The Independent View: NY Campaign Finance Forum

Last night I attended a forum on Campaign Finance Reform in New York. It was moderated by my state Senator, Liz Krueger (28th SD, Manhattan), the ranking Democratic member of the state Senate Finance Committee. The forum’s aim was to discuss the importance of fixing the broken campaign finance system, the effort to reform it, and the practical efforts this issue has on the lives of all New Yorkers.

The panel included:

Liz Kennedy, Esq. - the counsel for Demos, who works on money in politics, voter rights, and corporate accountability.

J. Adam Skaggs, Esq. - The Senior Council at The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, who works for the Democracy program on issues related to money in politics, judicial independence, and voting rights.

Jaron Benjamin – Executive Director, Metropolitan Council on Housing & Campaign Coordinator, Real Rent Reform,

And after the Q and A:

Jesse Laymon – Citizen Action of New York, the Downstate Campaign Manager, managing the grassroots efforts to support Fair Elections for New York.

First, Liz Kennedy, discussed the Demos’s report “Billion-Dollar Democracy”.

The first presidential campaign cycle since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling lived up to its hype, breaking previous records for total spending and exaggerating the undue electoral power of wealthy individuals and special interests to the point of awakening unprecedented public focus on the failings of our campaign finance system.
This report offers a comprehensive analysis of the fundraising and spending in federal races in the 2012 elections. The primary goal is to provide a quantitative analysis to describe tangibly what the vast majority of Americans already understand: political power in America is concentrated in the hands of an elite fraction of the populace—threatening the very concept of government of, by, and for the people.

Some of the interesting findings included:

Wealthy Donors Over Average Citizens
Newly minted Super PACs dominated outside spending reported to the FEC, aggregating huge sums from millionaires and billionaires.

• The top 32 Super PAC donors, giving an average of $9.9 million each, matched the $313.0 million that President Obama and Mitt Romney raised from all of their small donors combined—that’s at least 3.7 million people giving less than $200.

• Nearly 60% of Super PAC funding came from just 159 donors contributing at least $1 million. More than 93% of the money Super PACs raised came in contributions of at least $10,000—from just 3,318 donors, or the equivalent of 0.0011% of the U.S. population.

• It would take 322,000 average-earning American families giving an equivalent share of their net worth to match the Adelsons’ $91.8 million in Super PAC contributions.

• Super PACs accounted for more than 60% of outside spending reported to the FEC.

• For the 2012 cycle, Super PACs received more than 70% of their funds from individuals, and a significant percentage (12%) from for-profit businesses.

Fundraising for candidate campaigns was also dominated by an elite donor class and special interests.

• Candidates for both House and Senate raised the majority of their funds from gifts of $1,000 or more; and 40% of all contributions to Senate candidates came from donors giving at least $2,500, from just 0.02% of the American population.

• In the 2012 election cycle, 83.9% of House candidates and 66.7% of Senate candidates who outspent their general election opponents won their elections.

• Winning House candidates out raised major opponents by 108%, winning Senate candidates by 35%.

Special Interests Over the Public Interest
Super PACs raised a significant portion of their funds from business interests.

• For-profits corporations were the second largest donors to Super PACs accounting for 12% of all contributions.

• Businesses provided a significant portion of the funds for some of the most active super PACs, including 18.0% of Restore Our Future’s funds and 52.7% of Freedomworks for America’s funds.

Candidates, and especially winning candidates, raised a significant portion of their funds from political action committees (PACs).

• Winners of federal House races raised on average 40% of their funds from PACs versus 19.9% raised by major opponents.

• Winners of Senate races raised on average 15.9% of their funds from PACs versus 8.3% for losers.

Incumbents Over Challengers & Grassroots Candidates
• In 2012 95.2% of incumbent senators and 91.2% of incumbent representatives who ran for office won re-election.

• In the 2012 cycle, incumbent representatives out raised major challengers $1,732,000 to $319,000, for an incredible 443% advantage. Senate incumbents out raised major challengers $7.02 million to $1.69 million, for a slightly smaller 316% advantage.

• Challengers depended upon self-financing for more than 20% of their funds, showing that it’s important to be wealthy to run against an incumbent in our big-money system.

Secret Spenders Over Voters Seeking Accountability
Non-profit groups, which before 2010 were not allowed to directly spend on elections, spent big while hiding the identity of their donors.

• Of outside spending reported to the FEC, 31% was “secret spending,” coming from organizations that are not required to disclose the original sources of their funds.

• Much of the spending by these non-profit groups went unreported as it fell outside a certain window of time before the elections. Further analysis shows that dark money groups accounted 58% of funds spent by outside groups on presidential television ads.

Then, Skaggs explained the difference between the state and New York City current laws and how the different reforms were meet constitutional review.

Then, Jaron’s talk about the influence of the Real Estate industry in New York Politics. Their contributions far outnumbered all other interests, affecting housing polices like affordable housing and rent control.

One way they currently get around contribution limits, they can create a LLC for each building they own. Then they can contribute the maximum many times over. Some control over a 1,000 buildings.

And last was Jesse explaining the different ways the Take Action campaign was using social networking to lobby, get petitions signed, and using Lobby Day rallies around the state.

But campaign finance reform is only the middle leg of a three legged stool. Before you can get campaign funds, you need to be a candidate. Some of the charges last week were for bribing county party chairman to get on their party ballot line. The other leg is elected officials taking bribes from the real estate interest to pass laws favorable to them.

How would you solve this three legged stool of money in politics?