October 29th, 2008 By BRIJ KHINDARIA, International Columnist
If elected, Barack Obama will be the first truly independent President of modern times without a large debt of gratitude to big business and financiers. For the nearly two grueling years of campaigning, he is carried aloft by millions of ordinary people and financed for the most part by contributions of less than $100. His debt is to the people.
Obama has already made history not because he is black but because he has signposted an inspiring electoral process truly based on people’s involvement. He has clearly demonstrated that a politician does not have to sell his soul to big money.
He may or may not succeed as President but there is a real and profound reason for hope. He will be the first US politician at any level who is not in moral or financial obligation to big money, big business, aggressive religion, powerful labor unions or feisty non-governmental groups.
Even among Democrats, he is in hock neither to the liberals nor the traditional establishment. His beliefs may be left, centrist or right at times depending on the issue, but he is sold out or subject to no specific sphere of influence.
Some may perceive this as Teflon Obama on whom nothing sticks because he is committed to nothing in particular. Yet if he wants, he can be a truly independent actor taking decisions on the merits of each issue. Hopefully, he is such a man of character rather than one afraid to take decisions.
Every campaign season brings promises of change. What are the chances, in an election cycle more based on these promises than any in recent memory, that the next President will actually change anything? I speak to well-informed friends and they harp on the nuances of the Parties’ positions. The news media frets over the absence of specifics. It is ludicrous to think that the details matter in the slightest.
Decisions in this country are made by hundreds of egotistical and self-centered men and women trying to keep their well-paying jobs in Washington. The president is of course but one of them. We have layers upon layers of laws and regulations on our books. Both candidates have pledged to take some form of sharp object to these programs and the bloated budget that they create and get them under control.
Who do they think they’re fooling?
These are the pet projects of their constituents, donors and of the other hundreds of legislators, judges, regulators and lobbyists that make the real decisions in this country.
We will have an African American president or a female Vice President after having African American and female Secretaries of State, Congressmen, Senators, Supreme Court Justices and business people all through our country. Will either president declare victory over prejudice and ceremoniously slice all race and sex-related laws from the books? We would save tens of millions at least. No Way!
Everyone receives Social Security; even those with millions. Will either president come out and make a change to a means-tested payment of this benefit? We would save tens of millions. Do not hold your breath.
Does anyone really think that either president will eliminate earmarks? Two to three percent of a several hundred billion dollar budget is a lot of money. Not gonna happen!
These are the laws and regulations we all know about. The laws of the US are contained in hundreds of volumes. Regulations cover just about everything that exists in our economy and cost taxpayers and businesses billions. Is there any chance that we will make any real dent in these laws and programs? Special interest groups have paid entrenched Congresspeople great sums to get their beneficial laws enacted and they will not go quietly. We could not even get a critically important emergency bail-out package through Congress without the addition of billions in wasteful special-interest add-ons.
It is probably time for a complete do-over. Pass a first law eliminating all other laws. Then start over from scratch. Good luck with that. Good luck making any real change to the laws of this country. Washington is set in its ways. No one man is going to change that. God knows many have tried. But go ahead and vote for the candidate of Change, which is both and every candidate in history. I am sure it will work this time.
October 19th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Is public campaign financing poised to die as a viable funding option due to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’ raising some $150 million in September alone, while rival GOPer Sen. John McCain will make do with $85 million in public funds?
Barack Obama toyed with the idea of entering the public finance system. He even signed a public pledge that he would work to create public funding should he ever become president.
But with his announcement early Sunday morning that he’d raised more than $150 million just in September alone, Obama may well have killed the system that he claims to support. Some experts now suggest the once powerful idea backed by political reformers will just fade away.
And, as Moran notes, it isn’t just a matter of the amount of money. It’s that times have quickly changed this since the concept became reality:
Its demise would come courtesy of mass fundraising over the Internet — a concept that did not exist back in the Watergate era when the presidential public financing system was created.
By opting out of the government financing system — the freshman Illinois Democrat is the first candidate to do so since its establishment in 1976 — Obama is free to raise and spend unlimited sums.
So, that’s exactly what he’s doing.
While Republican Sen. John McCain is limited to the $84.1 million in public money he agreed to.
“Being awash in funds allows [Obama] to fight in a lot more states without having to make tough choices,” said political scientist Bruce Cain, director of University of California’s center in Washington, D.C.
And the spending will make a difference:
Obama is spending in Republican states and is shelling out huge sums for 30-second TV spots that air in Democratic bastions via national programming, including football games and the baseball play-offs.
The Wall Street crisis appears to have had little effect on Obama’s smalltime donors. He expanded his fundraising base by 632,000 individuals in September to a record total of 3.1 million — most of them in small amounts. Roughly half the $605 million Obama has raised has come from small donors, and nearly all of them give over the Internet.John McCain, meanwhile, accepted the $84.1 million grant from the Federal Election Commission. Even though the Republican National Committee is paying for much of his campaign, McCain increasingly is unable to compete moneywise.
Around their drive-by handshake at last evening’s forum on public service, John McCain and Barack Obama showed voters their best selves, but there must be an alternative to the sliming of the past weeks and yesterday’s arm’s length politesse.
Why doesn’t Obama take McCain up on the offer he repeated last night for face-to-face town hall encounters? In such a setting, McCain would not have been able to pass off Sarah Palin’s slur on community organizers without being pressed by Obama to repudiate such glib mindlessness.
In a race that has tightened with McCain’s momentum from the Palin effect, Obama should rethink his rejection of the town-hall setting as he did the issue of public financing. A presidential race is no place for a foolish consistency.
This drama has not played out its’ final scene yet. I expect the last shoe to drop tomorrow as Senator Hillary Clinton’s name is placed into nomination for President of the United States.
Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Will Bower who is one of the core members of the group P.U.M.A. I wrote about their efforts to still elect Senator Clinton a few weeks ago, and I thought he would have some interesting insights into the last-minute maneuverings in Denver. Here is what I have learned:
According to DNC Convention rules, a candidate has two avenues of having his or her name placed into nomination: the Democratic Party chair (Howard Dean) or from a petition of 300 signed delegates from the floor by 12 p.m. noon tomorrow, the 26th. Bower told me that P.U.M.A and the Just Say No Deal coalition “doesn’t trust Howard Dean to do what is right by Senator Clinton so we will have the 300 signatures, just in case.”
The latest estimate is that Senator Clinton has 1886 delegates and would need a switch of 231 (or about 5%) of the delegates to switch to her. This seems an unlikely scenario but the delegates in question are the super delegates, not the ones who are committed via the delegate primary system.
Bower stated that he “thinks that some super delegates were paid off to support Obama because of the money given to them by his campaign. Some super delegates voted against the overwhelming wishes of the voters of their state. For instance, Senator Byrd supported Obama even though Senator Clinton won his state by forty points because of the money he received from MoveOn.org.” Bower has a point here because Obama has given three times as much money to super delegates than Clinton, and OpenSecrets.org shows that Byrd has received more that $88,000 from MoveOn political action.
Finally, Bower brought up an interesting point of Clinton’s situation in Denver that has a historical precedent - the Chicago convention of 1932. FDR was running for his first term and had won 11 out of 13 primary contests. However, he was not the favored candidate of the business establishment or the Democrat Party. Bower states, “Like FDR in 1932, Senator Clinton has the will of the Democratic voters behind her. It took four roll call votes for FDR to beat the party machine. We are here to make sure that Senator Clinton has a fair vote.”
I have maintained that this primary fight was far from over. Here is a friendly hint to Senator Obama…watch out for falling objects. By tomorrow afternoon, we shall see how far and fast the last shoe will drop.
August 14th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This Guest Voice post is by CBS veteran newsman and anchor Bob Schieffer. In this excerpt from his new book, Bob Schieffer’s America, he looks at the issue of campaign reform and the realities facing those who seek it.
From Bob Schieffer’s America
by Bob Schieffer:
Campaign 2004 cost nearly a billion dollars. In 2008, spending in just the presidential race alone will surpass that figure. Bill Clinton had amassed a campaign war chest of $3 million when he ran in the New Hampshire primary in 1996. His wife had collected a staggering $90 million before New Hampshire rolled around in 2008.
Money was always a part of politics, but it has become the overriding factor in modern campaigns.
No candidate, no matter how brilliant or charismatic, can get elected without the money to buy campaign commercials. Only those who are willing to spend a major part of every day asking others for money can even hope to be elected. Since a vast majority of the American people wouldn’t even think of spending their days that way, we have come to see a different kind of person run for office, people who are willing to do just that. They are not bad people to be sure, some of them are very good people, but they are more akin to development officers and professional fund-raisers than those who sought office in the past, and with the new breed has come new values and new goals.
In 2004, the average winning Senate campaign cost $7 million, which meant the candidate had to raise $3,196.35 every day including Saturday and Sunday of his or her six year term. Ask a retired politician why he or she decided to get out of politics, and most of them will tell you they just couldn’t take another day of relentless fund-raising. Others may tell you they just got offers to make more money. The influx of money into the system has made public office a stepping-stone to wealth. Candidates find they can make more money and exercise more influence lobbying than they ever did as congressional representatives or senators.
Over the last few days we have been treated to stories about how much money the two presidential campaigns have raised along with how much the RNC and DNC can add to the pot. One of the big themes over the spring and summer has been about how Senator Obama will raise millions upon millions and vastly outspend Senator McCain. So far that does not seem to be happening since the recent numbers show the two sides about even.
However as I read about each side bringing in 100 million dollars or more in a month I am prompted to ask a question that has been running through my mind for some time. How much money is too much ? At what point do you feel like you have enough to spend on an election campaign ? When do you start telling your supporters that maybe their money might be better spent helping charities in their own towns ?
I ask this question not only for the rhetorical reasons cited above but also for some very practical ones. The simple fact of the matter is that there is only so much money that a campaign can spend before they run out of places and ways to spend it. I know that both sides (especially the Obama camp) have talked about a ‘50 state campaign’ but we hear those words every four years and it never pans out.
The reality is that there are only certain states that are even theoretically in play. I don’t care if Senator Obama spends a hundred million dollars a month in Utah, he’s not going to win the state. By the same token, Senator McCain can spend the next 4 months exclusively campaigning in Rhode Island but he is not going to take the Ocean State. In the reverse, Senator Obama is certain of winning New York and it doesn’t matter how much money he spends there, he is not going to gain any more electoral votes than he already has in the bag (the same would hold true of Senator McCain in Texas).
I’m not going to say I am enough of a political expert to name all of the states that are out of reach for one side or the other but I think it would be reasonable to say that about a dozen states on each side are pretty much locked in place. So right off the top you have maybe half of the ‘50 state strategy’ that is pointless in terms of major spending and effort. Either it is a state you are sure of winning or one you have no chance in.
This brings us down to maybe 25-30 states that are or could be in play, but even within those states there are only so many people who are open to persuasion. If you are a regular reader of Daily Kos or a huge Keith Olbermann fan it is fairly unlikely that Senator McCain is going to get your vote. It doesn’t matter if he spends millions of dollars targeting ads directly at you, he’s not going to succeed.
By the same token, if you are a big reader of Red State and think Bill O’Reilly is a great guy then it is not very probable that Senator Obama is going to be able to convince you to support him. He could come over and personally wash and wax your car but you’re not gonna back him in November.
So we’ve now limited our efforts to some of the voters in some of the states and the question arises of how much money its really going to take to reach them. There are only so many TV or radio ads available for purchase between now and election day. You can only open so many offices, hire so many staffers, put up so many posters before even your own supporters get tired of it.
Businesses talk about the law of diminishing returns which discusses the fact that after a certain point efforts to convince customers to use your services tend to either fall on deaf ears or actually are counter productive. I think the same can be true of Presidential campaigns.
Even if it is not entirely true I think the campaigns could do a service to the public by cutting back on the fundraising. If they raise the same amounts of money in July and August that they did in June they will hit the general election campaign with close to half a billion dollars between the two of them. That would seem to be enough money to support their efforts through November.
Starting in September I would like to see the campaigns tell their supporters to take the money they intended to donate to them and give it to charity. This would allow both Senator Obama and Senator McCain to show that they truly care about those in need.
Any guesses as to whether either one will take me up on the idea ?
The Obama campaign announced a $52 Million fundraising haul for June. This is a pretty big deal since Senator Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign on June 7th and Obama has been very supportive of erasing her campaign debt. His assistance in Clinton’s thirty million dollar restoration project will have a direct impact on Obama’s fundraising capacity in the coming months.
The post-Clinton cash windfall factor hasn’t kicked in yet. From the DNC Convention until the general election, Obama will be free to go after Clinton’s big money donors and get them to max out to his campaign. By October 1st, Obama will surpass the record for fundraising and possibly even eclipse the $500 Million mark.
The question is not going to be how much money will Obama raise, rather, where will his campaign plan to use it to maximize its effectiveness? Do you target ten or twenty swing states? How much do you spend on paid media and GOTV efforts in the Southern states like Georgia and Mississippi? Finally, how wide do you want to make your coattails in contributing money to candidates for U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives?
The story of the $52 Million was a portrayal of making up lost time and catching up with John McCain and the Republicans. McCain’s task is to come up with a way of energizing his supporters to the reality that he is facing two capable fundraising machines instead of just one. If he can’t accomplish that mission, the Republican Party may find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings come October… facing a Democratic Party with unlimited resources while they are strapped for cash.
In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted the NSA in illegal wiretapping. Most of us have wondered what happened to change the minds of 94 Democrats. What happened between June 20 and March 14 to change 94 Democratic hearts and minds?
The answer might well be simple: money. Could it be that simple?
MAPLight.org has published a breakdown of contributions received from Telco PACS by the 94 Dems who experienced the change of heart. [Maplight.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Berkeley, California. Its search engine at MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between Money And Politics (MAP) via an unprecedented database of campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.’]
Gill Action, in my estimation, bears some resemblance to GOPAC, the political action committee Gingrich wielded to obtain the GOP’s landslide victories in 1994, when — along with taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in four decades — Republicans stormed state legislatures to seize power in 18 chambers. In the 2006 election, by its own account, Gill Action’s nationwide donor base directed some $2.8 million to 68 candidates across 11 states. And 56 of those candidates won — presumably knocking out 56 other candidates who weren’t so friendly with the gays.
Gill Action isn’t the financial juggernaut that GOPAC was, nor does it have the sweeping ideological agenda of Gingrich’s Contract With America. But Gill’s emphasis on growing power from the bottom up — planting one school board member or city council person at a time until Congress is eventually overrun by politicians who support LGBT rights — is strikingly similar to the way GOPAC helped create a Congress full of pols who had been vetted by the Christian right before rising up through the GOP ranks. It was Gingrich’s revolution that laid a foundation for the Rovian politics of fear that has locked gays out of relationship recognition at the state level nearly across the country.
In the course of my conversation with [Executive Director Patrick] Guerriero and [Political Director Bill] Smith, I hesitatingly offer up the Newt analogy, thinking that few self-respecting LGBT activists — of Republican persuasion or not — would welcome the comparison. Instead, Smith and Guerriero flash a glance at each other. Far from drawing a distinction, Smith offers, “We’re not afraid to learn from anyone across the political spectrum who’s doing really smart work, be it EMILY’s List or GOPAC.” Sure, you could call these guys activists, but what Smith just gave me is neither gay nor straight. It’s the response of a political operative.
[…]
Gill Action was intended to address the LGBT movement’s most troubling deficits: its inability to provide direct candidate support, put lobbyists on the ground, and attract backing even from politicians who were genuinely pro-gay but too intimidated to act on it.
[…]
Asked which organization Gill Action most resembles, Guerriero and Smith stumble a bit trying to find a good comparison. It’s not a membership-based organization like the Human Rights Campaign, because even though it has a donor network, those donors don’t give money to Gill Action. Instead, they send their money directly to candidates that Gill Action has handpicked as pro-gay, in races that have been deemed strategically important. The donor base, said by insiders to be several hundred people strong and growing, is the sacred lifeblood of the organization.
Gill Action is also more than a political action committee. Beyond simply pumping money into LGBT equality organizations, Gill provides political counsel in everything from lobbying to field operations. … The focus is intentionally, bipartisan and so is its leadership team.
Read the full article for the tale of the New York/New Jersey race to become the first state to legislatively legalize same-sex marriage without having been instructed to do so by court order.
To Democrats now giddy about what appears to be a huge campaign funding advantage enjoyed by presumptive Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, you might control your giddiness: the RNC has out-raised the DNC five times over and is expected to use its money to level the campaign funding playing field for Republican presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain.
Led by chairman Mike Duncan, the Republican National Committee ended May with 13 times more money in the bank than its Democratic counterpart, and raised five times as much money in the same time frame.
As The Times’ campaign finance guru Dan Morain points out, the sums are significant as presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain squares off against the far more richly-funded Sen. Barack Obama for the last 136 days of the general election campaign.
Based on the numbers so far, the Republican Party appears poised to act as the financial equalizer in the fall campaign. The RNC disclosed that it ended May with $53.5 million in the bank
he looks at the issue of campaign reform and the realities facing those who seek it.
The Advocate is out with