Kyle McCarty
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Money in politics is a fundamental problem with American elections, a panel of campaign finance reform experts said in a widely attended forum this past Monday in Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre.
The speakers agreed that the way campaigns are funded has caused elected representatives to become beholden to a small subset of wealthy donors, rather than their constituents. The panelists called for citizen engagement and grassroots activism to reform the current system.
Included on the panel were former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith, Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig and Citizens Congress 2014 director William Ostrander. Political science assistant professor Michael Latner moderated the talk.
The event was co-sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Citizens Congress 2014, a group that seeks to unite those interested in campaign finance reform. The group held a series of events this week to create legislative ideas at the Cliffs Resort in Pismo Beach.
Lessig started the forum, making points that would be echoed throughout the night.
“Our government has failed, and I hope you believe money in politics is a core reason for that failure,” Lessig said.
Lessig said the time members of Congress spend soliciting donations has greatly increased since Congress became more polarized in the mid-1990s.
“As that competition gets more and more fierce, we move into the era of perpetual campaigns,” Lessig said. “It used to be there was a time for governing and a time for campaigning. There is no time for governing anymore.”
Lessig said he was not worried about the amount of money in politics, but rather the imbalance of where that money comes from. He said approximately 0.05 percent of the U.S. population make up the relevant funders of political campaigns.
Lessig has started a super political action committee (PAC) called Mayday PAC, which is raising money to fund the campaigns of congressmen who will support campaign finance reform. So far, the organization has raised $1 million through Kickstarter-style crowdfunding, which will be matched by wealthy donors.
Potter, who counseled with Stephen Colbert’s super PAC, criticized the Supreme Court and its decisions in cases such as Citizens United, which allows corporations unlimited spending on political issues. Citizens United paved the way for the creation of super PACs.
“The court redefined the justification for allowing regulation of money in elections to be the prevention of actual quid-pro-quo corruption. Effectively, bribery. Which is, of course, already illegal,” Potter said. “What this means is that the majority of the court thinks that preventing the appearance of corruption, by regulating the sources and amounts of money in federal elections, violates the constitution.”
Potter demonstrated the increased time spent campaigning at the presidential level by comparing Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign with Barack Obama’s. Reagan attended nine fundraising events, none of which were for his own campaign, since his race was publicly funded. Obama attended 222 fundraising events.
Smith, who reported on the civil rights movement, called for citizens to return to the kind of political engagement he saw in the ’60s and ’70s.
“We had a very active and engaged middle class in America,” Smith said. “People all across this country on issue after issue were involved in making sure that government was responsive to them.”
The speakers agreed campaign finance reform would have to improve before meaningful reform in other areas, such as the environment, could take place.
“Every single one of those issues is touched by, and affected by, and blocked by, money in politics,” Smith said.
When talking about solutions, Ostrander asked audience members to begin referring to government as “our government” rather than “the government,” in order to restore a sense of ownership among citizens.
Ostrander said the movement needed a “national galvanizing event,” such as the Million Man March in 1995.
“Physical actions capture the imagination and attention of others,” Ostrander said.