We know the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision has unleashed a torrent of undisclosed corporate and union spending at the federal level. It overturned a century of laws and decades of legal precedent. Common Cause has decided to stand up and take action! Common Cause has joined forces with a number of other organizations to build awareness and educate citizens across the country about the amounts of money corporations are emptying out of their own pockets to to steal our democracy. The goal of this new coalition is to strengthen the voice of the people and prepare to battle these corporations to save our democracy.
So far, we have filed a complaint with the Department of Justice asking for an investigation of Justices Thomas and Scalia for attending a strategy session hosted by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch in Rancho Mirage, California, at the same time the Court was considering the case of Citizens United v. FEC in 2008.
On January 30, 2011, Common Cause, along with over 30 organizations including the California Nurses Association, Courage Campaign, California Labor Federation, Greenpeace, held a peaceful public demonstration to "Uncloak the Kochs" and turned out 1,500 protesters to Rancho Mirage, CA for the Koch Brothers annual meeting. This event in CA had legs - and people all over the country are starting to following the Koch Brothers money trail. From Wisconsin to Nebraska, people are starting to wake up to special interests stealing our elections.
In Los Angeles, we're preemptively stopping the Koch Brothers and other special interests from pushing money into our elections. We are working to strengthen campaign finance laws to keep special interest money at bay with our support of Measure H, which will do two things:
1. Lift the cap on the public finance trust to create a more robust public financing system.
2. Ban prospective private companies with pending bids on city contracts from making campaign contributions.
We are pleased to be standing with LA City Council President Eric Garcetti, City Council members Tom LaBonge, Paul Koretz, Paul Krekorian, Jose Huizar, Bill Rosendahl, the California Clean Money Campaign, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, the William C. Velazquez Institute and others to pass Measure H on March 8.
All politics is local and we believe that! Ifnot, then when? When Los Angeles succeeds in passing Measure H, we will send an important message that we are taking back our democracy. It does not belong to We the special, well-financed interests. Our democracy belongs to We the People.
One of the best ways I have found to sort out convoluted or misleading ballot initiatives is simply to look up who gave the most money to each side, since the vast majority of them are proxy battles for some powerful interest or another. Rare is the proposition that is a truly grassroots nonpartisan effort, and even those by definition create winners and losers when they pass.
So why not take disclosure laws to the next level, and print a short list of the major contributors to candidates and initiatives right underneath the rest of the voter info on the state voting guide? it wouldn't add more than a couple pages at best, and would be a lot more salient information than the argument/rebuttal section, invariably done by some group calling themselves Californians for Truth, Goodness, Tax Fairness and Free Ponies.
Putting it online in some searchable database is nice, but the media doesn't cover it, and most citizens don't have the goddamned time to search through all that stuff. They've got jobs to do. Putting a brief summary of who is behind each campaign would give the average busy voter some idea of what's being fought over and who the sides are, and it would undermine the effectiveness of the massive corporate and special interest spending on initiative campaigns.
A few members of California’s congressional delegation played leading roles today in passing the most sweeping reforms in our campaign finance system since the post-Watergate era through the House Administration committee. The bill could head for a full vote in the House as soon as next week, which would give the rest of our delegation a similar chance to show they are hearing voters’ call for change and are getting serious about reform.
Lofgren joined Rep. Susan Davis in passing the Fair Elections Now Act. Fair Elections would let members of Congress focus on their constituents instead of raising money from lobbyists or other special interests. Candidates would raise donations of $100 or less from their home state, which would be matched on a four-to-one basis from a fair elections fund. The system is funded by the sale of broadcast spectrum and would not cost taxpayers a dime.
Candidates for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) have reported fundraising numbers for the period ending March 17th - and the need for reform is evident. Unlike other local races in the City (where contributions are capped at $500), there are no limits for giving to a DCCC candidate. Scott Wiener, Debra Walker and Rafael Mandelman are running simultaneous races for DCCC in June and Supervisor in November - and all three have exploited this obvious loophole. Other candidates have raised huge sums - with the Firefighters Union giving $10,000 to each of its members running. Nowhere else in California must candidates for DCCC raise this money - for a job that pays nothing, and whose only power is making Democratic Party endorsements. Most counties elect their DCCC by Supervisor district (rather than Assembly District), which may be a good start. But what's really needed are campaign contribution limits - and it's unclear which entity could do that. With the upcoming State Party Convention in Los Angeles this weekend, now is an ideal time to be talking about such reform.
The Sunlight Foundation launched a new web site, Pass223.com, to harness the distributed power of the Internet to pressure the Senate into increasing disclosure of campaign contributions by passing a bill - S. 223, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act - requiring senators to file their contribution reports electronically.
We need your help to pass this bill. Please follow the link to Pass223.com and call your senators to find out where they stand on S. 223. The site has full instructions on who your senators are, how to call, what to say, and how to report back to us. For more detail on the bill, keep reading.
As we head into e-board (and await Brian's updates), here's a few things I've noticed around the Web-o-sphere:
• It's a few days old, but I should mention that AB583, Loni Hancock's Clean Money bill for California elections, was amended. The latest is that it will be placed on the June 2010 ballot to enact a pilot program that would provide voluntary public financing in the 2014 Secretary of State's race. The original plan was to make the 2010 Governor's race clean money, along with a selected Assembly and Senate race. While shifting this to the lower-cost Secretary of State's race increases chances of passage, it basically puts off any chance at clean money for another four years. So it's bittersweet, to me.
• This Alex Kozinski situation has gotten a lot of noise on political blogs - I even linked it up in quick hits. Kozinski, the chief judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, was presumably caught with pornographic materials he stored on a public website, and now he's offering himself up for investigation. But the truth might be more sinister. As Lawrence Lessig explains, Kozinski may have been the victim of a smear campaign by a lone nut who accessed material that was private but unsecure. Worth a read.
• At the moment there are ten initiatives which have qualified for the November ballot; the latest would float $5 billion in bonds to subsidize purchases of clean-energy vehicles and research into renewables. I'm a bit worried that such a long ballot with an what will probably be record turnout is going to bring lots and lots of low-information voters to the polls making decisions on the state's future armed with little in the way of facts. In other words, just another California election.
• On Tuesday, all couples in the state will be permitted to marry regardless of gender. In anticipation, the New York Times ran an interesting article about marriage and gender relationships. Very interesting stuff.
• Fabian Nuñez endorsed Kevin Johnson in his runoff race for Sacramento Mayor. That race will happen in November. No word on Johnson's position on the allegations that refs gave the 2002 Western Conference Finals to the Lakers over the Kings, which may be a salient issue in Sac-town.
This article by Frank Russo got me pretty depressed about the state of California politics.
There's something amiss in the state of Sacramento-and it has something to do with the state's banking and lending institutions and the stacking of committees that deal with them with legislators that are either weak kneed or just a bit overfriendly with the industry that they should be protecting us from.
What else is new?
Well, this afternoon, the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance, and Insurance, Chaired by Senator Michael Machado of Stockton, will be hearing two bills that have been gutted down behind a closed door process such that today's public proceedings on them may amount to little more than a sham [...]
It's difficult enough to get bills passed through the Assembly Banking Committee and the Assembly floor when going up against the behemoth banking industry which has a lot of spare change to throw around in legislative races and many high paid lobbyists scurrying about the Capitol.
It looks like AB 69 by Assemblymember Ted Lieu, originally a great bill, has been amended since it left the Assembly-and before today's hearing-such that the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to protecting homeownership and family wealth by working to eliminate abusive financial practices, initially listed in support, has withdrawn that position.
Read the whole thing. The bottom line is that in this recent primary election special interest groups spent nearly $10 million, and a good bulk of them were business interests who are now playing inside Democratic primaries in traditionally liberal areas to sell low-information voters a bill of goods. This doesn't always work, but it works just enough to frustrate progress in Sacramento.
Lesson 3: The business lobby can influence Democratic politics, even in a largely minority district.
Former Assemblyman Rod Wright, a moderate, defeated liberal Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally -- reversing the pattern of leftist victories -- in a South Los Angeles Senate district after business donors invested roughly $1 million in Wright's campaign.
"Business has tended to stay out of black politics," says Sragow, who advises the business lobby. "But some black politicians ask, 'Why? We're always out looking for economic development in our districts.'
"The business community has decided it can't get a Republican Legislature, so it will play in districts where there's a Democratic candidate it can work with."
A major Democratic strategist has all but said that Don Perata shepherded along the candidacy of Rod Wright, and actually put it in terms that come very close to illegal coordination (note "a flurry of record spending by closely-aligned IE groups focusing all of their attention and ammo in one, concerted direction.")
This is the game. IE's are increasingly the only way to reach the electorate, as the low-dollar revolution has pretty much not reached the Golden State. So the Chamber of Commerce and industry groups fill the pockets of the politicians who, once elected, feel obligated to repay them. The US Constitution allows the right for anyone to petition their government for redress of grievances; outlawing lobbyists or the ability of merchants to consult their politicians is not tenable. What is tenable is to either create a parallel public financing system by employing the residents of the state to pay attention to local politics enough to fund progressive-minded candidates, or to bring clean money to California, where it's arguably needed more than anywhere else, and end the pernicious influence of special interests in state elections. Otherwise, you get a steady parade of mortgage relief bills that offer no relief.
I think the results of yesterday's primaries had some good news and some bad, and also brought to light the depressing realities of California politics.
• Turnout was horrendous. These numbers will go up, but with all precincts reporting we're looking at 22% turnout, the lowest in recent memory, far lower than 2006 and 2004. There still is not much of a real political culture in California with respect to state politics, and I think that's something we have to recognize. I saw a lot of activism and citizen-led activity leading up to these primaries which made me somewhat hopeful, but it did not translate at the ballot box. Of course, with so many uncontested primaries there was little at stake. But as a measure of intensity of the electorate, there wasn't much.
• IE campaigns win elections. The outsized influence of IE campaigns is something we have to understand and work with. Even the races where, as Robert said, progressives won in state legislature primaries, there were in general a lot of IEs, funded mostly by labor, on their behalf. Rod Wright basically bought a seat in SD-25, with well over a million dollars of independent expenditures funded mostly by tobacco and business interests. And the size of Bob Blumenfield's victory in AD-40 suggests the importance of IEs. There isn't going to be a lot of appetite for reforming this from a set of state legislators who have IEs to thank for their positions in office. Clean money elections is obviously the killer app, and I'm glad Loni Hancock will be in the State Senate to carry the bill, but it's pretty depressing how easily these seats can be bought, particularly in low-turnout primaries where almost nobodyis paying attention.
• Measuring Congressional intensity. Looking at turnout numbers in the primaries isn't really a great measure of how the candidates will do in the general elections, but it's a good benchmark of base support. Among the winners were Bill Durston (within 8,000 votes of Dan Lungren) and Charlie Brown (just nipped by Tom McClintock in raw votes, but he got 42,000-plus out to vote for him in one of the highest-turnout elections anywhere). Among the losers? Well, pretty much everyone else. But Nick Leibham can't be happy about his totals, and he has a MAJOR activist support problem in the 50th district that he has to recognize and fix. Russ Warner did sort of in the middle, well enough but with the need for improvement. Considering she faced two challengers, Julie Bornstein didn't do too badly either.
• Incumbency can be defeated, but it's tough. Carole Migden is something like the first incumbent to be beaten in a primary in California in a dozen years. Mervyn Dymally was a sitting Assemblyman and something of a legendary figure so I'll call him a sort-of beaten incumbent. But it took lots of money to unseat these two and they had their share of political scandal. Otherwise, it's just real hard to get your message out.
• PDA is less than worthless. I love and respect my friends in Progressive Democrats of America for their advocacy of progressive causes. As an electoral engine, they are simply not a legitimate organization. Only Cheryl Ede can hold her head up high as a PDA-backed candidate, and honestly I think that had more to do with Leibham than her. Mary Pallant had PDA backing, more resources than the other two candidates in the race, and was thrashed by someone who suspended her candidacy and came back just weeks before the vote. It takes more than screaming about the system and emailing frantically back and forth and writing resolutions to build a power base, and PDA needs to learn in a hurry.
• The legislative battlegrounds. I'm very excited by Manuel Perez' win in AD-80, where he was the only candidate to show strength in all parts of the district (he actually finished a close second in both Riverside and Imperial Counties). He has a lot of momentum going into November against Gary Jeandron, the former sheriff of Palm Springs. And Democrats got about 5,000 more votes than Republicans in that seat. If Perez can unify the factions, he wins. AD-78 looks good, too. Marty Block squeaked out a win, and overall Democrats got over 8,000 more votes. Joan Buchanan did well in AD-15 and has a decent base of support - this will be a close race against Abram Wilson. I like what Alyson Huber did in AD-10, getting more votes than anyone on the ballot, Republican or Democratic. In AD-26, John Eisenhut, a farmer, got almost as many votes in his unopposed primary as Republican Bill Berryhill did in his. Ferial Masry is a longshot in AD-37, but the Democratic vote was within 5,000 of Republican Audra Strickland's total. Those are the 6 races that get us to 2/3.
In the State Senate, we'll see what becomes of the Morris write-in. But the good news was in SD-19, where Hannah-Beth Jackson got 47,000-plus votes to Tony Strickland's 50,000-plus. That's relative parity, and a good place to be. Because of the coattails Barack Obama will bring, I don't mind some deficit between Democratic and Republican numbers in the primary, because there will be lots and lots of new voters coming out to support the nominee in the fall who will pull the lever for downticket candidates.
That's what I've got for now, I'm sure we'll all be poring over the numbers in the days to come.
Campaign finance reform has been bubbling as an issue for a number of years. And any time someone manages even a small step forward, you know you're going to have the big money corporations, the Club for Growth, and all other manner of rich righties lining up to defend their right to freely spend their money on as much questionable propaganda as they can muster. Normally the battle lines are pretty clear on this, ideologically speaking. That is, of course, unless you subscribe to Sen. Carole Migden's particular brand of "progressivism".
After the Fair Political Practices Commission barred her from accessing more than $640,000 from an old campaign account because, well...she didn't transfer it out of her Assembly campaign account before she left the Assembly (whoops), she sued to get it back. Free political speech, her argument goes, trumps playing by the rules.
And today, a District Court judge agreed. U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Brennan granted a temporary injunction against the FPPC's locking of the account:
The Fair Political Practices Commission is proposing new disclosure laws for travel expenses for legislators, which are obviously in response to revelations about Fabian Nuñez' lavish globetrotting. The regulations would require public proof that all activities had a legitimate government purpose, before the fact rather than after it comes out in the media.
Under a proposal made Monday by the state's ethics watchdog, detailed public disclosure of who benefited from such spending would be required of state officeholders, if given final approval next month. In addition, certain nonprofit groups involved in political campaigns would be forced to reveal their donors under a separate proposal by the Fair Political Practices Commission [...]
Under the new proposal, politicians and candidates would have to publicly list the gift recipients by name and the nature of the gift. They also would have to provide the dates of meals, the number of people at a meal and whether the diners included the politician's family or staff.
For out-of-state travel, politicians would have to disclose the dates and destination of travel and whether expenditures covered family and staff.
In all of these categories, the reports "shall state facts sufficient to demonstrate the political, legislative, or governmental purpose of the expenditure."
The rule also would require campaign account treasurers to make available to the commission, but not necessarily to the public, the names of all people who benefited from travel and meal expenditures.
The proposal was met favorably by the Nuñez camp as a way to improve accountability and increase sunshine. I can't see anyone, even the non-profits, finding this disagreeable unless they want to closely guard their own personal secrets. This is a common-sense measure to ensure taxpayers that their good name - and their money - is being used legitimately and to the benefit of the state.
There's a simple solution to all of this. When politicians want to use their influence to raise money for charity, the money should go directly to the charity. They get the credit, the charity gets their money, everyone's happy. But that's not what's happening, and too many questions are being raised about just what the politicians are doing with the money.
The chairman of California's political watchdog agency says the growing practice of politicians soliciting millions for pet causes apparently is being abused for self-serving gain and needs to be reined in.
"If I could, with the stroke of a pen, I'd do away with it," said Ross Johnson, chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission.
"It's a huge end run around the contribution limits that the people of California voted for" in Proposition 34 seven years ago, he said.
Payments "at the behest of" should clearly be abolished. There's absolutely no reason for them. If you want to look like a good politician by raising money for charity, let the charity have it directly. Otherwise, you get stuff like this.
More than $5 million has been donated at politicians' request both this year and last - far more than any year since disclosure began nearly a decade ago.
The money is meant for public benefit and cannot be used for campaigning, but some has been spent in ways that enhance a politician's image, such as for billboards or television ads.
Days before a fiercely contested Democratic primary last year, for example, John Garamendi solicited $300,000 in public-benefit funds for a TV advertisement in which he touted his performance as insurance commissioner without specifically asking voters to support him in his bid for lieutenant governor, a post he ultimately won.
(This video can't be good. It's overly sensationalist, and more than a bit trashy. But still, the underlying question remains at a time when such questions could be disastrous for the term limits initiative. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
"There's not too big a difference," Nuñez told Vogel, "between how I live and how most middle-class people live."
Hands down, it's the quote of the year.
I'm not sure what middle-class people Nuñez is talking about, but I'm worried that he's spending entirely too much time with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Could the speaker be talking about Brentwood's middle-class?
That's the kind of quote that haunts people throughout their political career. And Lopez connects it to fears of buying access that should worry all of us, especially in light of the special session.
It's the democracy we've all been waiting for in Sacramento. Gulfstreams, Louis Vuitton office supplies and nose-thumbing responses to inquiring constituents.
Given Nuñez's refusal to explain the specific purpose of his travels, Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is biting her nails, hoping Nuñez wasn't sampling fine wine with players who have pumped $5.3 million into the "Friends of Fabian Nuñez" campaign kitty.
"The first question that comes to mind is whether the health insurance industry was sponsoring the speaker's lavish trips, as he's now debating the future of the health market in California," Balber said.
She notes that Nuñez's travel fund has received $136,000 from health insurers and their lobbyists. And Nuñez is working with Schwarzenegger ($719,000 and counting from health insurers and their lobbies) on a health insurance reform bill that would require every Californian to buy coverage, but wouldn't require insurers to cap the cost.
Certainly the insurers would love to raise a fine bottle of red to the passage of such a bill, and Nuñez has been known to pop the cork on crushed grapes that run as high as $224 a bottle.
I think we have to look at the root causes of something like this. I believe it directly comes out of a static Democratic Party, with its extreme gerrymandering and zealous antipathy to primaries. Matt Stoller has an incredible post today about the broken market for Democratic primaries, and I think it's directly relatable to what we're seeing in California. On the flip...
One thing leaped out at me when reading Frank Russo's roundup of the bills that passed through the state legislature yesterday. That is that AB1430, a plan that will completely gut local campaign-finance reform laws, passed through the State Sente after a unanimous vote in the Assembly earlier this year. All 15 Republican Senators joined 12 Democratic Senators to support the bill, giving it the bare minimum of 27 votes it needed to pass. Bill Cavala tried to mount a defense of the bill in July by saying it's an attempt to break municipal monopolies and foster competition locally. Right, because it's always the case that challengers can outraise incumbents, ay? Sadly, both state parties backed this measure because they both want to MAINTAIN their fiefdoms in their respective regions without allowing localities to manage their elections their own way. Anytime you hear a politician argue for less restrictions on campaign money, ask yourself if they're doing this to aid their opponents. The answer is usually no. From the Chronicle editorial:
Let's be clear: This bill deals with one very specific type of "communication" -- an expenditure on behalf of a candidate, in collaboration with the campaign itself. These are direct political contributions. If local governments want to limit them -- as the Legislature has done for state races -- they should have a right to do so.
Now, if the governor signs the bill, they won't. And that will probably help Democrats more than Republicans, particularly with regard to labor. Doesn't make it right, however.
Even though Loni Hancock's Clean Money bill, allowing for a pilot program to attempt public financing for state elections, was turned into a two-year bill, meaning it won't be eligible for passage until 2008, I was under the impression that campaign finance reform was making some progress in the state legislature. And while this shocker legislation is more about the state exerting control on local municipalities more than anything else, it certainly puts a damper on public financing efforts, as it would virtually eliminate any local limits on contributions.
This is an absolutely enormous development. Clean Money got kind of lost in the shuffle at last weekend's CDP Convention, but Loni Hancock's AB 583 has been quietly making its way through the Assembly. It cleared the Assembly Elections Committee, and yesterday there was a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which was favorable. And now, the Senate President pro Tem has signed on to be a co-author. Considering that the CDP wouldn't take a position on Clean Money just a year ago, this is historic news. Susan Lerner writes in an email to supporters:
I want you to be among the first to hear the exciting news: California Senate President pro Tem Don Perata just became a co-author of AB 583, the Clean Money bill!
The President pro Tem joins an ever-growing list of Legislators who are co-authors of AB 583, the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act. Clean Money supporters in Senator Perata's Oakland district and throughout California should be proud because it was your calls, letters, and petitions that convinced him to sign on as a active Clean Money supporter.
