We need public financing. And we need it immediately.

When I began my very long-shot campaign for the Democratic party’s nomination in Missouri’s 2^nd Congressional district, I knew that my campaign would concentrate on political reform. I spoke ad nauseam whenever I had the chance about our need for fundamental reform across elections, ethics, and, in particular, the way we fund our campaigns.

I went into this campaign already convinced that money was a corrupting influence that we should not ignore. My experience across the 216 days I campaigned only solidified my already strong opinion that money is a corruption and that political reform must be our priority.

In fact, money isn’t just an ordinary run-of-the-mill corruption, it’s a catastrophic corruption. The 2018 Democratic primary in Missouri’s 2^nd District proves it.

Cort VanOstran was a fine candidate. He worked hard. He campaigned with passion and conviction. You can say he deserved to win the Democratic nomination. But you can’t say that he deserved to win by as much as he did. Nor can you say that the process was fair.

His campaign had a lot of things going for it. But the tragedy that we can’t ignore is that only one of those things really mattered: the amount of money he was able to raise – an amount that dwarfed the amount raised by this closest competitor, Mark Osmack.

By the time the August 7^th primary was held, the battle for money wasn’t even close.

Cort raised and spent a little more than $800,000. Mark was only able to raise a quarter of that.

Both Cort and Mark announced their candidacies over a year earlier –  in the summer of 2017. But after just a couple of months, the winner was already crowned. Cort had won the most important primary of all, the “money primary.”

Recall, by the way, that there was another very popular candidate in this race, Kelli Dunaway. As the only woman running for the Democratic nomination, Kelli should have been a favorite. But after just a few months of campaigning, Kelli dropped out. Chief among her reasons for her exit, “I was getting my ass kicked in fundraising.” (her words).

Those early numbers are pretty shocking. By the time Kelli dropped out (November 2017), Cort had already raised over $200,000. This included 20 donations from contributors donating the maximum amount, $2700. And 71 individuals contributing over $1000!

Compare that to Kelli. At the time of her withdrawal, Kelli had raised just 18% as much as Cort (about $38,000). That included only three maximum contributors and 10 contributions of over $1000.

Mark’s numbers at that point were even worse. Four months after starting his campaign, Mark had raised a paltry 8% of what Cort had (about $16,000). This included just one $2700 individual contribution and only two donations of over $1000.

Let’s not fool ourselves. Cort won by as much as he did because he was able to do what Mark and the other candidates couldn’t: advertise on TV and bombard mailboxes with campaign literature. Only he had contributors with that kind of money.

Two fine candidates. But only one had the finances to significantly amplify his message.  Two fine candidates. But only one had the means to thoroughly advertise throughout the district. Two fine candidates. But given these differences, only one had any real chance to win.

Three days into my campaign a Missouri Democratic party leader approached me and told me to drop out. One month later, that same party leader approached Mark and strongly encouraged him to drop out. Mark’s supporters weren’t as generous with their ActBlue donations as Cort’s. And to the Missouri Democratic party, that was a high crime that deserved impeachment.

Please don’t misconstrue my point. I know that Cort was a fine candidate who worked tirelessly. But the same can be said of Mark. Shouldn’t both men have been given an equal opportunity to make their cases?

As a candidate myself in this race I enjoyed a front-row seat to the campaigns of both Cort and Mark. They worked their rears off! They each had great ideas. And they each attracted a large number of passionate supporters to their ranks. But what I learned most from my experience is that the passion of one’s supporters isn’t important if those supporters are not wealthy. In this corrupted process, we’re fooling ourselves when we talk about passion. The wealth of one’s campaign contributors is what matters overwhelmingly.

Cort didn’t crush Mark because he was a superior candidate. He crushed Mark because he had a lot more wealth on his side. The nomination wasn’t won by Cort. It was purchased.

I pity the American that doesn’t see the tragic injustice in that and who doesn’t want to do something about it.

And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that the amount of money that you raise is a direct reflection of your hard work, perseverance, or some other heavenly virtue. Yes, you have to work hard to raise money and I’m sure Cort worked tremendously hard.

But Cort raised and spent FOUR times more than Mark. Does anyone really think Cort worked FOUR times harder than Mark? Does anyone believe that his ideas were FOUR times more popular than Mark’s? Is there anyone that can legitimately argue that Cort’s supporters were FOUR times more passionate than Mark’s? Does anyone who paid close attention to this campaign think that Cort deserved FOUR times the opportunity to win?

Most troubling is this question: How much of Cort’s fundraising superiority was a product of unique external factors – factors not available to Mark or other candidates? Factors related to Cort’s position in a prestigious law firm and his connections with Democratic party insiders? Factors that blocked Mark and Kelli from the same resources necessary to get their message across to voters? Mark and Kelli didn’t know the secret handshake. And for that, their campaigns were doomed.

The Public Financing Solution

The Democratic primary in MO-2 proved our process is tragically unfair. Nothing will change until we demand real reform. And that is where public financing comes in. I’ve never been more convinced of this.

Imagine a system where qualified candidates are given an equal opportunity to make their cases. A system that rewards candidates that work hard but doesn’t show favoritism to those that just happen to have access to wealthy contributors. A system that says that the candidate that has the support of those that give $27 contributions should be taken as seriously as the candidate that is the darling of those that can make $2700 contributions.

In such a system, each of the candidates would be allowed to prove their viability by going out and raising “seed money” – thus demonstrating their seriousness. Taxpayers would grant qualifying candidates with vouchers that would allow them the opportunity to broadcast TV commercials and to send out mass mailings.

Candidates that would want to forego public financing and raise and spend money the old fashioned way would still be allowed to. But candidates without those same deep-pocketed enablers would now be given more of a fighting chance. Public financing levels the playing field.

Imagine the 2018 Democratic primary again but under a public financing system. Mark and Kelli would probably have still been outspent – but with public financing, they would have had a much greater opportunity to compete with Cort.

Given the passion that I saw in their supporters and the vigor I saw in their campaigns, this was an opportunity Mark and Kelli deserved – an opportunity that was cheated them in our current system.

Wealthy Americans should be afforded many privileges in America. But a monopoly to determine which candidates are viable and which are not, should not be one of them. Public financing gives qualified candidates with great ideas but without wealthy connections a chance to compete.

Most importantly, a public financing system would change our political campaigns for the better; transforming them from the farces for funding that they’ve become and into the contests of character and position that true democratic republics require.

The post What I learned about Campaign Financing When I ran for Congress appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Earlier this week I received one of those odious phone calls with a political candidate asking for, you guessed it, money. I wish that solicitation calls were on the EPA watch list for harmful pollutants that damage our environment, but sadly, such is not the case.

Donald Trump seems to have solved the problem of not bugging people for donations. He’s simply rich and doesn’t need contributions. This adds to the luster of his campaign, because not only is he “un-plugged,” but he also is “pander-free.” He doesn’t have to kiss anyone’s rear end to raise cash for his campaign. He has the liberty of mocking other candidates for their disingenuous and mind-numbing begging.

Trump’s current campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.” We might say that’s a little vague and obviously subject to interpretation. He might think that a “great America” is one that does not include immigrants from any continent other than Europe. He might think that a great America is one that flexes its military might on a daily basis. But then again, he might think that a great America is one in which everyone can be like him, worth close to ten billion dollars.

If that was the case, he not only would have wiped out poverty, solved the problems of the middle class, but he also would have eliminated the need for campaign finance reform. No more begging would be required. PACs and Super PACs would be a thing of the past. For those who are religious, it might be considered “the Kingdom of God on Earth.”

Of course, Trump frequently has difficulty when his ideas confront reality. So whatever he brings us as a result of his campaign is likely to be somewhat less than squeezing everyone into the one percent. However, there already is and will continue to be one positive outgrowth of the Trump campaign. We will see what a campaign looks like when it is not obsessed with raising money. This seems to put more oxygen back in the air. If people like the “pander-free” campaign of Trump, perhaps they will give a second listen to meaningful campaign finance reform.

The post Trump knows how to reform campaign finance appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Unaccustomed as I am to writing about sports, I beg for indulgence just this once. I’m still breathless from this evening’s amazing come-from-behind win by my local team, the St. Louis Cardinals. But as caught up as I have been for the past three hours in the play-by-play, the strategic moves, the psychological analysis and my city’s sense of reflected glory lived through a baseball team, I can’t resist turning this into a political story.

It’s pretty simple, really: The team with the most money lost.

The Dodgers play in one of the top media markets in the U.S. Their revenue from cable rights and advertising has been reported at about $293 million per year. The Cardinals, in a much smaller media market, reap much less from media–$28 million– and they must rely on ticket sales for the rest of their operating budget. Of course, that means that the Dodgers, whose annual payroll budget is $243 million, can pay huge salaries to baseball superstars and pre-empt most other teams when the best players become free agents. The Cardinals have an annual payroll budget of $107 million, and have to be much more strategic in assembling a team.

Today’s upside-down result [the Cardinals beat the Dodgers 3 games to 1 in the best-of-five division championship] is a victory for financial underdogs. And this is where, for me, the political parallel kicks in.

It has become axiomatic in politics that, without a huge campaign treasury, a candidate cannot be competitive-just as in baseball, the lower-budget teams start every season at a competitive disadvantage.

But that assumption has had a negative effect on the political game. Candidates, as well as political parties, have bought into the idea that money is everything—and they act accordingly. In the frantic pursuit of campaign contributions, ideas take a back seat to money. Fundraising events take precedence over meaningful contact with constituents—even cutting into the time elected officials spend on the floor of the legislative bodies to which they are elected. In the endless money chase, politicians see fundraising as their day jobs, and reelection—for the sake of retaining power—as the primary goal. Their patrons—wealthy donors, corporations and lobbying groups—use the power of the dollar to buy the loyalty—and votes—of their dependent candidates and incumbents.

At this point in American politics, it’s a financial free-for-all, and, as a result, American democracy is in free fall.

In politics, money is ruining the game. In baseball, a limited form of revenue sharing has narrowed the income gap among teams slightly [pro football has a much more robust revenue-sharing system]. In American politics, the only way to achieve financial parity would be to institute a system of publicly financed elections, with spending caps. The chances of that happening in the near future are dim, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. [There was, of course, that little glimmer of hope in 2012, when Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super PAC spent upwards of $400 million and yet still failed to elect Mitt Romney to the presidency.]

So, when the lower-income St. Louis Cardinals beat the extremely wealthy Los Angeles Dodgers today, and when the notoriously free-spending New York Yankees didn’t even make it to post-season, upending all the financial assumptions of the baseball world, I feel hopeful. I’m going to take it as positive indicator, both for baseball and for the political realm: Money can’t buy everything.

The post The team with the most money lost today: Cardinals vs Dodgers–a political parable appeared first on Occasional Planet.

[by Gloria Bilchik]     “What if you could get a text or email alert every time a wealthy donor cut a fresh check to your member of Congress?” asks the Sunlight Foundation.  That kind of instant disclosure would go a long way toward exposing who’s wielding [or should I say, “buying”] influence in political campaigns. It seems like a pie-in-the-sky idea, but it’s not. In fact, there’s a bill in Congress right now that could help make that scenario a reality.

It’s called the Real Time Transparency Act. [Remarkably, it has a name that actually describes what it would do–unlike so many Orwellian-named bills whose titles suggest the direct opposite of their intent.] It’s sponsored in the Senate by Angus King [I-ME] and in the House by Beto O’Rourke [D-TX].The bill requires 48-hour disclosure of so-called hard money campaign contributions of $1,000 or more to candidates, committees and parties.

This bill is especially important in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United and McCutcheon. In Citizens United, the court declared that money equals speech, leading it to rule that corporations cannot be barred from donating to campaigns. In McCutcheon v. FEC, the court destroyed the last vestiges of campaign-finance sanity, ruling that there should  not be an overall cap on the amount individuals can donate to political parties, candidates and PACs.

At the same time, in his opinion in McCutcheon, Chief Justice John Roberts  asserted that “with modern technology, disclosure now offers a particularly effective means of arming the voting public with information.”  The Sunlight Foundation notes that, while Roberts’ comment is a nod toward the importance of disclosure, but it doesn’t take into account that..

…laws don’t exist to ensure effective, complete and timely disclosure. Right now, we have a system in which the public must wait as long as three months before some contributions are made public; in the case of U.S. Senate candidates, even longer because candidates for Senate still file their campaign reports on paper, delaying disclosure by weeks after reports are due.

Sometimes that delay means voters go to the polls without knowing who contributed to a campaign.

The Real Time Transparency Act isn’t the ultimate solution to campaign-finance reform, of course. There are other actions that must be taken to overturn these two democracy-killing Supreme Court decisions: It’s going to take an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to do that–and that could take quite a while. In the meantime, this bill is a helpful step in the right direction.

I’m less than optimistic about this bill’s chances, for the obvious reasons that the very politicians who would be voting on it are the people who don’t want you to know who their fat-cat donors are. To get this deal done, Congress would probably have to set an effective date far in the future–and my cynical side thinks that our current crop of representatives would be inclined to set such a date for 10 years after everyone currently serving in Congress is dead.

In the meantime, we can at least try to encourage our representatives to do the right thing, right? The Sunlight Foundation offers these suggestions for helping to build momentum:

Sign our petition calling on Congress to pass the bill.

Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, or write a post for your blog. [Or link to this post!]

Share one of our political cartoons on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +

The post Congress should pass the Real Time Transparency Act appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Hating Citizens United is easy. Overturning it is much more difficult, but that’s not stopping some intrepid legislators from trying.

The hurdle is high: You may remember, from your middle-school Civics class [I didn’t], that to upend a Supreme Court decision of this magnitude, you have to amend the U.S. Constitution. One route is for states to hold a Constitutional convention. On May 2, 2014, Vermont passed JR27 by a vote of 95-43. The bill places the following language on the November 2014 ballot for voters to ask the U.S. Congress…

…to call a convention for the sole purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America that would limit the corrupting influence of money in our electoral process…by overturning the Citizens United decision…

Ten other states are currently considering similar resolutions this year. I don’t remember if they covered this on Schoolhouse Rock, but it would take 34 states to trigger a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Another way to override Citizens United is for Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states. On May 28, 2014, the California State Assembly passed a bill that would put an advisory [meaning non-binding] question on the November 4th, 2014 General Election ballot, asking voters whether Congress should propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution [it would be the 28th Amendment, in case you’re counting] overturning Citizens United.
The California ballot question would ask voters:

Shall the Congress of the United States propose, and the California Legislature ratify, an amendment or amendments to the United States Constitution to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission … and other applicable judicial precedents, to allow the full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, may express their views to one another, and to make clear that the rights protected by the United States Constitution are the rights of natural persons only?

Meanwhile in Washington DC, some politicians are taking a similar approach. During the current, 113th Congressional session, Senators and Congressmen have introduced 15 bills calling for a Constitutional amendment, which—using varying language—would either mitigate or overturn Citizens United. Of course, some of the sponsors of these bills–and many others who are not on board– are undoubtedly slurping up the tsunami of campaign donations unleashed by the Citizens United ruling they say they are trying to remediate. Given that reality, the odds are heavily against passage of any of the suggested amendments.

On the other hand, just because the Congressional route seems impractical, we need to be careful about states calling for and convening a Constitutional convention. I think I remember that such a convention can’t be limited to just one topic. It’s wide open and therefore fraught with opportunities for mischief and ill-conceived ideas. I recently read that 49 states have passed resolutions calling for a convention to propose some 700 different amendments. So, I shudder to think, in today’s extreme political climate, what kinds wacko ideas might worm their way in to a wide-open convention and make things much, much worse.

We can only hope that Congress comes to its senses, our representatives look beyond their own next election cycles to see what’s good not just for them, but for our democracy, and that voters push for what’s right. It’s going to be very difficult to put the Citizens United toothpaste back in the tube, but we really must keep trying.

The post Vermont calls for Constitutional convention to overturn Citizens United: Is it a good idea? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If you can’t join them, beat them. That’s the strategy behind a new political SuperPAC launched in May 2014 by Harvard economics professor Lawrence Lessig. The SuperPAC is named MayDay PAC.

Lessig—an outspoken critic of the negative impact of dark money on political campaigns—is fighting fire with fire by attempting to raise $12 million, which will ultimately be applied to five targeted Congressional races in the 2014 mid-term elections, yet to be chosen. Lessig wants to focus on candidates who are committed to campaign-finance reform. And, by the way, Lessig does, indeed, see the irony of the need to fight big-money’s influence by…raising big money.

According to Think Progress:

Lessig vows that 100 percent of the money will go to candidates who want to reform campaign finance, and all overhead costs will be paid by the directors. Lessig hopes to use the maritime and aeronautical distress signal, “mayday”, as a call to action to end the growing influence that the 1 percent holds over American politics. “Our democracy is held hostage by the funders of campaigns. We’re going to pay the ransom, and get it back,” Lessig said in the launch video. “We want to build a Super PAC big enough to end all Super PACs.”

Lessig’s effort comes as a response to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that opened the floodgates to unlimited and undisclosed campaign donations. Think Progress reports that the 2012 election broke records for outside spending on elections, with over $300 million spent by outside groups that do not have to disclose donor information. The 2014 election is likely to surpass even that sum.

On 2014 Senate elections alone, advertising spending is already 45 percent higher than the previous cycle — and nearly 60 percent of ads are funded by outside groups, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Over two-thirds of ads supporting Republican candidates were bankrolled by outside groups. Democrats are not far behind, with outside groups funding almost half of pro-Democrat ads.

As reported by Moyers & Company, Lessig plans to raise funds using a two-tiered model: He hopes to appeal to a large pool of small donors as well as a smaller pool of deep-pocketed donors. When he launched Mayday PAC, he said that if $1 million was raised—via online crowdsourcing—by the end of May, whatever was raised would be matched by the larger contributors. If Mayday missed its goal, all money would be returned to donors.

The result was eye-popping. Mayday’s servers swooned under the volume of traffic from inspired small donors, and the SuperPAC took in $1 million in its first two weeks. Lessig plans to release the names of the initial donors at the end of May. He has said that their participation reveals an across-the-spectrum interest in reforming campaign finance. Later in 2014, he will begin the second phase of the crowdsourcing drive, seeking the next $6 million dollars.

It remains to be seen whether Mayday PAC can exert significant influence on an election landscape addicted to deep-pocketed, often anonymous donors. But if Lessig can pull this off, he will have accomplished something—in partnership with grassroots America—that Congress and the courts have been unable—and unwilling—to do.

The post SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs raises $1 million in its first two weeks appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The U.S. Supreme Courts’ 2010 Citizens United decision–combined with the more recent McCutcheon ruling– eviscerated the last vestiges of campaign-finance sanity and fairness. But those rulings also sparked a quest for a better way to fund our political system. In February 2014, Congressman John Sarbanes (D-MD] introduced a creative idea in a bill that many have found intriguing. The bill, H.R. 20, has been dubbed the Government by the People Act of 2014. In this case, that’s not an Orwellian title. The bill’s stated goal is “to o reform the financing of Congressional elections by broadening participation by small dollar donors.” According to an op-ed by Joe Nocera of New York Times, the bill has three main components:

• A $50 tax credit per donor per election cycle.
• A voluntary matching fund system. People who donate up to $150 to a candidate who has agreed to lower contribution limits and the full disclosure of all donations will have that donation matched 6 to 1 with federal funds. If the candidate agrees to take no contributions higher than $150, the match rises to 9 to 1.
• And finally, it allows candidates to raise additional matching funds in the last 60 days of the election if the candidate feels he needs it to ward off a last-minute advertising blitz. (The bill has disincentives to keep that additional money from being used unless it is really needed.)

The inspiration for the bill is New York City’s public-financing system, which provides public funds to match small donor contributions. The New York City plan specifies that:

In exchange for abiding by strict spending limits, candidates may be eligible to have contributions from individual New York City residents matched with taxpayer dollars. The Program matches each dollar a New York City resident gives, up to $175 per contributor, with $6 in public funds, for a maximum of $1,050 in public funds per contributor. To qualify for public funds, candidates must be in compliance with all Program requirements, be on the ballot, have an opponent on the ballot, and meet a two-part financial threshold that demonstrates a basic level of community support.

The New York City program, which has been used for city-wide and city council races since 1980, has gotten very positive reviews from candidates. A report published in May 2014 by the Brennan Center for Justice notes that:

…[candidates] have told us that by pumping up the value of small contributions, the New York City system gives them an incentive to reach out to their own constituents rather than focusing all their attention on wealthy out-of-district donors.

That’s an important result, because—according to an article published in 2013 in the Columbia Law Review that confirms popular opinion—large donations have a major impact on politicians’ views on issues:

“There is near consensus in the empirical literature that politicians’ positions more accurately reflect the views of their donors than those of their constituents.”

Sarbanes’ bill has garnered co-sponsorship from 149 Congressional Democrats and one Republican. It also has received strong backing from a large coalition of progressive, reform, labor and environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communications Workers of America, Service Employees International Union, the NAACP, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the Teamsters.

In his New York Times op-ed, Nocera notes that Sarbanes’ matching plan has a further advantage:

It engages small donors in the political process—and it gives them an incentive because their money is being maximized. But Sarbanes also likes it for another reason: It forces members of Congress and would-be members of Congress to actively solicit the money — and thus the views — of their constituents. “Because it rewards finding small donors, your priorities change,” he said. “You don’t get co-opted.”

Public financing of elections works. How do we know? Because 26 states have enacted and sustained some kind of public financing of election systems. Those states include Maine, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina and Vermont.. The logic is obvious: Public financing of elections puts the power in the hands of voters, not donors. Unfortunately, in the U.S. Congress, logic is the underdog. But I’ll take it as an encouraging sign that at least some politicians are signing on.

The post An idea for campaign finance reform: A small-donor matching system appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Those of us who are politically engaged often get dozens of on-line political solicitations every day. There’s a basic formula to them:

This is even true of some of our finest progressive Democrats, such as Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Recently I’ve received some totally different correspondence from a member of Congress; Representative Lacy Clay (D), representing Missouri’s first district.

It’s a weekly edition of his newsletter called “Backbone,” which works to inform constituents and others as to what is going on in Congress. There is very little self-aggrandizement, but much valuable information from a reliable source inside the Beltway.  On Monday, September 30, 2013, Congressman Clay wrote:

House Republicans had a choice…pass the clean funding bill that the U.S. Senate sent over to keep the government functioning, or throw another Tea Party tantrum that makes a government shutdown almost certain, and brings the United States closer to defaulting on our debt.

With millions of jobs at stake and the economic recovery hanging in the balance, why are they wasting the nation’s time and the taxpayer’s money?

The truth is that the fight isn’t really between Democrats and Republicans, it’s between Republicans who want to do their job, and House GOP Tea Party members who prefer, in their own words, to employ a “Kill all the hostages” legislative strategy.

Clay goes on to write:

Here’s a link to a great story published in POLITICO that gives an inside view of the internal war that Speaker Boehner is facing.

GOP move on Obamacare all but ensures shutdowns
Read more:  http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/house-gop-budget-strategy-government-shutdown-97496.html#ixzz2gDpmH6he

You can read the newsletter in its reasonably sized entirety by clicking here:

Among other things, you might note that the newsletter:

1. Delineates the impact of a government shutdown.
2. Provides helpful information on how to learn more about and sign up for the Affordable Care Act.
3. Describes working on a settlement to provide justice to black farmers who were discriminated against until 1997.
4. Puts in a small and non-obtrusive “contribute” line.
5. Ends by Clay saying, “If you have interesting items or political news that you would like me to mention next time, please send them to me at backbone@lacyclay.org .”

The communication style of the newsletter offers way that all of us can do business with one another. But Representative Clay and other reasonable public officials need others who will engage in serious dialogue with them. Let’s hope that both parties work to nominate candidates who can reason, and who are not thoroughly self-absorbed.

The post My Congressman’s newsletter: refreshing, intelligent communication appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A friend of mine lobbied for campaign finance reform in Missouri for more than a dozen  years. He finally gave up in  2000, when after all those years of trying, he and a coalition of progressive organizations managed to get a proposition on the statewide ballot that would have enabled publicly financed elections in Missouri, only to watch it go down to defeat by  a margin of 65% to 35%. A previous measure, which would have placed limits on campaign contributions, actually passed by an even bigger margin in 1994. But it didn’t stick.  Most recently, in 2008, the Missouri legislature passed a bill repealing contribution limits. So, currently, Missouri is the only state the allows lawmakers to accept both unlimited gifts from lobbyists and unlimited campaign donations.

Fortunately, good ideas like campaign finance reform don’t die, and my friend can take hope from a new group of Democratic legislators who want to push for change: A Missouri Democratic state representative is  pre-filing a bill in the 2013 Missouri legislature that would–hallelujah–reform campaign finance. It’s an uphill battle, to be sure, and, although I haven’t spoken to my friend about this, I wouldn’t be surprised if he expressed cynicism about the bill’s chances in an overwhelmingly conservative-dominated Missouri legislature. And it’s definitely not publicly financed elections. But before we give up before we even start, let’s take a look at what this go-round offers.

The big news is that, under the proposed law, no donor could give a candidate for the state legislature or statewide office more than $5,000 per election, and a $1,ooo annual cap would be placed on gifts from lobbyists to individual legislators. That provision, alone, would at minimum pull Missouri back from its extreme–and sole–position among the rest of the states.

Also, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the proposed law would change Missouri campaign finance and ethics rules in several other ways:

“Sham nonprofits” set up to funnel money to campaigns would be required to disclose their donors.

Legislators could not work as paid political consultants while in office and would have to wait two years after leaving office to become lobbyists.

Candidates could invest their campaign treasuries only in interest-bearing checking or savings accounts, a move aimed at former Republican House Speaker Steve Tilley’s use of campaign funds to purchase shares in a bank.

The Missouri Ethics Commission’s powers to initiate investigations would be strengthened.

Missouri Republican leaders have been consistently opposed to caps on contributions, claiming that unlimited contributions are more transparent. That point deserves debate. But the make-up of the Missouri legislature will make it difficult for this bill to even get a hearing, let alone a vote on the floor. Republican House Speaker Steve Tilley has already stated that campaign-finance reform is not among his top priorities. Surprise! [And, by the way, just since I started writing this post, we’ve learned that Missouri’s Republican legislative leaders are countering with a campaign/ethics reform bill of their own–one that doesn’t even mention contribution limits, it should be noted.]

The contribution-limit bill’s Democratic sponsors say that, if put to a vote of the people today, their ideas would receive overwhelming popular support. They’re even suggesting that, should the legislature turn down their bill, they’d like to turn it into a statewide ballot initiative. Try. Try again. Repeat.

In light of  the bad press and negative  reception among voters given to the excessive spending of the 2012 election–on all levels–these guys may be onto something. Maybe campaign finance reform is an idea whose time has come–again. [I know, we all said that in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, and even in the 1990s, too. Sigh.] But it’s heartening to see a new generation [sure, call them cockeyed idealists if you must] want to keep this issue alive and try to make some progress. A lot of the biggest issues we’ve faced have taken generations to resolve.

I move for a round of applause.

The post Reforming campaign finance in Missouri appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or member of any other political party, chances are that you will find at least one member of the crop of the GOP candidates to be lacking in essential qualities to be President of the United States. Among Republicans, the choice “None of the above” or “Someone else” seems to be a rather popular candidate. But who could be the person to fill that void?

One is an announced candidate who is serious about being president. You may not know of him because he has not appeared in any of the debates. His name is Buddy Roemer, and he is a credible candidate.

More importantly, his platform addresses one of the key problems in American politics. He is four-square behind campaign finance reform. His commitment is beyond words. He refuses to take contributions of greater than $100. He sees money as the corrupting influence in politics that it is. Roemer knows of what he speaks, because he has successfully used large donations to win important elections. But that was then, and this is now. In the current era, in which Newt Gingrich can raise five million dollars overnight from one donor for a SuperPAC, Roemer plugs along seeking more $100 donations. This gains him considerable integrity, but still leaves him with a great deal of anonymity.

From 1981-1988, he was a member of Congress from Louisiana. After four terms in the House, he decided to run for governor of Louisiana and won in 1988, serving a four-year term. His background is impressive. He graduated from Harvard in 1964 with a degree in economics and three years later received his MBA in finance, also from Harvard.

While serving in the House of Representatives as well as Governor of Louisiana, Roemer was a Democrat. In March, 1991, he switched to the Republican Party, in part because of the urging of President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu. His move was not uncommon among conservative southerners, as the region was still in the process of rejecting the Democratic Party because of its strong support for civil rights and economic fairness. But in some ways, particularly with regard to campaign finance, Roemer would probably feel more comfortable today as a Democrat.

Despite all of his credentials, experience, and contacts, Roemer has largely been off the radar screen for Republican candidates for president in 2012. The given reason for why he has not been invited to participate in any of the debates is that he failed to meet the 2% minimum criterion. Roemer asks the obvious question, “How can you receive votes in a poll if you’re not listed among the candidates?”

Clearly the Republican establishment does not want Buddy Roemer competing against the other candidates. Roemer feels that his rejection of large contributions is the reason; he is not playing the game by their rules.

Conspiracy or not, the Republican Party and the American people are at a loss by not having Buddy Roemer as a high profile candidate. The time has come and gone for Roemer to effectively compete with the others. Little is left except for the media to continue to provide forums in which he can speak. Someone with big bucks is going to win the Republican nomination and the same is true for the Democratic Party. But in at least one regard, campaign finance reform, Roemer offers a refreshing and needed change. It will be good to have that in our memory bank as we approach the 2016 election.

You can hear some of his wisdom in the interview below with MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan.

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