Political Junkie Hypes a Quick Fix for Incumbent Ills

Chuck Valvo is a 29-year-old bachelor in Huntington Beach who eats up C-SPAN. He’ll watch it at any odd hour of the night just to get his daily fix of what’s happening in the world of politics.

As you may have heard lately, even if you’re not a political junkie, what’s happening in Washington isn’t especially good.

There was the Clarence Thomas hearing. Then we all got to play “follow the bouncing checks” of some congressmen. Other stories detailed the great perks that elected officials get and how they then abuse them. All of this occurs against a backdrop of seeming congressional inactivity toward the country’s most pressing problems.

If Valvo didn’t like politics so much, it would make him sick. But rather than giving up (or, throwing up), Valvo has become one of those growing numbers of private citizens trying to challenge business as usual in D.C.

On Monday night, he and four others spent about three hours at a Coco’s restaurant in Newport Beach--the first official get-together of the Orange County chapter of a group called the Coalition to End the Permanent Congress. This weekend, Valvo heads for Tampa, Fla., to meet with people from about 50 other groups from around the country who want to reform politics.

The Orange County chapter joins others that have formed in Los Angeles and San Jose. The group’s primary goals are campaign spending reform and term limitations, akin to what California voters did last year when they passed Proposition 140 to limit the terms of state legislators. The coalition describes itself as nonpartisan and not set up to advance particular causes.

Simply put, Valvo said, campaigns cost so much that challengers have almost no chance to win, and that without term limitations, Congress becomes a perpetual body of legislators, many of whom are beholden either to special interests or their own interests.

Valvo envisions a country where every congressional race is a contested election.

“I just usually say that I’m an average citizen like everyone else who’s concerned about the way the country is going,” says Valvo, who provides banking services on a contract basis. “I’m not favoring either party, either persuasion, whether it’s liberal or conservative. Things need to be changed. There are problems that transcend ideology, like the budget and ethics in Congress, or the lack thereof.”

The national Coalition to End the Permanent Congress was formed in 1988 by a Kansas Democrat living in a strongly Republican district. The man, Lionel Kunst, discovered that not even his local Democratic Party would help him because of the unlikelihood of winning the seat.

Lionel Kunst was not alone. Democratic candidates in Orange County have sat at party rallies as recently as last year and heard their own leaders concede that they had no chance to win and that party resources would be focused in races other than theirs. That perpetuates the vicious cycle of local politics: Without money or strong backing from the local party, where are the new candidates going to come from to challenge an entrenched, bankrolled incumbent?

There are subtle signs that things are changing. National political reporters noted that many congressional incumbents, while still being reelected in overwhelmingly large numbers, drew smaller voter shares in 1990 than in 1988. In addition, the term-limitation bandwagon is moving in fits and starts, with respected national political columnist George Will recently climbing on board.

Most Americans have heard the words campaign reform enough in the past to bore them into a stupor. But just imagine how things might be different . . .

Imagine local races--for supervisor, Congress, sheriff, whatever--in which all candidates had roughly the same amount of money to spend in their campaigns.

“The bottom line is representation,” Valvo says. “No one feels represented. They don’t think they (congressmen) are in touch with their constituents. They think there’s just a general lack of concern for the country as a whole.”

Only history will tell us whether the current anti-Congress, anti-government movements will go the way of the Mugwumps or will redefine American politics.

Believe me, incumbent politicians are hoping that only political junkies like Chuck Valvo are thinking such evil thoughts. The incumbents’ greatest fear is what will happen if Mr. and Mrs. Average American, who heretofore couldn’t stand C-SPAN, suddenly stand up and say, “Throw the bums out!”