Not For Sale

Voting with their feet, tens of millions of Americans are taking a walk on present-day politics. Fewer than half of potential voters are registered and fewer than half of those who are registered actually vote, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars candidates spend each election cycle urging them to do so. This decline in participation and the corresponding upturn in disillusionment with government has been amply documented. But this is not the whole story.

Everywhere we look, people are moving, not in the same direction and certainly not all in directions with which we agree. But, most assuredly, they are in motion-in fact, radical motion. Major organizing efforts by unions and community organizations to support exploited workers fighting for a livable wage are under way in many cities. Many people have become personally involved in the increasingly political battles against AIDS and breast cancer. Almost 20 percent of those voting supported an independent candidate for president in 1992 after hundreds of thousands helped to put his name on the ballot in all 50 states.

Term limits have passed in 23 states, winning in every state where voters have been offered ballot measures. Activists of the Left, Right, and Center are mounting what could be the most successful efforts in this century to expand beyond the two-party duopoly by forming new parties and fighting archaic and unfair ballot-access laws. Such activity contradicts the commonly held notion that the public is apathetic.

Consensus for reform of our political system cuts across all ideological divides. In many states, there is new momentum to change the laws governing money in politics. This may well catalyze the ultimate in "strange bedfellow" coalitions.

For example, so popular was the issue at the August 1995 United We Stand convention in Dallas, two related panels had to be run several times to accommodate the more than 60 percent of delegates who signed up to attend. Two conservative freshman Republican members of Congress are taking the lead in pushing federal legislation to "Clean Up the House" by enacting sweeping campaign finance reform. The group Maine Voters for Clean Elections has received as warm a reception from the Christian Civic League as it has from the Maine Education Association. And where sweeping reform legislation has been introduced, it has been sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats.

While sentiment for campaign reform is running high, and many individuals and groups are placing the "pro-democracy" issues at the top of their agendas, using the word "movement" to describe what is going on may obscure the need for progressives to reach out to and work alongside those with whom they disagree on a host of other issues. To succeed, a message and organizing strategy needs to be crafted based upon the common beliefs held by a largely uncommon universe of citizens.

Events in New England illustrate the current possibilities for reform. For more than a decade, grassroots activists in the Northeast have had remarkable success with progressive electoral coalitions-the Legislative Electoral Action Program (LEAP) in Connecticut, the Dirigo Alliance in Maine, New Hampshire's Granite State Coalition, the Commonwealth Coalition in Massachusetts, and Ocean State Action in Rhode Island.

Combining street-smart community organizing with old-fashioned volunteerism, these coalitions have produced more than 300 election wins in New England, including victories for more than 60 leaders drawn directly from the ranks of progressive organizations. Despite these successes, the common desire of these coalitions to see elections revitalized at the grassroots has not been realized.

While the coalitions continue to produce remarkable results in selected races every cycle, the dominant trend in politics has been toward fewer volunteers, less genuine focus on issues, and a decline in ordinary citizens being willing to stand for office-discouraged, no doubt, by the seeming intractability of the system. Average citizens who do win are then routinely caught between the obligation to do right and the imperatives of re-election.

CAPITAL-INTENSIVE methods of campaigning are supplanting people-based politics. Even at the level of state representative, campaigns use paid phone banks, pollsters, glossy direct mail, and consultants who orchestrate it all. Candidates willing to court wealthy vested-interest donors no longer need to worry about the volunteers to help on Saturday's literature drop. Their case to the voters is being hand-delivered via the U.S. Postal Service, underwritten by a few well-heeled contributors.

Are there strings attached? Common sense tells us yes. Anytime someone helps you, at some level, an obligation is created. Former California state Sen. Alan Robbins, sent to jail on corruption charges, says it even more explicitly: "What goes on every day in Sacramento is that the same lobbyist comes in; on Monday he talks to you about arranging for a campaign contribution to come from his client, and on Tuesday he comes back and asks you to vote on a piece of legislation for that same client. It doesn't take that long before the least bright legislator figures out that if he keeps ignoring the Tuesday request the lobbyist is going to stop coming to his fund-raisers."

Out of this common frame of reference, 150 organizational activists in the Northeast gathered in the fall of 1991 to form Northeast Action's Money and Politics Project, which now coordinates research, public education, policy development, and organizing on campaign finance reform with citizens and groups across New England.

Initially, the project focused on research. Northeast Action enlisted the help of the Center for Responsive Politics, the nation's foremost analyst of campaign funding data, to train researchers on the fine points of collecting information on political gifts, identifying donors by likely economic interest, and computer analysis. In October 1992, the project released reports in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, detailing, more extensively than ever before, the scope and nature of vested-interest giving to politicians at the state level.

While previous studies had focused on PAC donations, these reports also closely examined individuals' giving, which constitutes a far greater share of campaign funding. From tens of thousands of computerized contributions came two major conclusions common to each of the five states: The money required to win state office was skyrocketing, doubling every few election cycles; and the vast majority of individual givers, drawn from a thin, wealthy slice of the population at large, held a corporate economic stake in electoral outcomes.

The studies, which received wide media play, sparked intense interest in election finance reform within groups not generally associated with the issue and triggered the formation in 1993 of ongoing state projects in Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts. It wasn't difficult for union members, stung by a string of demoralizing defeats in legislatures across the region, to make the easy connection between big campaign money in and anti-labor policy out. Those in the thick of the universal health care battle could look at the thousands of campaign dollars pouring in to state lawmakers who sat on key legislative committees and realize they weren't in a fair fight.

WORKING IN COALITION with organizations supportive of campaign finance reform, the state projects have continued to document the big money domination of elections, sought to bring more citizens into motion around reform, and have developed sound policy measures for an egalitarian alternative to the existing money-driven system.

All have developed comprehensive reform policies that would create "democratically financed elections" (DFE). The proposals share four basic features: They sharply cut candidate spending from current inflated levels; they sever the present link between candidates and wealthy contributors; they financially level the election playing field; and they offer virtually full public financing for qualifying candidates who will take no other money or in-kind donations (with the exception of an individual's volunteer hours).

The DFE proposals vary from state to state. In Connecticut, activists, working with Secretary of the State Miles Rapoport, have sought to win passage of a bill that would have offered $1.5 million in campaign money to gubernatorial candidates who raised $100,000-and no more-from private givers of $250 or less. To put this in perspective, Connecticut Gov. John Rowland raised a record $4 million in private contributions to win his seat in 1994, with some businesses giving him as much as $10,000.

In Maine, the "Clean Elections Act," a proposed 1996 ballot measure, would be more sweeping, applying to legislative races as well as the campaign for governor. The Maine reform would allow candidates to receive public funding by collecting a fixed number of $5 contributions from individuals (2,500 for the governor's seat) and forgoing further private money for the duration of the campaign.

The cost of these measures is surprisingly little, roughly $4 per taxpayer in Maine and less for Connecticut's gubernatorial-only bill. The Working Group on Electoral Democracy, which developed the original DFE outline, estimates the cost of its national model bill, applied to the full Congress, to be about $5 per taxpayer.

"But wait!" say critics. "The public will never go for public funding of elections." Not true. It may be in the interest of incumbent officeholders and their financial patrons to perpetuate such a myth, but polling data and organizing experience suggest otherwise.

In Maine last year, close to two-thirds of those responding to a Bannon Research survey said they would support "providing a fixed amount of public money for the election campaigns of candidates for state legislature and governor who have pledged to accept no other campaign contributions." Similar results were obtained independently in Connecticut. Just as significant, surveys show even stronger voter support, in the 80 percent range, for the other key aspects of DFE-limiting overall campaign spending, cutting out monied interests, and providing equal funding for candidates.

So public opinion isn't the problem-it's the political power and standing of those for whom the current system works so well. Fair-minded elected officials who crusade for genuine reform risk the wrath of legislative leaders and fat-cat funders whose applecarts they might upset. To win on this issue, they must convince a majority of their colleagues to vote for measures that implicate them in the corruption of the current system-in which they all participate-and that would increase their chance of losing the next election to challengers now playing on a level field.

Should their valiant legislative efforts not prevail prior to the next election, elected reformers still need to go out and raise money the old-fashioned way, setting themselves up for easy negative attacks. In states where binding ballot measures on DFE are allowed, we must expect political big money to fight hard for its own survival. Opponents will distort such proposals and force the raising of large sums of money to set the record straight.

TO REVITALIZE American democracy, we need to rebuild both its citizen base and its machinery. We rebuild the base by reconstructing old participatory institutions and constructing new ones. We rebuild the machinery of democracy through sweeping structural reform of our political institutions. Campaign finance reform enables us to do both.

Organizing around campaign finance reform compels us to join together to knock on doors, solicit the help of thousands of our neighbors and friends, and aggressively challenge candidates and elected officials to support genuine reform. Campaign finance reform efforts compel citizens to consider fundamental issues of equality and representation and to believe in the possibility of democratic restoration.

Some critics believe that it is impossible to "take money out of politics" in a capitalist system. They have a point. But we counter that there is a heartfelt belief in and desire for democracy in America. It remains a leading standard by which our political system is judged.

While economic conservatives may have sold a voting majority on the notion of limiting government intervention in business, the marketplace, or the accumulation of wealth, there is also strong public belief in that proposition's logical corollary-that the market should not interfere with government. Americans might accept that money buys a luxury car, a third home, or a greater market share, but few believe it should buy elections.

Organizers know that the best tonic for cynicism is meaningful participation. The achievement of even the most comprehensive campaign finance reform policy is not an end in and of itself. It is a beginning-an essential beginning-but only that.

The most fundamental element of revitalizing democracy is the active engagement of small "d" democrats. Sharply cutting access to money as a determining factor in elections will be a major victory because it will create the political space in which people are galvanized to fight for more and win. As money ceases to be the coin of democracy's realm, so much new becomes possible.

From Alaska to Georgia, grassroots organizers are reinventing the call for election finance reform, working in new coalitions, and building a populist base. In three states last year, state activists associated with the Center for a New Democracy, ACORN, and the Public Interest Research Group networks won strict new state limits on PAC and individual giving. In California, thousands of volunteers are attempting to put on the 1996 ballot two separate initiatives that would limit currently unlimited state political contributors.

This September, in Salt Lake City, Utah, progressive leaders affiliated with dozens of organizations met at a Western States Center conference to prepare for launching new reform drives in eight Northwestern states. Perhaps the most visionary proposal anywhere is Maine's. Slated for next year's ballot, it would give grassroots candidates vested-interest free funding-and voters unbought elections as the norm for the first time anywhere in the country.

It will take considerable hard work to win these changes. But just imagine how much easier it would be for average citizens to run for office if they no longer had to stand in the wealth primary first. Imagine if lobbying on an issue or helping a candidate had nothing to do with getting out a checkbook. Perhaps then voting with one's feet would mean a new American march into the voting booth as millions cast their ballots-as a claim on democracy rather than an exercise in futility.

JANICE FINE is the organizing director of the Northeast Citizen Action Resource Center (NECARC) and coordinator of the group's 1992 research program on corporate financial influence in New England. NICKNYHART is the director of NECARC's Money and Politics Project and a veteran of Connecticut state coalition politics.