right to control corruption. Contribution limits have been allowed for that reason, but only to the extent necessary. For example, there have been instances of unrealistically low contribution limits being struck down by courts.
Barack Obama has set records raising money from in small amounts from individuals across the country, showing that a popular candidate isn’t at the mercy of those traditional sources of funds. And in the case of a very popular candidate like Obama, donors give because they want him to be able to break away from the pack of candidates. The campaign is seen as important enough for people to dig down and give a few dollars instead of buying that next set of iTune downloads.
And let’s face it. Even if every candidate were required to run their campaign on exactly the same amount of money as everyone else, interest groups aren’t going to disappear. Progressives, also an interest group, will hopefully find progressive candidates to back. Hawaii residents will get excited about a presidential candidate from Hawaii. Smokers will throw their backing behind candidates who promise to spread the smoke. Union members will be more likely to back those who support their interests. And all those special interests, along with industry groups, and ideological groups from MoveOn.org to evangelical lobbies, will try to get their people out to campaign for their favorites. They won’t be going away if they are prohibited from contributing. They’ll probably just work harder to exert their influence in other ways. Their interests will still make a difference. That’s what elections are about.
And HB 661, and its system of public financing, won’t end all contributions through which influence will be wielded by special interests. To quality for public money would require candidates to first get small contributions from a not-insignificant number of registered voters in the district. That’s the first place where special interests will come in as interest groups rally their troops to provide the qualifying contributions. And a successful publicly funded candidate will be able to raise some private contributions after the election to fund their routine office expenses.
And buried down in all those complicated details of this law is the fact that if money runs out in the middle of a publicly funded campaign, candidates will be freed from their “no private contributions” pledges and suddenly told to go back out and raise private funds. That isn’t likely to happen in a small scale demonstration project. It will happen if such a system were implemented on a larger scale.
And I think Andy may be jousting with a windmill that doesn’t exist any longer in Hawaii, that “pay to play” system that was tolerated here for years but has now been checked both by tighter procurement laws (one of those areas of relative success for public interest groups) and by criminal prosecutions.
Andy discounts any bureaucratic hassles caused by HB 661. But even trying to read through the bill and keep track of its layers of requirements and punishments is a challenge. There is nothing very straightforward about it.
Here one of the reporting requirement for candidates who choose to raise their own funds:
Commencing forty-five days before the primary election day, nonparticipating candidates and their candidate’s committees shall file an initial excess report with the commission within twenty-four hours after cumulative contributions are received, or expenditures are made or committed to be made, including verbal commitments, in an election period that exceeds one hundred one per cent of the base amount of comprehensive public funding allotted to an opposing certified candidate in a contested election. Nonparticipating candidates and the candidate’s committees shall file supplemental excess reports within twenty-four hours after any encumbrances or expenditures that exceed $1,000 in aggregate;
As clear as a good volcano haze.
And reporting requirements extend to anyone who tries to sway voter’s opinions before an election, including “noncandidate committees, parties, and any other persons that incur independent expenditures that expressly advocate the nomination, election, or defeat of a certified candidate”, will have to file a disclosure report as soon as they spend $1,000 during an election period, and then would be required to file supplemental reports within 24 hours whenever they spend as little as $100, with fines or criminal penalties waiting if those instant reports are missed or delayed.
Finally, HB 661 is based on the premise that we need to do as much as possible to assure that publicly funded candidates are not outspent by other candidates, creating a campaign arms race putting public money in an escalating competition for dominance or at least parity.
But l would argue that a alternative approach would simply be to assure publicly funded candidates enough to run viable campaigns. Forget about keeping up with all those opponents. If you’ve got enough to communicate effectively with the voters, a winning candidate with an effective campaign doesn’t have to spend the most. In my view, increasing the number of viable candidates is more important than insuring that a relative few publicly funded candidates are able to match all competitors dollor for dollar.
Which leads to a bit of simple advice. Proponents of public financing shouldn’t get caught in the trap of assuming that anyone who has trouble with the legislative vehicle, HB 661, must be an opponent of an effective system of partial or full public financing.
7 responses so far ↓
1 LarryG // Feb 26, 2008 at 9:25 am
I noticed that a legislator who speaks out strongly against the smoking ban has been well funded by Altrea (read: Phillip-Morris). There are plenty of other examples if you follow the money, most even better than this one, which was just on my mind at the moment.
We finally have a chance to advance this legislation, which could be a beginning to a more comprehensive system of clean elections for Hawaii. The bill can and will likely be amended as it goes along, and any contributions that you or others can make toward its success will advance the cause of democracy in Hawaii.
I’m tired of watching lobbyists and corporate people casually walking into legislators’ offices while I have to struggle for appointments. That’s what the campaign contributions buy. Access and influence. HB661 is one very important first step towards changing the system.
I’m also tired of our state House using amendments essentially written by the corporations who pay them. These are often written behind the scenes and sprung on the public after we’ve testified often for hours. Essentially, the Hawaii corporate-legislative partnership disses public participation altogether, and that’s the kind of thing publicly funded elections will help discourage.
Obama/Clinton are fully dependent on big contributions. Don’t let Obama’s success at also reaping small individual contributions cloud your mind. Corporate money is flowing toward Democrats now as the likelihood of their taking over the presidency has been felt by CEOs.
Anyone who supports clean elections can help by working toward the success of HB661, a pilot at the county level, including by suggesting improvements.
2 Kory // Feb 26, 2008 at 10:11 am
You’re making two points here that are false, and one point that is so “all over the map” that it would take a dissertation to tackle.
False Points:
1. Reporting requirements are “overbearing”
2. Matching funds creates an “arms race” of money.
My repsonses:
1. The bill looks bigger than it is because it carbon copies language that already exists per the partial public funding system. All HB 661 does is reiterate these current rules, making the bill look bigger than it is.
On the reporting requirements, you’re saying that making candidates frequently report contributions during the days leading up to the elections is overbearing.
Excuse me for saying so, but I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Try asking people why they don’t vote, or why they don’t care about politics, and they’ll tell you — “cause it’s all about the money” Requiring disclosure that might force the Campaign Spending Commission to hire 2 or 3 new staff people is not a lot to ask. If you talk to some people within the CSC though, they might paint a scary picture of “beurocratic” overkill.
We put a man on the moon, I think we can administer a public funding system for 9 county council seats. Come on, really …
2. I’ve done my homework on the “arms race” point, and you’re instincts, while logical, are incorrect.
What happens when publicly funded candidates get matching funds is that privately funded oppenents stop raising money because they don’t want their challenger to get more money.
In states with full public funding options, the aggregate amount of money going into campaigns actually goes down. This is happening while inflation and costs in other states are on the rise.
This is an important point. And you’re assumptions on this blog are flat out false.
Finally, legislators over the years have used every excuse in the book not to pass this bill. Now that we are finally managing to paint them into a corner on this issue, I can hear the next excuse coming already: “Let’s fix the partial public funding system…”
Acutally, there are legislators who champion the idea of a full public funding option. They’re hard to find because they’re the exceptional ones who can look past their own agenda or ambition.
In summary, I don’t think by frequent reporting requirements and forcing the CSC to hire 2 or 3 new staffpeople is argument enough to stop supporters for this bill from continuing the campaign to enact this reform that is wildly successful in the places where it’s being implemented.
We don’t let people in a courtroom pay judges to interpret the law, and lawmakers runnign for office deserve an alternative option from the pay-to-play system.
On your point about the essence of private money, there’s a difference between someone giving $5 to a candidate and chemical companies pushing GMO foods giving $2000 to almost every single politician in at the Capitol.
To paint the qualifying contributions as somehow the same thing is a stretch and swerving towards a connection i’d call irresponsible.
3 Ian Lind // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:05 am
Just a few thoughts on Kory’s valuable comments.
–the “within 24 hours” reporting requirement with it’s penalty provisions area burden for state and county offices that run with small volunteer committees and no paid staff. Anyone who has ever taken the time to service on a candidate’s campaign committee knows how difficult this would be, just as a practical matter.
–the same thing goes for the Campaign Spending Commission. Take the certification of a qualified candidate for public funds. Candidates will turn in lists of 200-400 registered voters in their districts who have made qualifying contibutions. The bill would give the Commisison 5 days to issue a decision to certify the candidate. This will obviously have to involve checking names against voter lists, double checking possible address changes, sorting out differences, all work done by staff, then the commission issuing a decision to certify. All within five days. That will be a push to complete with a single candidate, in the midst of the other work the commission has during a campaign year. If multiple candidates submit their papers for certification at the same time, it will be put the commission in a difficult situation.
Kory thinks it’s irresponsible to suggest that interest groups will find ways to throw their support behind favored candidates, but I think it’s obvious and it’s real. You can’t get rid of the role of interest groups, whether they’re helping get out the troops for sign waving, helping put together campaign events, or organizing those qualifying contributors. And you shouldn’t want to eliminate interest groups, as isn’t the involvement of interested voters what it’s all about?
Let’s not confuse the control or elimination of undue influence with the idea of stomping out all influence. These are very different things.
It’s a mistake to view this as simply a question of whether the system can be administered for a single county election. Legislators have to be looking beyond that to whether and how it can be expected to function if expanded to other races statewide. To expect less would be a mistake.
Frankly, I still don’t understand why folks are fixated on this particular bill and its approach to the problem of reducing the role of money.
Very simply, HB 661 does not present such an elegant solution that other approaches should be swept off the table, but that’s what proponents have done for several years. “Our way or no way” appears to have been the approach, and that’s always a difficult position when you’re lobbying for a big statutory change like this one.
4 Andy Parx // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:13 am
I’ve got to admit to not reading the HB 661 in detail and it sounds from your description the vehicle comes with some ready-to-swallow poison pills already in place this year.
Actually Buckley v Vallejo leaves the door open for full compulsory public funding according to many constitutional scholars even though it equates money with speech. But V-O and CleanElections before it (glad to see “our” guys are playing the hot-button/ buzz-word game a little bit better these days) seeks to do everything legal to make it easier to run under public financing rather than stuffing a war chest.
In theory the privately financed candidate would not do all the hard and ”dirty” work to keep the financial arms race going because no matter how much he or she raises the V-O candidate can spend time campaigning rather than fundraising and get an equal amount. And the reporting requirement for the privately funded candidate are pretty draconian but that just encourages them to go to public finance.. It punishes fundraising so discourages it which is the intent of the law.
We all learned on the first day of Poli-Sci 151 about the fine line between giving money to a candidate because you like how they think and you suspect they will do what you think is right and giving them money to insure they will do your bidding.
It becomes a perception game- did the big contribution from a company or individual the day after a vote for their bill constitute a bribe-pledge fulfilled or was it simply showing support for someone whose inclination was similar to theirs and whom they want to see continuing in office. That kind of ambivalence has been going on since ancient Rome and will go one forever as long as we stick to allowing private money to fill campaign coffers
But the private finance system’s ability to keep us playing that game of regulating intent keeps us running in circles. And while all the procurement law bans on contributions from people doing business with the government are good but they won’t stop things like specific industry tax breaks or other regulatory laws being written by the big-bucks-bundle-bearing lobbyists.
Private expenditures are never going to stop so maybe public disclosure of the funders is the best we’re going to do and may be the only thing we should do. That’s why both the NRA and the Sierra Club don’t like the private spending restriction in McCain-Feingold. The anti-coordination rules- if observed- keep a firewall that, with disclosure, give the voters a pretty good idea of who is saying what… whether it’s the candidate or someone else doing the swift-boating.
I’m gonna take a look at HB 661 and as usual, I’m sure the devil is in the details. The question is, have the V-O supporters been beaten down so much that they will support a bad bill in the name of “pass something- anything this year” just to get a foot in the door?
A bad bill that doesn’t do what it’s title says is just a straw man – even if it is a scary one- to the discussion over the overall intent and eventual implementation of V-O .elections.
5 Dennis // Feb 26, 2008 at 11:28 am
Get the honest media back in the picture along with a few honest judges to slap hands hard and we might not need a bevy of new rules and laws that will be ignored like the present ones are–
6 Kory // Feb 26, 2008 at 1:35 pm
You’re making two more points:
1. Turnaround time on qualifying contributions
2. “Interest Groups” point — which is out of the blue, by the way, and you’re putting words in my mouth.
1. The current bill from which you (and the CSC) are deriving your arguments is not the proposed bill. Hawaii County has revised language for the bill. In that bill, the turnaround time is exteded from 5 days to 14 days I belive. When we were redrafting the text, we realized this turnaround time was a little too quick.
If the CSC was more willing to work proactively with us, they would know this. I”m assuming the CSC is where you’re getting your information, by the way.
2. Your quote: “Kory thinks it’s irresponsible to suggest that interest groups will find ways to throw their support behind favored candidates …” I have no idea where you’re getting this quote.
This whole debate is like a pinball randomly going around from random point to random point. Probably why I stay away from blogs for the most part.
In response to this “#2.” point, I have two points:
A. The term “interst group” is a loaded term, and to start making sweeping statements like you did makes it impossible to debate, just like the money argument earlier: it would take a dissertaion to tackle. It’s like using the word “beurocracy” or “political” These terms mean so many things to so many different people, that it’s rediculous to infuse the primary line of a debate with them.
B. Anyway, to your point that you created a quote for me on: Yes, grassroots groups will influence the qualifying process for candidates. But remember, the qualifying contributions must come from within the district. That’s the thing here. Instead of candidates networking an old network of moneyed interests from chemical companies and mainland real estate interests, for example, instead, the candidates remain in their own districts, meet people in their own districts, fundraise their qulifying constriubtions from constituents and yes, networks, in their own distrcits. And ultimately, instead of spending 60% of their taxpayer-funded time on fundraising from private intests, they instead spend that time focusing on solving problems that lie within their own districts.
I’m halfway expecting that after I submit this, there will be 2 or 3 more random points that are going to come out of left field, and consequently, I cannot justify spending too much more time running around in the outfield of this blog trying to catch these baseballs and throw them back at you.
7 charles // Feb 26, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Here’s a few more baseballs regarding public financing:
1. No doubt a lot of cash can be a corrupting influence but so can a lot of anything. For example, a fundamentalist church backs a candidate, gives no cash but provides an army of volunteers “free of charge.” Some would say that’s just an exercise in democracy. Others would say there’s a quid pro quo whether it’s money or bodies.
2. When you ask some legislators in states that have public financing if it has lessened the influence of special interests, the answer is a qualified no. In other words, lobbyists who are paid to hang out at the capitol all day will have more access, influence, etc., than Joe Citizen who shows up to testify on a bill and goes home.
Indeed, some special interests claim that public financing is a good thing because it saves them money while still giving them influence.
What is has done is change the face of campaigning more than it changed the face of lobbying, in my opinion.
3. As far as collecting $5 or $10 donations from the community, there’s nothing to stop a labor union or political party or organization to mail their membership to send in the required donation to a candidate.
The notion that the candidate will slog door-to-door winning the hearts and minds of voters to the point that a hundred (or whatever the number ends up being) citizens will fork over a check could happen but I’m not holding my breath.
4. The hard right does have a point when they say they don’t want public dollars to support candidates that have views contrary to theirs. It’s a point; not a deal breaker.
5. There’s no doubt if the entire system were publicly financed, it would be a pretty penny. Not a reason not to do it, but to say that those who are concerned about the ultimate cost are just sellouts, afraid, etc., is a bit overwrought.
6. Lastly, review public opinion polls of legislatures or governors that have adopted public financing. My hunch is that the public’s view of politicians hasn’t diametrically changed because the influence of money is lessened.
Oh, let me make a final point. If you review the contributions of candidates at the county or legislative level, you don’t find “moneyed interests from chemical companies and mainland real estate interests” as much as you’ll find the typical ones from local banks, local unions, well-to-do donors, local corporations, family and friends, etc.
And very, very few candidates ever receive the maximum allowable by law. No doubt some are influenced in their votes with a $100 donation but it’s doubtful it’s the tipping point for most.
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