The wealthy have dominated American political life since the nation’s founding. It is ironic that the directors of the greatest revolution “for the People” in world history were not “of the People” themselves. The Founding Fathers were on the most part radical, courageous, daring, and comfortably wealthy. At first political rights were granted only to landed white men, but thankfully spread to all citizens over time through many trials and tribulations. However, the main leaders in government remained and still remain the upper class. Populist discontent over this disparity between the governing and the governed has always existed, and has even gained political ground in recent years. The Democracy Matters campaign at Brown is part of this movement. At first sight this campaign’s objective is to restore political rights to “the people.” Upon closer inspection the campaign is a thinly veiled charade to restore political rights to “the people we like.”
Democracy Matters highlights a perceived societal ill to form a base for their movement, and then from there suggests a solution to the problem. Their perceived ill is the notion that private money from wealthy donors and special interests in industry, etc. unduly robs the less fortunate of their due political influence and has put the brakes on real change in this country. According to cleanelectionsri.org, “For years, the role of money in politics has systematically disenfranchised women and minorities while serving as a roadblock to environmental and social change.” To remedy this, members advocate a voluntary public financing program that would allow less wealthy candidates for election to use public campaign funds if they wish, but they must stick with the system throughout the campaign. Privately funded candidates are supposedly free to continue with their own campaigns, however they are often subject to additional restrictions such as contribution limits, etc. The regulations become complex, so to simplify I will only analyze the solution provided by the group in its base form, which is an opt-in public financing system that purportedly does not tread on First Amendment rights unlike other campaign financing schemes.
Public financing of elections is an ineffective and nonsensical method for removing the “corrupting” influence of money on politics. A look at the results of such “clean elections” legislation shows that clean elections laws have failed to change legislator behavior. Ideology matters more than quid-pro-quo arrangements when special interest contributions are made and while clean elections supporters claim to have the people’s interests in mind, they are in reality a special interest themselves.
Arizona, which passed a clean elections bill in 1998, is trumpeted by Democracy Matters as a success story in electing candidates untainted by special interests. Supporters laud the fact that, according to a study done by the Goldwater Institute (a think tank which concentrates on Arizona issues), after being in effect for one election cycle, the bill had already allowed for twenty three percent of all candidates to run “clean”. But have these newly elected Arizona legislators voted differently than their privately funded counterparts? The answer is no. According to the same Goldwater Institute study, once you control for ideology, clean elections candidates show virtually no difference in their voting patterns. Whether elected “clean” or not, a liberal legislator voted for legislation backed by Planned Parenthood, and a conservative legislator voted with the NRA. Assuming that the Democracy Matters crowd believes special favors run rampant within both parties (looking at who backs them, a tenuous assumption at best), these findings crush the idea that public financing will somehow change how legislators act.
But how could this be so? Don’t special interests give money to legislators in expectation of a reward? And doesn’t money matter a great deal in the overall success of a campaign? The answers to these questions are radically different than the conventional wisdom. There are two reasons why a special interest might give money to a candidate: the interested party wants to influence how a legislator will vote in a quid-pro-quo arrangement, or the interested party already knows how the legislator will vote (due to ideology) and gives money to him because he wants him to win the election. In any campaign, both of these types of donations will occur, the question is how much? The Arizona example above shows that ideology is far more important than money with strings attached when determining how legislators vote. Absent of such restraints, legislators still followed their convictions. Moving to the question of whether money matters, an oft-quoted study by Stephen Levitt that can be found in his best-selling book Freakonomics reveals that money has a negligible effect on the outcome of races. To find this, Levitt looked across 1,000 U.S. House of Representatives races in which the same two candidates were matched up in two consecutive races. In the first race, the first candidate spent more than the second, and this situation was reversed for the second race. Levitt found that in these cases the amount of money spent by an incumbent or a challenger didn’t matter. The inherent attractiveness of a candidate determined the election outcome. This is vividly illustrated by the Arizona example. No matter how much special interest money is given to candidates, the candidates themselves tend to keep to their ideologies and the people cast their votes for the candidate/ideology package that they find most attractive.
The evidence is in: money doesn’t matter and the people and legislators alike vote with their hearts. Knowing this, you may ask, who are the Democracy Matters people really working for? A cursory glance at democracymatters.org uncovers multiple calls for action against the dearth of “progressive” change brought about by the current system. Cleanelectionsri.org (quoted above) decries the lack of social and environmental progress, as well as the under-representation of minorities. Only one side of the political aisle speaks in these terms, and it is not the conservative side. Frustrated with consistent failure to stop “big business” at the ballot box, advocates of a heterodox state are attempting to force their ideas down voter’s throats by disenfranchising evil corporations, and as such constitute a special interest themselves. This does not appear to be working in the same way they intended, but don’t count on them to back off from a coercive initiative once they have latched on to it. On cleanelectionsri.org, evidence of increased percentages of minority and women candidates running “clean” is provided as proof of the success of the policy. I personally thought that the goal of any campaign finance legislation was to have better government, but apparently such considerations are less important than having an aesthetically pleasing yearly photo of the legislature. The idea that having the right genitalia and melatonin ratios in the room will automatically improve policy is racist, sexist, and logically beyond the pale.
Through all of this, one might legitimately ask just how bad are the special interests that Democracy Matters rails against? Logging companies, auto manufactures, and oil companies are not just great monsters that siphon money to overpaid CEOs. These sectors of the economy represent legitimate businesses that create jobs, drive down prices, and improve everyone’s quality of life, accept it or not. A business, in looking out for itself by lobbying the government, is at least in some way going to benefit a great many people quite often. This is in stark contrast to environmental and social advocacy groups, which represent special interests of their own and employ mainly lawyers. These lawyers destroy productivity, raise costs for businesses, and demolish jobs – all the while thinking they are a force for good in the world. One can not blame businesses for perhaps making friends in the state house in order to defend themselves against organizations that are bent on putting them out of business.
It is obvious what kind of change Democracy Matters would like to see in this country. Their only error is that they employ coercion rather than persuasion to enact this change. M. Stanton Evan’s words ring true, “A modern liberal is someone who doesn’t care what you do so long as it’s compulsory.” Progressives should forget public financing and actually attempt to field socially-conscious candidates that are attractive to voters. If they believe that is a losing proposition, then that doesn’t say much for their ideas.
