At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" A production of WTVP, Peoria ,Illinois Original Transcription: Kathy Smith & edited by Mark Lasswell Date produced: 1/8/2015 Original Air Date: 1/29/2015 Guests: David Melton ‐ Illinois Campaign for Political Reform Executive Director Dale Risinger ‐ Former State Senator Chris Kaergard ‐ Peoria Journal Star Political Reporter [Intro Music] >>H: And welcome to "At Issue." Thank you for joining us. I am H. Wayne Wilson. This is going to be an intriguing conversation. I am going to introduce three gentlemen, and I am going to sit back and let them chat I have a feeling because we will be talking about the impact of money in politics, what happens with redistricting, and things of that nature. To have that conversation is the political reporter for the "Journal Star." that's Chris Kaergard. Chris, thank you for joining us. >>Kaergard: My pleasure. >>H: Joining us, once again, he comes down every so often from Chicago, we appreciate it, David Melton is here. He is the Executive Director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. Thank for coming down. >>Melton: thank you, H, my pleasure to be here. >>H: Also, Dale Risinger is here. It would be totally appropriate to have a former legislature on the program when we are going to discuss money in politics. Dale, thank you for joining us. A senator from 2003 to 11. >>Risinger: Correct. >>H: With that, I am going to start with David. And this is a real vague question, but money and politics, is there a solution to this? By the way, how much was spent on the governor's race in Illinois? >>Melton: The governor's race, some place in excess of a hundred million dollars. Exactly how much we can tell you a little more in a few months. But roughly, a hundred to $110 million was spent on the governor's race. As one political commentator said in one of our post mortem, seemed like never so much spent to say‐so little. [Laughing] >>H: In television is probably to blame for that. We get the 30‐second sound bites. By the way, mentioning that, you had a chance to participate in some of the debates. You noticed that regardless of what questions we asked the two gubernatorial candidates, they fell into their talking points. >>Kaergard: They had talking points. Right away they almost ignored the questions, and it is to the credit of the journalists that they continued to pursue the original question that was asked, but they were very on message and you did not get much more sadly out of the debate than you were able to get from the 30‐second television spot or repeating same bromides over and over in campaign appearances. >>H: We might as well jump into solutions. I mean is there hope? At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" Page 1 of 7 >>Melton: There actually is hope although the public is highly ‐‐ the public actually believes according to recent polls, 90% of them see money in politics and corrupting effect it is having as a serious issue, but about the same 90% believe there is no solution, no way to get money out of politics. To a certain extent, they are right. You can't get money out of politics. Campaigns are always going to cost money. That's the cost of democracy basically. But there is a solution which is what we need to be able to convince most people of, and they are not aware of it. There are solutions. We are pursuing one what is called small donor matching system which is a way to shift where the money from the campaigns comes from. Basically it is our feeling that if you want politicians to be responsible and have owe their first duty to the general public, then the general public has to step up and essentially help them fund those campaigns, help them pay for that, same way we pay for legislators salaries and other costs of democracy. These systems have actually worked quite well in some places. The most well known example, in New York City, used the system for financings mayoral and city council elections. You get a very high participation rate. The way it works is essentially the candidates once they raise a number of required number of small contributions to prove they are a serious candidate, they can opt into the system. They can get public matching funds to match up to ‐‐ any donation up to $175 from each qualified voter and up to overall cap that is set by commission in New York. It is the amount the commission thinks is necessary to run a competitive campaign which they set in consultation with candidates and others. And the system has worked very well. They have relatively high participation rates of 70 to 80% of the politicians, and it has a beneficial effect on the electoral system. Because, number one, it encourages politicians to instead of spending their time in rooms making endless calls to potential donors, it encourages them to get out on the stump, and talk to actual voters and make these small contributions to combine the politicking with the fund raising in way they now can't because they tend to focus on bigger donors. And it also increases the diversity of the candidate base and makes it ‐‐ reduces barrier to entry so that if there is somebody actually interested in public policy, but they don't have the connections to raise the money for a campaign, they still have a shot at being able to effectively run. And that increases the diversity. It tends to increase the participation rate by voters, both as donors and campaign workers and so one across the city. It is a very interesting system and we are trying to convince some localities here in Illinois to consider it. >>H: Was that part of the issue for you dale, when you ran for state senate, in terms of raising funds you could actually be competitive? >>Risinger: Yeah, when I ran, I was a novice and had no idea how much money you needed to run. We ended up spending over 800,000 on my side of the race than my opponent spent about the same amount of money. At least I won. But, yeah, the political side of what David was talking about is this, though, as soon as you propose something, both parties, be it the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, are going to take a look at it and say does it tip the scale one way or the other in our direction. If it tips it in our direction, we are all for it. If it tips it against us, we are against it. >>Melton: That's a very good point. And that's why people who have proposed these things, I'd say two of the leading intellectuals who have written extensively about this are Larry Lessig at Harvard and Zephyr Teachout who ran for New York governorship who is at Fordham. They have both written a number of books on this. They make the point, they make an argument ‐ Lessig particularly in his book, "Republic Lost" makes extensive argument why this is a bipartisan issue that it should be as important to people regardless of your political persuasion to solve. >>Kaergard: And in this particular circumstance, one thing I think you hinted at but didn't really get into, David, is you have also got the influence of leadership money in all these political races, and we see that in the top tier legislative contests every session. What interests and somewhat concerns me going forward with this into this new legislative session is, as Dale said, both parties tend to look at any new proposal and ask themselves is this better for me or us, is this better for the other guys, and will it tip the balance. We know going into this new legislative session, the incoming governor has already said he has got $20 million set aside in a campaign war chest with donations he and several other ‐
‐ several others with money have made that they have announced they are going to use to help push their legislative agenda. So you have a push toward more parity there between a new incoming republican governor and his interests and the democrats in house and senate leadership. >>Melton: Right it is a still a bad system in my view, whether republican side or democratic side. In each case, somebody has to go to a king maker, whether the governor on the republican side or the legislative leaders on the democratic side, At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" Page 2 of 7 and those people control the flow of money that control whether you can raise enough money to run a campaign if you are in a competitive race, that's the way the system has evolved in Illinois >>Risinger: We haven't talked that much about legislative districts and redistricting. When I was a senator, after I got elected, I was elected in a republican district. It wasn't that our party drew the districts. Whenever the democrats drew the districts, whatever they had left was republican districts. I like to tell people the I was the best senator they ever had. But the truth the matter is, I was in a republican district. As long as I didn't do something really bad, I was going to get re‐elected. If you take a look at these last elections in the senate, there was really only two races, Springfield, I think, and the Quad Cities. Republicans won one. The democrats won one. But a ton of money was poured into those because ‐‐ and they could, and if you take a look at other candidates who didn't have races, they were putting money into that race for their candidate, for their party candidate. >>H: Is that part of the problem, in the case of Illinois, Michael Madigan is not only the speaker of the house, he heads the Democratic Party. You watch the fliers ‐‐ if you take a look at the fliers you get during a political campaign, at the bottom it says who financed it. It is usually, in fact, almost exclusively not the candidate's campaign. It is the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. >>Melton: That's the way the system has evolved here in Illinois. Legislative leaders tend to control, be the king makers who control the money. Now with arepublican governor who is rich, he can act in the same way. >>H: That leads to same way, well, if Mr. Madigan or Mr. Cullerton in the senate helped me as a democrat, how beholding am I to ‐‐ >>Kaergard: Well, and that question relates to whether or not you want a challenger in your next primary and the extent to which you can buck your party as we have seen sometimes with, for example, downstate democrats. It seems as though Speaker Madigan understands that sometimes they have to vote their district more than their party on some issues, and he has been able to make allowance for that, even more since he not only has a majority, but a super majority, and the same for President Cullerton in the senate. >>Risinger: And you know, every individual is different. Leaders can stand one or two renegades. They can't stand a lot. In some ways it is kind of nice for them to have one or two renegades, you know. >>Kaergard: Prove they aren't all powerful. >>Risinger: Exactly. Right. Exactly. And so ‐‐ it's ‐‐ money ‐‐ money really plays a big role in all of this. I go back to my campaign and why I spent so much money. We had two media centers, Peoria and the Quad Cities. The quad cities was just on the edge of mine, and we weren't going to into the quad citing televison stations because most of that advertisement goes over into Iowa anyway. Okey. But my opponent went no that. And when my opponent went into that, I had to go in that and counter it. So you spent a ton of money for ‐‐ and what is it worth? You know, it was questionable. >>Melton: That's true across politics and regardless of party, all politicians feel if my opponent is going to do something, I have to match it. It is this kind of arms race. >>Risinger: Sure. >>H: Well and ‐‐ I'm sorry Chris go ahead. >>Kaergard: I was going to ask in terms of the pilot programs that you brought up before because it seems to me if you have enough successes you can demonstrate in Illinois, you start to approach a critical mass where it becomes a wise idea. How do you do that around the state and get enough buy‐in around the state for that? >>Melton: That's a very good question, and we have ‐‐ our group is working with a coalition of other reform groups trying to do that essentially. We are focused at the moment trying to get a couple demonstration projects, pilot projects At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" Page 3 of 7 off the ground in Evanston and Oak Park, and there is a ballot question that will appear in the City of Chicago ballot at the end of February, common cause has gotten on there, advisory referendum about adopting such a system. We are also working with the League of Women Voters and Citizen Advocacy Center to try and identify other areas outside Chicago, around the state to try to adopt these kinds of things, like a Peoria, or Rockford, or Champaign, and try and set up this kind of system basically to demonstrate that it can work. >>Kaergard: Right, and Certainly that's critical because, particularly in downstate, you have the question of okay, so this has been done in Chicago. What about downstate, how does it work here? There is always that parochial interest that needs to be demonstrated. >>Melton: Absolutely. We recognize that, and we are all for demonstrating, setting it up in other places to prove that this can work. >>Risinger: And there is always the fear of change. >>Melton: There is always the fear of change. >>Risinger: We know what the problems are right now, but it is a system that we know, and if we change, then how is that going to affect. >>Melton: That's the biggest problem with convincing existing incumbents to change the system, they feel, okay, I at least understand how the current system works. I don't know how the new system will work. >>Kaergard: The current system requires a lot of citizen engagement if you really want to know what is going on. Illinois does, I would say a very good job of requiring disclosure, particularly in the lead up to an election, and for substantial campaign donations. But you have to be an engaged citizen to want to see that, and while it used to be that required going and looking at the state board of elections web site and pouring your way through the d2's or the a1's that you have to file within just days of receiving a campaign contribution within 30 days of an election, it has gotten slightly easier now. I personally follow that on twitter. The Chicago tribune has an excellent twitter account that tells you when someone has received a large donation of a thousand dollars or more. But, again, I have to be an engaged news consumer to want to know for lack of a better term who is buying my candidate. >>Melton: You are absolutely right. There is pretty good disclosure requirements here in Illinois. There are pretty good disclosure requirements. But in order to get that information, that's the key to making an effective vehicle for the public. We set up a data base taking the information off of state board of elections data base and trying to make it more user friendly in terms of searches. We set up a database, we have a site called sunshine data base that does that. There is another organization in Montana that runs this information, but they are not ‐‐ usually a lag time in when they get the information posted. So there are places you can find it, for federal elections you can find it through the sunlight foundation. But you do have to be engaged and you have to go search it out. So, yeah, that is a problem, and part of the problem is that because political ‐‐ because there are fewer political reporters these days that are spread more thinly, they don't have the time to dig as deeply into particular issues as they used to. >>Risinger: I found that in the senate while I was at the capitol. Reporters would come and they would interview you and get your comments and so forth, but they didn't have time to do really a background check on everything. So they were basically in their article quoting what you had to say. And whether you were accurate or not, you know, that's what they were reporting. >>Melton: That's the problem, he said, she said. But you don't have judging of the relative credibility of those statements, then the public just sees it as well, just political fight, one side versus the other. >>Risinger: Exactly ‐‐ At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" Page 4 of 7 >>Kaergard: And the consequences to these campaign donations last far beyond the election and who ends up winning a tier one race or denying somebody a super majority or anything else. A campaign donation for four year senate term from a large special interest may not come into play until there is just to pick something at random, one of the electric companies looking for a change in the rates, their ability to do something with smart grid technology, something like that where there is legislation being carried three years after a race. >>Melton: Right. With all due respect to the U.S. Supreme Court, I think they are a little either naive or disingenuous when they say only thing that matters is quid pro quo kind of arrangement. Most politicians are honest people. They are not willing to let their vote be bought. But what the money does buy is access. >>Risinger: Yeah, I agree with that totally. >>H: We have been talking about money and disclosure and things. You broached this, Dale, the question of redistricting. And every time we see an effort to put redistricting on the ballot, someone, a politician comes out and says, no we have to knock that off the ballot. Is there any hope of redistricting getting back on the ballot? >>Risinger: Well I think there is hope for it, and I this he that's one of the things we have to do. And I think ‐‐ because what it does, it really makes your politician then responsive to the voters. If you are in a district that is heavy democrat or heavy republican, and your only concern is that you are going to get another person of your party in the primary running against you and even then it is not a real problem unless the party supports that person. Then you are not as responsive to the voters as you would be otherwise. And after all, that's why we send people to Springfield to be responsive to the people and what the people's needs are. >>Melton: I would agree with that. Dale is right. And there is, there was an effort to try and reform, redistricting process here in Illinois. That's continuing. I think that coalition that we are part of as well as looking whether they should try in 2016 or 2018. There will be another attempt to amend the Illinois constitution to reform and come up with more rationale redistricting and more effective redistricting process to take it out of the hands of the politicians. You should have the voters deciding what their districts are, deciding who their politicians are. Not the politicians deciding who the voters are. >>Kaergard: Though there are times when political redistricting doesn't have to be deeply partisan and divisive process. I would point locally to Peoria County which did actively involve republican members of the county board, democratic members of the county board in a process that passed unanimously. >>Melton: It does not have to be and under the Illinois constitution it's not suppose to be. But the problem is the drafters of the 1970 constitution were not cynical enough about this. >>Kaergard: Right. That the rare good ‐‐ >>Risinger: I honestly believe the farther away, the congressmen aren't as close to the people as the state senators are, and they are not as close to the people as your local government is. So the county representatives, even though they are partisan, they are more in tune to the people of the area. And whenever I say that, I am going to get a lot of flack because we have our congressman coming back every weekend and being involved, and they are involved. But still‐‐ >>H: This district is so big. >>Risinger: The people themselves have a harder time staying connected to somebody who's out in Washington doing work or somebody in Springfield doing versus somebody working locally. >>Kaergard: Part of that is the way these districts are drawn. This last time for the congressional district was, I think I described it when I wrote about it in a column and slightly less abominable than the prior ten years, and the 17th District which incorporates Peoria, is the prime example of that. The previous 17th ran all the way down to St. Louis out to Decatur, through an alleyway in Springfield. It was horrific. It is slightly more compact, but it still forms a sea that runs At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" Page 5 of 7 from Rockford through the Quad Cities into Peoria. It is very difficult for someone to be close to their member of congress who does come back every weekend or almost every weekend but has to cover three different media markets and 150 miles north‐south, and whatever east‐west of territory. >>Melton: yeah. It's not‐‐ I mean there are lots of horror stories about redistricting. Cindy Canary and Kent Redfield who is a emeritus professor at the U of I on politics just wrote a paper which I think has been published in the Paul Simon Institute for Southern Illinois University, and also the change coalition has published it recounting the history of redistricting and some of the war stories from redistricting in Illinois. >>H: For the record, Cindy Canary used to be with ‐‐ >>Melton: Used to have my position before they downgraded to me. >>Risinger: We used to have a humorous conversation in the senate with my colleagues that were from Chicago who talked about how they campaigned handing out fliers at the train station, and, you know, their district is very compact because they have all their people right there versus me out walking door to door in all those counties and some of them are spread out, you know farm areas. >>Kaergard: Hard to go door to door in stark county. >>H: Only 6,000 people in the county. Regarding money, how difficult was it? What kind of time did you have to spend raising funds to run a race as opposed to meeting people in stark county? >>Risinger: Well, you know, it was interesting whenever ‐‐ I wasn't a young chicken when I ran, and people said, well, aren't you tired because I worked every day hard at it, and I said well, I will be tired after the election, not now. But, you know, the candidate has to get out and meet the people. So he is out there meeting the people. But at the same time, somebody is driving you around. That's why you have a driver. Somebody is driving you around of you are on the phone talking to people, saying, hey, we ‐‐ this is what I am going to do. This is what I am for, all those kinds of things. Please support me. >>H: So the Illinois campaign to have this public financing, however it works out is a way to help alleviate that issue? >>Melton: Yes. That is part of the goal of the system is right now, particularly the higher up you go in terms of local to national offices, bigger the problem becomes. Members of congress now there are interesting stories in Larry Lessig's book about, he lectures about this, about the amount of time that incoming ‐‐ a new congressman is told during their orientation briefing to expect to spend between 40 and 60% of their time on the phone raising money. That's 40, 60 percent of the time they should be spending on substantive policy issues. >>H: I suppose you could say it is a good thing someone like a Bruce Rauner had all sorts of money he could spend more time talking to people as opposed to raising funds. >>Melton: In that respect, it is. >>H: I don't know that's good! [Laughing] so real quickly, there are no easy solutions, but I want to quickly ask you, in 15 seconds apiece, the question of term limits. Dale? >>Risinger: Well, I think term limits are a good thing if they are far enough out. You don't ‐‐ we have tremendous staff in Springfield and I am sure they do in congress and every where else. But we had tremendous staff. If you make it short, if you made it the eight years Rauner said, I think the staff would be running things. I think it needs to be at least 15 years. >>Melton: I agree with the problem Dale pointed out. I feel like we already have term limits. They are called elections. If we make that system work properly, the term limit question becomes moot. We don't need them. At Issue #2717 "Political Campaigns & Money" Page 6 of 7 >>Kaergard: I very much agree with that I would argue institutional memory is a great thing. People point to someone like Mike Madigan and say that he has been there too long and controls too much. His counterpart is David Leitch, longest serving republican member of the house who has also phenomenal institutional memory and is able to say, we tried this 20 years ago, here were the pitfalls. >>H: I might suggest as we close out this conversation, maybe term limits on the general legislature is not a good idea, but maybe term limits for leadership in the legislature might be something to look at. >>Melton: That might be something worth looking at. >>H: With that, I hate to cut you off. This has been a wonderful conversation. We have run out of time. Chris Kaergard of the "Journal Star," Dale Risinger, senator from 2003 to 2011. Thank you so much for joining us. And from Chicago, Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, www.ilcampaign.org. David melton. Thank you so much. >>Melton: Thank you so much. >>H: We thank you for joining us on this conversation we will be back next week with another edition of "At Issue." 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