Campaign Finance
I had lunch today with someone who started talking about what's wrong with campaign finance and he seemed to endorse something called Clean Money - Clean Elections (CMCE), which apparently goes along with the concept of public financing of campaigns.
All this campaign finance reform is bunk. I want to be very clear about the problem.
First of all, I agree that the current system is a form of licensed corruption. Politicians, especially incumbents, accept campaign contributions from people who, generally speaking, want them to vote a certain way on some issue or set of issues. It smacks of vote buying.
This system has become so corrupt that many politicians now think it's no big deal to kick some of this campaign money directly to their own family members. The incumbent in my race funneled something like $30K to his brother. A salary of $1347 a month isn't bad for a couple hours work. He stopped after I pointed that out. Another nearby incumbent was funneling money to his wife for "fundraising". Most local media ignored this, with the notable exception of the Times Union (that darn Liz Benjamin again). Don't worry. The incumbents find plenty of other ways to funnel their campaign money. They buy support from their local party organizations, and even from the third parties and other interest groups.
A great example of this is Citizen Action. This organization is a big supporter of CMCE. That didn't stop them from accepting $650 from the incumbent in my race, according to his campaign finance filings. Citizen Action is a far-left group, but they're happy to take dirty campaign money from a guy who voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, is anti-abortion and opposed to gay marriage.
But I want to move on from the corruption. The system exists in its present form after substantial campaign finance reforms were passed in the last 10-20 years. Despite those reforms, incumbents continue to raise huge sums. At the same time, congressional elections have become much less competitive -- the incumbency reelection rate has been higher recently than it was before the reforms.
Let's see. Incumbents pass campaign finance reforms, and incumbency reelection rates go up. Hard to figure that one out. I'll spell it out for you. The incumbents used the push for reform to pass laws that made life more difficult for challengers. A great example of this is the "Millionaire's Amendment". For House races, if a candidate spends more than $300K of his/her own money, that allows the other candidate(s) to raise more money. That law is aimed squarely at challengers, because incumbents never spend their own money.
For those who say that they want campaign finance reform, I ask this -- What's your goal? I think the goal should be more competitive elections. To do that you have to make life easier for challengers. And you have to recognize the problem of being a challenger.
The incumbent has name recognition, and unless it comes from a missing intern or from attending frat parties, that's an advantage. Challengers need to get name recognition. If voters don't know who you are, they're much less likely to vote for you.
Going door to door? There are 450,000 registered voters in a NY congressional district. If you manage to meet 100 people a day for 500 days, that's only 50,000. Postcards? Sending a postcard to each registered voter will cost roughly 25 cents apiece. That's over $100K per postcard. And to really get that to work, you'd want to send at least three. TV and radio ads? I spent $25K last time and it was clearly not enough. People in Republican campaign headquarters didn't know who I was.
In other words, challengers need money to get their name and their message out to voters. Proposals to have public financing of elections are sure to be coopted by incumbents to make sure challengers cannot campaign effectively.
I have a solution. Free postage. Give each person who gets on the ballot enough postage to send a few postcards to each registered voter. That would effectively give each candidate (including incumbents) an extra $300K for their campaign. And it would be a drop in the bucket for the post office -- I doubt it would even be measurable in terms of their added expense.
So, do you think incumbents will vote for that? Do you care enough to support it?
All this campaign finance reform is bunk. I want to be very clear about the problem.
First of all, I agree that the current system is a form of licensed corruption. Politicians, especially incumbents, accept campaign contributions from people who, generally speaking, want them to vote a certain way on some issue or set of issues. It smacks of vote buying.
This system has become so corrupt that many politicians now think it's no big deal to kick some of this campaign money directly to their own family members. The incumbent in my race funneled something like $30K to his brother. A salary of $1347 a month isn't bad for a couple hours work. He stopped after I pointed that out. Another nearby incumbent was funneling money to his wife for "fundraising". Most local media ignored this, with the notable exception of the Times Union (that darn Liz Benjamin again). Don't worry. The incumbents find plenty of other ways to funnel their campaign money. They buy support from their local party organizations, and even from the third parties and other interest groups.
A great example of this is Citizen Action. This organization is a big supporter of CMCE. That didn't stop them from accepting $650 from the incumbent in my race, according to his campaign finance filings. Citizen Action is a far-left group, but they're happy to take dirty campaign money from a guy who voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, is anti-abortion and opposed to gay marriage.
But I want to move on from the corruption. The system exists in its present form after substantial campaign finance reforms were passed in the last 10-20 years. Despite those reforms, incumbents continue to raise huge sums. At the same time, congressional elections have become much less competitive -- the incumbency reelection rate has been higher recently than it was before the reforms.
Let's see. Incumbents pass campaign finance reforms, and incumbency reelection rates go up. Hard to figure that one out. I'll spell it out for you. The incumbents used the push for reform to pass laws that made life more difficult for challengers. A great example of this is the "Millionaire's Amendment". For House races, if a candidate spends more than $300K of his/her own money, that allows the other candidate(s) to raise more money. That law is aimed squarely at challengers, because incumbents never spend their own money.
For those who say that they want campaign finance reform, I ask this -- What's your goal? I think the goal should be more competitive elections. To do that you have to make life easier for challengers. And you have to recognize the problem of being a challenger.
The incumbent has name recognition, and unless it comes from a missing intern or from attending frat parties, that's an advantage. Challengers need to get name recognition. If voters don't know who you are, they're much less likely to vote for you.
Going door to door? There are 450,000 registered voters in a NY congressional district. If you manage to meet 100 people a day for 500 days, that's only 50,000. Postcards? Sending a postcard to each registered voter will cost roughly 25 cents apiece. That's over $100K per postcard. And to really get that to work, you'd want to send at least three. TV and radio ads? I spent $25K last time and it was clearly not enough. People in Republican campaign headquarters didn't know who I was.
In other words, challengers need money to get their name and their message out to voters. Proposals to have public financing of elections are sure to be coopted by incumbents to make sure challengers cannot campaign effectively.
I have a solution. Free postage. Give each person who gets on the ballot enough postage to send a few postcards to each registered voter. That would effectively give each candidate (including incumbents) an extra $300K for their campaign. And it would be a drop in the bucket for the post office -- I doubt it would even be measurable in terms of their added expense.
So, do you think incumbents will vote for that? Do you care enough to support it?
posted by Albany Lawyer at 4:03 AM
1 Comments:
Its a pretty interesting idea. I'm trying to organize an 8,000 piece mailing for Dr. Paul in Schoharie (which is very Republican) and the costs are stiffling. It becomes chicken-egg where you have trouble fund-raising without name recognition while having no funds to obtain name recognition without fund-raising. There needs to be a way outside of big media to put a candidate profile for each candidate in front of every registered voter. We need informed people voting on principles, issues, and philosophy rather than appearance and name recognition. I'm in Schoharie so let me know how I can help your campaign. rob_panico [at] schoharie [dot] us
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