Campaign Finance Reformers Shift Gears

Badly stalled in their drive to reform campaign finance laws, many advocates have given up on Congress for now and are trying instead to stir up grass-roots outrage as an indirect way of goading lawmakers into action.

The tactical gambit points up a curious dichotomy: Even as the reform effort falters in the nation’s capital, a significant desire to improve campaign finance laws is manifesting itself in states from coast to coast.

“States have done an awful lot in recent years,” said Tommy Neal, an analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“There is a bit of a disconnect here,” noted Tony Corrado, a professor and campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine. “That grass-roots pressure isn’t being brought to bear on Congress, and members are not perceiving this as an issue people care about.”

Thus, only a strong and unequivocal public clamor is likely to resuscitate the drive to change the way federal elections are financed, reform advocates concede.

“That’s the way we have to go,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading reform advocate, referring to a nationwide campaign being mounted by citizens’ groups, religious leaders and a small but prominent group of business executives.

“It’s going to have to come from outside the Beltway, in the disgust and anger and cynicism of the American people,” McCain said, noting that California is one of the targeted states.

McCain and his fellow reformers cling to the hope that public demand for reform may yet overcome the seemingly insurmountable resistance to change among most lawmakers. That demand could be whetted by upcoming congressional hearings on campaign finance abuses and continuing news reports of irregularities by the Clinton administration and both parties in Congress.

“Ultimately it’s got to be a grass-roots effort--combined with some people in power in the business community, in the religious community, in the media--to make this possible,” said former Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.).

Still, many experts in grass-roots campaigns, such as those mounted to support term limits for lawmakers and health care reform, doubt a successful drive can be achieved any time soon, particularly given the proliferation of competing reform proposals.

Similarly, President Clinton, who in his Feb. 4 State of the Union address called upon Congress to enact campaign finance reform by July 4, appears to have succumbed to the prevailing pessimism in Washington, telling the American Council on Education on Feb. 24: “We seem destined to some period of hand-wringing.”

Groups now trying to mobilize public support for campaign reform include Common Cause, Citizen Action, Public Citizen and an alliance of religious groups assembled by the National Council of Churches, whose member denominations claim a combined membership of 53 million people.

“Our support for current campaign finance reform comes from seeing it as an important step in public moral correction,” said the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the council’s general secretary.

In a recent letter to Congress, she and other clergy leaders declared campaign finance reform to be “not simply a political or public relations dilemma but a moral matter.”

As such, added Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the demand for reform must come “from the pews, not just the pulpit.”

Separately, Common Cause has launched Project Independence, a grass-roots drive to gather 1,776,000 signatures on petitions calling for congressional action by July 4.

“This is a daunting task,” said Ann McBride, president of Common Cause. “But we believe it can be done.”

Working with Common Cause is a group called Campaign for America, founded by prominent Wall Street investment banker Jerome Kohlberg Jr. Business leaders joining him include Richard Rosenberg, former chairman and chief executive of Bank of America, and Roy Vagelos, former chairman and chief executive of Merck & Co.

“American business suffers when our democracy withers,” Kohlberg said.

Common Cause and Kohlberg, along with Clinton, are backing a bill introduced by McCain and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.). It would ban political action committees, severely restrict “soft money” contributions to political parties and grant free TV time and discounted postal and advertising rates to candidates who agreed to spending limits.

Competing for attention, however, is a veritable bazaar of proposals that range from full public financing of federal elections to a constitutional amendment that would exempt government restrictions on campaign contributions from the 1st Amendment’s free-speech protections.

The array of proposals is serving only to confuse an already skeptical public, some experts warn.

“People are outraged. They know what they hate. So there is a moral component to it. But they don’t know what they like,” said Harvard University pollster Robert Blendon. “And that’s very difficult to mount a campaign over.”

The nascent grass-roots drive to mobilize public opinion, he said, is not necessarily doomed--particularly if a clear proposal emerges around which people can rally. “But it has to be clear, and you have to be able to put it on a bumper sticker,” Blendon said.

Proponents of change can take heart from the many successful reform efforts in the states, including California and Maine last November. And now there is hardly a state legislature in which campaign finance reform bills are not pending. Moreover, many governors, including those in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Idaho and Nevada, have called for campaign finance reform in their “state of the state” addresses, according to the National Governors’ Assn.

In California, voters by a 61%-39% margin approved an initiative that bans fund-raising more than 12 months before an election. It also imposes a $250 contribution limit for legislative races and $500 for statewide races; these caps double if a candidate agrees to voluntary spending limits.

Tony Miller, California’s former acting secretary of state, called the measure “a truly comprehensive reform package” and said it could become a national prototype if it survives a legal challenge.

In Maine, after about 40 reform bills had been rejected in recent years by the Legislature, voters last November approved an initiative called the Clean Election Act by a 56%-44% margin. It relies on a complicated formula to set lower contribution limits and provide public financing to candidates who agree to such limits.

The Maine model is being promoted aggressively by Citizen Action and its national program director, Tom Andrews, a former Maine congressman who is now helping several members of Congress draft a similar bill to add to the mix in Washington.

Andrews said Citizen Action is taking the long view: If nothing passes in Congress this year, it will try to make campaign finance reform a major issue in 1998 election campaigns.

Others also seem to have written off the chances of congressional action this year. Experts in grass-roots campaigns say reform advocates have repeated a central mistake committed several years ago by those seeking comprehensive health care reform. In both cases, reformers should have ginned up public support around the need for fundamental change before coalescing around any specific proposal, they say.

“The marshaling of political support should have been the central effort--starting on day one--and the policy stuff should have followed,” said Arnold Bennett, a longtime grass-roots activist in liberal causes.

“It’s not a matter of the people listening to the elites, but the elites listening to the people,” added Bennett, who helped the Clinton White House in its belated and unsuccessful drive to drum up public support for health care reform.

Campaign finance reform advocates also harbor few illusions about the daunting challenge ahead. “This issue has always been one of the very toughest--you’re asking the people benefiting from this system to change it,” McBride said.

“What we want to do is give people a way to do something,” she said. “Our goal is to build a citizens army of people who will demand change from this Congress--now.”

Andrews added: “It’s all based on public pressure. People in Congress may not see the light, but if they start feeling the heat, reform will get enacted. So far, serious reform has yet to appear on the radar screen of Congress because American citizens have yet to enter the debate.”