Follow the money
October 16th, 2007 – 7:18 AM by Dennis J. McGrathPolitically Connected is awash in money today.
All federal candidates had to file their fundraising reports by midnight last night, so we’ve got stories about the money race in the presidential campaign and the U.S. House contests in Minnesota. And, over the past week, we’ve had stories about the Minnesota U.S. Senate race fundraising.
George Washington Plunkitt, center |
Below are resources if you want to dig deeper into the role of money in politics.
But first, to set the tone, here’s a quote from George Washington Plunkitt, a state senator and a boss in New York’s Tammany Hall in the late 1800s. Plunkitt boasted about how he enriched himself in public office, and in a series of frank interviews he essentially gave tutorials explaining how money fueled politics. Here’s one of those comments:
“The day may come when we’ll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn’t come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 a.m. today.”
More from Plunkitt later in this post, but regarding political money today…
On Politically Connected, we have overall numbers for the presidential candidates on the home page. And on each candidate’s page — for presidential and U.S. Sente candidates — we have a summary of how much they’ve raised, how much cash they have on hand and how much of their money has come from Minnesota donors. (Those numbers are current through June 30; we’ll be updating them with the latest reports as soon as possible.)
You can also look up Minnesota donors to the presidential candidates, and look up all donors to the U.S. Senate candidates by name, employer, city, zip code or other identifying information.
One of the best sites that tracks money in politics is www.OpenSecrets.org. It provides an enormous amount of easy-to-digest analysis of where the money is coming from and who’s getting it.
Another good national site is www.CommonCause.org. It points out that a main program to reduce the influence of money in politics — the public financing system for candidates — is broken. Common Cause says that in this election cycle, for the first time, it appears likely that the leading presidential candidates will opt out of the public financing system entirely and raise more than $1 billion in total.
Congressional Quarterly’s MoneyLine provides a lot of daily updates.
The National Institute on Money in State Politics tracks money going to gubernatorial candidates and state legislatures, as well as the money behind ballot measures, such as the marriage amendments in a number of states in 2006.
The Cato Institute offers a different take on the matter, arguing that donating to candidates and PACs is protected by the First Amendement and that people and the courts should bring a high degree of skepticism to efforts to restrict that flow of money.
In Minnesota, the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board is where candidates, PACs and lobbyists have to file reports.
In April, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, named after the late Supreme Court justice, produced a report critical of Minnesota’s campaign finance system. The report is here.
Also, here’s a book that’s highly recommended. “Honest Graft,” written in 1990 by Brooks Jackson, is a scorching examination of the role of money in politics. Jackson takes you inside the maw of the money machine and brilliantly illustrates how it works.
Finally, a word or warning to those who want to try to reform the system.
“A reformer can’t last in politics. He can make a show of it for a while, but he always comes down like a rocket…He hasn’t been brought up in the difficult business of politics and he makes a mess of it every time.”
– George Washington Plunkitt
Questions: Does the system need reforming, or do you have a First Amendment right to give as much as you want to your favorite candidates or political groups? If the system does need reform, is it really possible, given that ultimately it’s the incumbent politicians who reap the most benefit from the system who would have to pass the changes.
In other words, in the end, is George Washington Plunkitt right?
3 Responses to "Follow the money"
“Is reform possible, given that incumbents would have to do the reforming?”
The premise is false. Petition, public assembly, free speech, referendum and amendment are the means by which reform is possible. The public should go around the incumbents. Reform is possible. Comparitively, it should be relatively easy.
Un-bribing public officials should be far easier than, say, giving the vote to women or desegregating public schools. Mr. Plunkitt was writing before these developments, before public movements really had brought any good results to public policy, but the history of the 20th century shows such movements can succeed.
Also, the fate of the Tammany machine itself(which comes after these quotes) should cast some light on whether corruption or goodness prevail in our system, in the long term.
“Does the system need reforming?”
Yes. Pretty straighforward there.
“Does the first amendment grant me the right to give as much as I want to favored candidates and groups?”
I don’t see that in the text, but it depends on the composition of the USSC. Some people don’t find a right to privacy in the 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments which support the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy.
I do find such privacy right there (although I personally think the states should get to decide on the choice question). The court is not infalable on such questions is the point I make here. Of course, nor am I.
I’ll dedicate my next post to why I do not think there is a right to unlimited contributions in the first amendment.
The USSC got this question wrong, in my view.
In the first place, whenever money is spent, commerce is occuring, and under the constitution either the federal government or the states have the enumerated power to regulate commerce (depending if the commerce takes place across state lines or not).
In the second place, money is not itself speech, as the USSC claims, but rather is a means by which to magnify speech (like a megaphone). While I would agree with a ruling that says I can use my money to amplify my voice (in campaign finance terms, independent expenditures), I cannot agree that a donation of my money to another person is an expression of speech in and of itself. It is merely the transfer of property, a commercial exchange.
As a transfer of property, it can be regulated after due process according to the 4th amendment.
In the third place, and really, in the most important place, the USSC ruling which finds political contributions to be speech in and of themselves contridicts and overrides the only right guaranteed to the people by the body of text of the constitution itself, the right to a republican form of government.
Since the ratification 14th amendment, a “republican form of government” is one in which each citizen has one vote. Vota, the latin root, meant choice or will. It is very closely related to Volen- (to choose of free will, from which we get words like volunteer), which is also closely related to voca, the latin word for speech or voice.
One man one voice is drastically undermined when individuals have wildly different effects on the electoral system as a result of their relative wealth.
Some sources say that the top 1% now control 2/3rds of all accumulated wealth in our country now.
If money is speech, as the USSC says, then 1% of the population has 2/3rds of the voices, of the votes, in our public discourse.
This fails the republican form of government requirement and it fails the equal protection requirement, and it reflects an interesting and wrong-headed application of the speech provision of the 1st amendment, one which runs contrary to the overall effect of the 1st amendment, which is to limit the power of a particular faction, be it a religion, state, or other group, to dominate the public debate to the exclusion of other voices.
The current USSC position, that money is protected speech when given to candidates, and therefore beyond the regulatory power of congress and the states, grants a faction, the very rich, an overwhelming voice in shaping the public debate.
It isn’t right.
I support a cumulative cap on individual contributions for any given year at $100. Furthermore, I support a federal public finance system like the Political Contributuion Refund Program we have in Minnesota, where the first $50 donated to any candidate would be refunded by the federal government directly to the donor.
This encourages monitary participation in the electoral process and eliminates discrimination based on economic status, and it puts each citizen at equal liberty to effect the outcome of a given election.
In short, it would restores republic to our aged “republic”.
In short, it would restores republic to our aged “republic”.
Short??????