Where Are the Good Guys When We Need Them?
Cottle, Michelle
Where Are the Good Guys When We Need Them?. While the public interest groupsjddle, campaign finance reform burns BY MICHELLE COTTLE MEMBERS OF THE CLINTON administration boast ...
...They hear it in the media, but it is almost all on a national level...
...Fred Thompson and Co., witnesses relate hair-raising tales of convoluted financial shell-games rigged to funnel vast sums of special interest money into the coffers of our major political parties-and that’s just the legal stuff...
...See “The Battle of the White Hats,” December 1996...
...However, U.S...
...The League of Women Voters recently launched a $I million ad campaign in support of the Ornstein-Mann proposal for incremental reform, while Public Campaign and Citizen Action want full public financing for elections as outlined in the Kerry-Wellstone bill...
...But the toll such battles take on the activist community cannot be ignored...
...The difficulty in the last two decades is that it’s been such an inside game...
...The California initiative should not have been as rancorous as it was, leaving bitterness behind,” says Bollier...
...As the reform debate rages - on, minor coalitions between the groups form and break and reform...
...I doubt it.’’ But if reform advocates seriously hope to achieve real reform this Congress-or any Congress for that matter-they cannot afford to write the public off as a lost cause...
...After a stunning display of internecine squabbling, complete with television attack ads, Common Cause emerged victorious...
...Sadly, despite its shortcomings, Common Cause may be our best hope for achieving national reform in this Congress...
...These people’s egos and organizational agendas get bruised or derailed, and when that’s your life’s work, you don’t just brush it off...
...What’s more, as the fund-raising frenzy escalates, an increasing number of talented men and women, recognizing that perpetual begging is no way to spend a career, are opting out of public service, ceding the field to candidates whose primary talent is money-grubbing...
...The public interest groups are hindered by tactical errors, general and plain oldfashioned disorganization, infighting...
...lot of it has to do with personalities, with the activist elite not getting along,” says Bollier...
...I want them to be effective...
...Besides, as Senator McCain points out, with the scandal in the news and all of the big talk by Clinton and Congress about reform, if a substantive bill doesn’t get passed this time around, public cynicism about our “do nothing” legislators will skyrocket...
...They keep huffing and puffing and issuing press releases,” says Bollier, “but they haven’t organized the people to make congressional representatives feel the pain...
...Officially launched in late March, Project Independence got off to a roaring start-S00,000 names as of early June-only to fizzle, coming about as close to meeting its July 4 deadline as did Congress...
...Of course, some folks think the activists’ squabbling and disorganization don’t matter, because campaign finance reform ultimately won’t be driven by a public outcry...
...As for Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen: “Their campaign reform efforts almost don’t even count,” says one Washington researcher with ties to the public interest community...
...They’ve played an inside game strategy, which means the public has not been educated on the issues...
...on the toes of more established groups, Miller personally has been known to ruffle some feathers...
...political influence, the antics of Charlie Trie, the Young Brothers, and John Huang add flesh to the bones of what we suspected all along: Rather than devoting their time-and the tax dollars that pay their salaries-to saving Medicare or Social Security, our elected officials spend their days dialing for dollars...
...PIRG, meanwhile, plans to spend the fall engaged in what Democracy Campaign Director Derek Cressman calls “defensive lobbying” (i.e., fighting against any “bad” reform bills that come up for consideration...
...This country needs them to be effective...
...No one is holding up votes and saying, ‘See, this person is voting against this.’ We need to be bringing this home to the community so members know there’s pressure building at home for them to deal with us...
...Bollier says he has- r n’t kept a close watch on the public interest community in recent months, “But from what I’ve heard and seen, there hasn’t been much change.,’ Some reform watchers are more optimistic...
...Despite a brave front,” concludes David Bollier, “there is a lot of disorganization and a lack of clarity within the movement...
...It should have succeeded with the groups standing shoulder to shoulder and ready to move that energy on to Washington...
...The Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann, co-author of the Ornstein-Mann proposal, says he senses an emerging consive Politics Executive Director Kent Cooper says he sees “a little loosening to previous hardline stances...
...Either way, for Congress members desperate to convince themselves and their constituents that campaign reform isn’t a major issue, the petition drive’s tepid results are a license for inaction...
...With the coming battle on the Hill, why aren’t legislators under siege from the likes of Public Citizen, Public Campaign, Citizen Action, U.S...
...What they have effectively done is incredibly lowered their profile in 20-some states,” Rovira told The NationalJoumal in an April 1 article...
...Outspoken and unflinchingly direct, Miller is clear about what she perceives as the flaws of past reform efforts...
...Hardly a promising sign of an emerging coalition...
...More than a few people in the activist community made mention of her abrasive mannerhardly conducive to coalition building...
...however, her effect on the tenuous relationship between the reform groups is already apparent...
...Common Cause Kentucky’s part-time executive director, Ivonne Rovira, has made it clear that she considers the national office’s redistribution decision a serious mistake...
...Political heavy hitters ranging from the ACLU and the NEA to the NRA and the Christian Coalition all oppose reform-and all have nice big budgets with which to express their commitment to the status quo...
...A lot of money is raised and spent, but it’s not well spent because all of the organizations pursue their own little fiefdoms and never work together...
...When you talk to them, they tell you how hard it is to get reform passed...
...But with Miller focusing on state-based reform (and expressing staunch opposition to McCain-Feingold), it is unlikely that a dime of Public Campaign’s windfall will go toward lobbying Just as her organization treads Congress this fall...
...With 250,000 members nationwide and offices in almost every state, Common Cause considers itself the standard bearer for campaign reform...
...As Ivonne Rovira told NationalJournal, “Let’s face it, Mitch McConnell doesn’t give a damn if there are nasty stories about him every day in The New York Times and The Washingtun Post...
...Still, talking with even the most politic organization leaders, you hear numerous remarks along the lines of “this campaign is primarily ours,” or “other groups will come around to a more achievable agenda,” or that a particular group is nice “but not really focused on action...
...Right now, the new kid on the block-and the one in everyone’s cross hairs-is Public Campaign...
...However, those listening for the distant footfall of the troops are likely to be disappointed...
...History suggests that, with an issue as dear to Congress members’ heartsand careers-as campaign finance, it takes a good old-fashioned scandal to get the ball rolling...
...When liquidity becomes the primary qualification for elected leadership-when Michael Huffington, Ross Perot, and Steve Forbes can become serious contenders for national office-one can only echo that sage former Senate majority leader, presidential contender, and fund-raiser extraoydinaire, Bob Dole: Where is the outrage...
...For veteran reformers who have been laboring long and hard, hotshot newcomers can prove a threat not only to the old guard’s pride, but also to its political support and funding...
...Senator McCain too notes that Common Cause “has gone from the view that we had to have all of McCain-Feingold or nothing, to being willing to make some progress now sensus, and Center for Responand more later...
...The competition for grants is vicious...
...At this point, I don’t see much happening from the public interest groups,” confirms Leonard Weiss, Democratic staff director for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee...
...The forces allied against reform are too well-organized and well-funded for the public interest community to allow its fragmented efforts and personal agendas to divide it...
...Far from being united in their common pursuit, the major activist groups have pursued their diverse agendas, leading to what Bollier calls the “balkanization” of the activist community...
...Those involved with the campaign reform movement say the answer lies with the activists themselves...
...In Nebraska, for example, Frances Mendenhall notes that, although Common Cause and the state’s League of Women Voters have been trying to forge a working relationship for quite some time, things never seem to pan out...
...There are only a handful of foundations that fund this cause, notes a former staff member of Public Citizen...
...PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), and, the granddaddy of them all, Common Cause...
...We’re trying to get beyond that...
...Chuck Lewis, head of the research group The Center for Public Integrity, agrees...
...Meanwhile, back on the Hill, more than 70 campaign finance bills have been introduced as legislators rush to appear on the virtuous side of the debate...
...PIRG’s Derek Cressman says his group plans to actively lobby against McCain-Feingold unless the legislation undergoes significant changes...
...Excellent question...
...After all, even the most reform-minded candidates often experience a change of heart upon talung office and realizing that they’ve joined the ranks of the incumbents, for whom the current system works so well...
...I just don’t see their effectiveness, and it really pains me...
...And our elected leaders will continue to wander the streets with their tin cups, endlessly searching for their next sugar daddy...
...We are the quintessential grass-roots organization...
...Clearly, now is the moment for campaign finance reform supporters to join forces, sound the trumpets, and storm, not only the Hill, but also every congressional office in the country...
...We have 100 volunteers who come into our offices, we have 40 interns this summer, and what these people do is organize members by phone,” says Common Cause President Ann McBride...
...Former political luminaries Walter Mondale and Nancy KassebaumBaker have been stumping around the country since March, drumming up public support for the issue...
...The Bottom Line With the legislative showdown over campaign finance reform looming, are the groups making an effort to table their differences...
...But staffers who point to Clinton’s use of the bully pulpit as evidence of his reform commitment mistake his real contribution: the fantastic fund-raising scandal now on display in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building...
...With an issue as complex as campaign finance reform, some philosophical differences are to be expected...
...Whatever the individual and institutional differences among the public interest groups, they are missing an important opportunity to work together and exert targeted, coordinated pressure on the true enemy: legisla tors who oppose reform, including those who claim to suppor it while working quietly to undermine the cause...
...The result: “Campaign finance reform is a long shot this year,” predicts Weiss...
...She’s got her elbows flying all over the place trying to crowd out everyone else...
...Len Weiss predicts it will take congressional challengers malung reform a ’98 campaign issue before anything really starts to move...
...But most observers considered the battle an absurd waste of time, energy, and good will, undermining what had previously been a solid working relationship between the two organizations...
...And almost no organization could, when asked, come up with an example of effective programs or activities being independently pursued by another activist group...
...Many Common Cause chapters are closing down, consolidating-many are one- or two-person offices without a lot of troops behind them,” says Bollier...
...Although careful to point out what a tough job campaign reform activists face, Lewis thinks the state infrastructure is lacking...
...It’s been a discussion held between Dupont Circle [where Common Cause’s and Public Citizen’s offices are located] and Capitol Hill...
...Common Cause’s Project Independence is pushing specifically for ithe McCainFeingold bill...
...Similarly, Bob Schiff, the staff attorney at Public Citizen, says that although his group doesn’t have chapters outside of Washington, its members work in coalition with local groups such as environmental and religious organizations...
...Apathy will spread...
...Where Are the Good Guys When We Need Them...
...He’s worried about what The Lexington Herald Leader and the Courier journal in Louisville say about him...
...Somebody needs to put it in their faces...
...Correction...
...Over the last couple of years, Common Cause has moved to reallocate resources to the more populous states, cutting funds to offices in smaller states and putting them on what one state director calls “a starvation diet.’’ Among the states to suffer cuts is Kentucky, home to the Senate’s No...
...And membership and money follow media attention...
...Common Cause members in Arizona, Kentucky, and Nebraska-while very active in their local reform efforts-seem to have little information about or interest in the national office’s push for McCain-Feingold...
...Unfortunately, insiders say the factionalism of the California campaign is a microcosm of what’s going on nationally...
...and Arlen Specter (R-Pa...
...Unfortunately, most of Common Cause’s grass seeds have been sown inside the Beltway...
...As our disillusioned Washington researcher puts it: “One reason we won’t win reform is that these groups all work together so badly...
...Indeed, we may well owe this country’s First Fund-raiser a debt of gratitude...
...Rovira is not the only state affiliate feeling abandoned...
...It’s like they don’t care,” says our self-described “makeshift” director...
...Certainly, even SO0,OOO signatures are nothing to sneeze at...
...Hoping to take advantage of the scandal and its resultant buzz, the two veteran crusaders for reform have vowed to bring their long-debated bill to the floor this month...
...Whether Miller will serve to energize the movement remains to be seen...
...For a summary of the major reform proposals, see sidebar...
...The efforts taking place in the smaller states are underappreciated-including by the national Common Cause office,” says another part-time director who asked not to be identified...
...But the untold story is that they don’t work together...
...Naturally I hope for the best, but I haven’t read up on the issue...
...What reformers need is a surgical, we’re-going-to-make-McConnell-pay approach...
...The organizations’ energies (and funds), however, are ultimately being split among the numerous bills and proposal!;, saving reform opponents the effort of having to divide and conquer the public interest crusaders themselves...
...If the groups can agree on nothing else, it should be to systematically torment any legislator who fails to stand up for campaign finance reform at this crucial time...
...Ernest Hollings (D-S.C...
...While passionate about reforming the system, the groups are hindered in their effort to fight the good fight by a number of internal factors: tactical errors, general disorganization, and a liberal dose of plain old infighting...
...Like Bollier, Lewis sees the need for coordinated operations in all SO states, with activists holding individual members of Congress accountable to constituents...
...And former Washington Post columnist Paul Taylor, another co-author of Ornstein-Mann, predicts that reform “will come from more of a Hill thing than from public pressure...
...The investigation also has politicians both past and present coming forward to decry the existing system...
...Becky Cain, president of the League of Women Voters, notes that her organization is sponsoring citizen caucuses around the country and will be running a 20-state ad campaign in the fall...
...And by “stand up,” I mean really work to build a reform coalition in Congress, not just grandstand for the cameras...
...A process, it seems, that now requires knowledge of the international calling codes for Jakarta, Beijing, and Hong Kong...
...Taking funding away from us was a really bad mistake, because until recently when California passed its bill, all of the reform progress being made at the state level was happening in small states...
...She’s one of the most tactically inept people around,” says a source familiar with Miller’s work...
...Frances Mendenhall, part-time executive director of Common Cause Nebraska, says she recently received an e-mail from the national office announcing that the McCain-Feingold bill would be brought to the floor in September, but she admits, “I’m not a good source on the topic...
...And whether the funds are foreign or domestic, designed to snag a morning cup of coffee with Bill Clinton or an afternoon of bill-drafting with Tom DeLay, the real scandal remains the same: The American public is getting ripped off thanks to a campaign system that bestows enormous influence upon moneyed special interests, while turning our national leaders into high-class panhandlers...
...For Common Cause, which does not accept foundation or PAC money, the primary battle is for membership fees and public donations...
...We held a series of press conferences during the Memorial Day recess, and we send materials out to people on our lists of groups...
...However, in some states, it doesn’t appear that affiliates are being seriously mobilized to join the national battle...
...Here, beneath the watchful gazes of Sen...
...But after all the fanfare and advanced publicity, Project Independence’s failure to meet its objective sends one of two messages to Congress: 1) The public is precisely as apathetic about campaign finance as reform opponents claim, or 2) Common Cause is too disorganized to meet a self-established-albeit ambitious-goal for collecting signatures, much less pose a serious political threat to legislators who don’t champion reform...
...Common Cause Kentucky Chairman Richard Beliles notes that the $7,000 his chapter now receives from national headquarters is just enough to pay for the group’s bare-bones office...
...Take, for example, the reform fight in California’s last election, in which Common Cause and CalPIRG each championed its pet ballot initiative...
...I just don’t think people on the Hill are feeling pressure to act...
...All of these people hate one another...
...Headed by Ellen Miller, a 12-year veteran of the Center for Responsive Politics research group, Public Campaign is focused on total public financing for elections...
...Now, if they were on his butt every day, that would be very different...
...The key to change is public pressure-not a crusading president or a “reform friendly” Congress...
...Citizen Action and Public Campaign have given up on Congress passing reform this time around and are focusing on state efforts...
...Even assuming there was no insidious Chinese plot to buy U.S...
...Perhaps...
...And despite the media’s decree that the Senate hearings are too boring for “V, the partisan bickering and fingerpointing that flavor the proceedings have kept the campaign finance issue in the daily papers...
...The group’s modified plans are to try to get the number of signatures up to 1 million in time for a September presentation to Congress...
...Some of this is based on arcane history going back five years on this or that legislative battle...
...Instead, a similar confrontation is shaping up on the national level...
...Research assistance provided by Seth Meisels...
...as well as the senators’ call for a constitutional amendment overturning Buckley v. T/aleo...
...For many other “good government” groups, however, the financial struggle includes scratching and clawing for a share of the limited pool of foundation dollars...
...President Clinton has issued a statement of “strong support” for the senators’ efforts...
...Administration insiders say the noises they hear emanating from the activist community sound more like discordant babbling than a coordinated roar for reform...
...U.S...
...In Kentucky alone, notes Richard Beliles, state anti-reform interests spent some $7 million on lobbying efforts last legislature...
...I just don’t think people on the Hill are feeling pressure to act,’’ says one congressional staffer...
...Foremost among these reformers are Senators John McCain (R-Ariz...
...Why then are we seeing so little coordinated action from the people who have made this type of crusade their life’s work...
...Will we see them marching on Washington to get it...
...What McBride does not mention is that the group’s original goal was to have -these signatures ready by the July 4 deadline that President Clinton set for Congress to pass a comprehensive campaign finance reform bill...
...If the public is, as reform opponents claim, suffering from political malaise or resigned disgust, the public interest community should be laboring nonstop to get John Q. Public mobilized for the fight...
...A House Divided Before the public interest groups can join forces to put serious political heat on Congress, they’ll have to overcome yet another key obstacle: infighting...
...There are no institutional bonds between these groups...
...and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc...
...Some state directors question whether their achievements are even of interest to their “out of touch” Washington counterparts, noting that reform bills passed in their legislatures have received little press attention or credit from the national office...
...A lot of the do with problem has to personalities,” says one inside source, “with the activitist elite not getting along...
...I campaign finance reform enemy, Republican Mitch McConnell (not to mention the state’s seven other congressional representatives, who could also stand a bit of goading...
...Of course, not all of the discord stems from complex policy disagreements...
...David Bollier, an independent consultant commissioned in 1995 by Ralph Nader’s chief of staff, John Richard, to report on the state of the campaign finance reform movement, says the group’s grass-roots presence is more “faqade” than fact...
...PIRG backs the tougher spending and contribution limits in the proposal co-sponsored by Sens...
...Campaign finance reform may be the defining public interest issue of our time...
...In late July, former Presidents Bush, Carter, and Ford jointly issued a public plea for congressional action on campaign reform...
...They are pathetic-to describe them as moribund is far too generous...
...When asked about other grass-roots efforts Common Cause is spearheading for September, Jennifer Lamson, the group’s vice-president for grassroots lobbying, says Project Independence is pretty much it...
...There are no personal bonds,” confirms an inside source...
...Even the League’s Becky Cain says, “I don’t know if we’ll ever have people storming the gates on this issue...
...The picture painted by the activist groups themselves is, not surprisingly, quite different...
...They consider us too radicall’ Similarly, says Mendenhall, efforts to team up with the remains of Ross Perot’s United We Stand presence in the state “kind of got us in trouble because their goals are not a perfect match with ours...
...Ann McBride points to the local and national press garnered by Project Independence, a nationwide petition effort by 6S,OOO Common Cause volunteers (and a handful of professional organizers) to collect 1,776,000 signatures in support of campaign finance reform...
...They seem slightly invisible...
...Some of the differences are ideological, with individual groups adhering to their own vision of reform and pushing policy proposals tailor-made to fit this vision: Common Cause and Public Citizen have long backed McCain-Feingold, in all its many incarnations...
...Most reform efforts have been inside the Beltway...
...Such battles also ultimately drag down the larger movement...
...But the fear is that this scattershot approach doesn’t provide the groups with the grass-roots firepower-or the big funding-needed to move their agenda...
...As groups like Common Cause pinch pennies, Public Campaign finds itself awash in dough from such notable patrons as George Soros, whose foundation has already awarded the group $3 million in grants...
...Out of Touch For more than a quarter century, the not-forprofit advocacy group Common Cause has been synonymous with campaign finance reform...
...While the public interest groupsjddle, campaign finance reform burns BY MICHELLE COTTLE MEMBERS OF THE CLINTON administration boast that their boss has done more to promote the cause of campaign finance reform than any president in recent history...
Vol. 29 • September 1997 • No. 9
