Transcripts For CSPAN Washington This Week 20160313 : vimars

The other thing you need to look at in that respect is the National Committees have high limits compared to state Party Committees. That doesnt mean we dont raise low dollar money. The fact is it costs a lot of money to raise low dollar money and money that could come in the door from high dollar contractors could be used to build low dollar fundraising programs and the state funding state parties dont have the resources to do that just now. Increasing or eliminating limits could have a positive effect on state parties. A couple of other points i will make and one thing you may be wondering is why is the guy from the National Party committee here . Two reasons i think are important for the discussion. The Party Committees are very well integrated. The system is not just a matter of National Parties, state parties and local Party Committees. We all need to be strengthened but the regulations in place have drawn fissures between the Different Levels of Party Committees. For instance, as mentioned in the paper, National Party Committee Officers can not even raise money for state accounts and state candidates. The chairman of the Republican National committee is banned by federal law from raising a single dollar for a state candidate for local candidate or state Party Committee to help state and local candidates. Measures such as rolling back those kinds of restrictions could help the state parties. The other reason i think im here from a National Party perspective is we are set up a little differently on the republican side. I worked with state parties all day, every day. We dont have a separate state parties association so i get questions from state parties all the time and as i read this paper, one of the things that struck me is how much of what i was reading was reflect in the kind of questions i get an sentiments i hear from folks on the ground every day and the frustration and confusion. I teach election law at the state level on a regular basis and its very complex. The most highly regulated entities in the political system and the least equipped to deal with it because they are so highly regulated because there are so many structural daises against them. I try to walk them through the rules and how to allocate costs between state and federal accounts. Hopefully not exclusively. Partially the other two laws, all they want to do is grassroots activity and all they want to do is engage with voters and they find out they cant do that without employing lawyers and not spending time on actual voter context but instead on mere compliance. I think theres a lot of room for reform and i think there is Common Ground and i think theres looking i think brookings and the authors of this paper for their work. Eliza thanks to brookings for this event and ray and john for taking this seriously. Civic engagement, accountability and transparency some of these ideas are excellent and i support them, but others i would say we need to be careful in crafting our solution so we dont bring about the opposite of what we intend and have the effect of weakening state parties by exciting voter anger at big money. It wasnt too long ago that we had deregulation of the parties in the form of soft money. Before the mccainfeingold law took effect, we had a series of scandals involving the lincoln bedroom and buddhist monks. The donors were rewarded with ski vacations and getaways and exclusive access. Some of them got what they wanted. Anyone who needs reminding of the problems of that era can look at the record that was the Supreme Court ruling that upheld that law. What that record showed was that no one was happy. Donors were unhappy and felt shaken down. The voters were increasingly upset and that is why that law was enacted. We shouldnt forget that. That wasnt long ago and there were some dangers that occurred when parties were deregulated that would be a shame to replicate. One feature of that euro that speaks to this paper is at that time, there were elected officials who set up leadership packs, their own Political Action committees in the state, taking advantage of the fact that the states had no contribution limit. That is something i think is a little bit of a red flag in this paper because it is revoking the band on that the and on National Party officials raising money. I would be full to make sure those types of abuses did not take place once again. A couple of contradictions im going to quibble with a little bit. On the one hand, state parties are presented as pure and virtuous and outside groups are secretive and polarizing. State parties are forwarding the goals of establishing infrastructure and sitting with a lasting brand. They are described as less corruptible than candidates, but lets not forget it is elected officials running for office who are running the state parties and they are the ones tasked with raising this money. To say they are less corruptible than the candidates is a complicated article. Given a clear role candidates play in running and raising money for these parties. The paper also does say these parties and outside groups are competing to hire the same people, duplicating messages and tasks. If anything, that illustrates the fuzzy line between parties and outside groups and we see that in this election or the republican party, some established leaders are concerned about donald trump. The one group that came out first against trump was none other than the club for growth. An outside group of the type resized as meddling in primaries. But they were the first to do what Establishment Party leaders wanted to do. I dont know if we can really say state parties were parties in general are that separate from outside groups. I think often they have similar goals and i dont think they are less corrupt. Theres a strong question raised in my mind by the statement in this paper that corruption is less important than moderation. I think that is at odds with the anger voters feel right now. I think voters feel is a huge problem and its turning up in poll after poll as being a huge concern to voters. If parties become perceived as being driven by special interest donors or big money, voters might go against it rather than becoming part of the grassroots army. Theres a perception we move money from one place to the other, will have trans parent see and accountability. There is some evidence here that in states with less regulation, that is happening. There is a danger that will that there will be more money and if the problem is outside groups are not disclosing, maybe we should focus on disclosure. Virtually unanimously, the Supreme Court upheld in the Citizens United ruling. Having said that, there are some great ideas here. That includes the idea that they should allow contributions to be taxdeductible. I think that is something that is of interest to republicans as well and i would use that as an example. A tea party reform group called take back our republic support tax credits. I think thats a strong possible area of Common Ground. I also agree it is way overdue to let parties coordinate with their candidates. I think that is something you can an act today. I know there are dangers to that in there probably would be people who argue against it but i think a lot of lawmakers would rally around that. We could narrow the definition of federal activity by state parties, but with the caveat that it needs to be done with extreme caution so federal elected officials dont turn state parties into personal slush funds away they did before mccainfeingold. In closing, i would say nature we talked not just to one another, but voters in this process. I think there is an alternative model for state parties. It has been proposed by congressman john sarbanesoxley match low dollar contributions for candidates and i think that could be applied to state parties. I think that would be more calculated to strengthen them because once people make a small contribution, they are invested in the process. A final note i would say is the federal parties already have quite a bit more access to unrestricted money as a result of the fec ruling in 2014, without going into too much detail allows joint fundraising committees to raise much larger contributions. And this is actually happening. Elected officials on capitol hill are setting up joint fundraising committees and raising contributions up to 300 and a time to give to Political Parties for new special accounts created by a spending bill that allows parties to operate special accounts with much higher contribution limits for buildings and conventions and recounts. That money is coming in and i dont see a change in the strength of the party. Its a complicated Political Landscape and i think we need to proceed with caution. Elaine thank you very much and thank you to everyone. I thought i would give ray and john a couple of minutes to respond before we go to the audience. Ray i want to point out one thing what we are talking about is state parties. On the lincoln bedroom thing, i think it is almost quaint that was our biggest worry. You can only fit one couple in the lincoln bedroom at the time. And we knew who they were. There was a guest list. Thats not true anymore. Trust is a funny thing. During the height of soft money, there was more trust in congress and the government and at any point in the 10 years before that in the 10 years after that. Im not sure people make the distinction between all this money that goes to super pacs our pouring our point is if they are not making the distinction, at least give it to the parties who are going to be more accountable. They are the people who have to govern eventually. Put as much money as possible to the ones who are going to face the burden of actually having to govern and face the people. They are not really the same people. Some of them are. But just as one example, why do you think senator mcconnell faced so much difficulty pushing in a writer from the tea party because he wanted to have more money to coordinate . They know it is giving the party more power. So there are differences out there and one of the most telling stories we had was it depends on where you sit. We had one executive director who was working for a very conservative group. His perspective changed entirely. My job is to get republicans elected, not conservatives. When i was doing that, that was my job. This equation that they are all the same is problematic russ. Let me stop there. Jonathan thank you for the comments there. Especially allies of. If we had magic bullets with no downside, all of this would be easier. It is possible if you lighten the contribution limit on parties, more money would flow in. Im not sure we think theres anything wrong with that. Money flowing to parties can strengthen their relative clout in the system and if you have looked at the president ial race right now, you might think strengthening relative clout might be a good ring. Not looking just at the amounts, but look at where they are going. Its not enough just to look at the individuals and the names and say its all the same people. The incentives are very different whether you are an insider or outsider, whether you have a longterm stake winning elections, in which case you are likely to look toward the median voter or if you are just and for the shorthaul. I often worry our Reform Community has lost sight of that and boiled everything down to a simple follow the money rubric. The idea of matching low dollar contributions to state dollars is interesting. We didnt evaluate it for this paper but it could use evaluating. We also think it is less likely to happen. If you go to the American Public and say should we match contributions to parties, we think they would give you a resounding no. A tax break might be more practical, but it is certainly worth a look. Thank you all again for your wonderful and challenging comments. Elaine jason or john, any thoughts . John i will respond to allies a just a little bit as far as Mccain Feingold and what they did and what was nearly what was merely speculation at the time. We can talk about the lincoln bedroom, but those were National Committees. The restrictions were driven by mere speculation that National Parties and federal candidates would use parties to circumvent the national softmoney ban. Without any evidence. We are in a different time and a different system with a lot more groups involved. Theyve been freed up to be more involved by citizen united and theres every reason to take a look back and say what has been the experience and mccainfeingold passed and is the mere conjecture about circumvention that existed at the time enough to keep state parties so restricted in this new d new day and age. I wouldnt courage and examination of that. Jason the way in which i drilled down a little bit is on coordination. We have state candidates on the ballot almost two years no matter what state youre in. The idea we can coordinate with them because there is a congressional candidate on the ballot and the inability to participate in a coordinated way, despite the fact that we are all democrats are all republicans seems absurd. It also seems absurd a state party cannot put out a mailer that we could use state funds that lists all of those candidates running for office on the democratic side without being forced to use one type of funds, one type of activity. It just doesnt seem logical and also seems very restrictive and something that is unnecessary. We are an added value to all the candidates running for office, whether its at the munich to the level, and the state level all the way up to the president ial level. We can provide that added value but these laws restrict the added value we are able to provide. These recommendations may and john set forth at least start the process for us to be more engaged and in order for us to get more people engaged in the process. If we are restricted and the ability to do voter registration, less people will get registered to vote. If we are restricted in a way we can communicate meaningfully with voters, less voters could be engaged. If we are restricted in the way we turn out voters, less people are going to turn out to vote and those are things everyone would agree we should be doing more of. More people should be registered and we should be having important conversations about the impact of laws and regulations and more people should turn out and vote in order to share their voice with the American People or with their communities. Eliza i thought i would take the prerogative to enter my two cents since this is a topic near and dear to my heart. One of the things we will see when the general election begins is that there will be people in many states in the united they to do not get a president ial campaign. The candidates will simply not go there. They wont go to hawaii emily will go to alaska. But they also will not go to the safe states. They will simply stay away from all but about 10 states. Theres a lot of speculation that over time, the polarization, which is a result of lots of things, people moving to where there are near people like them gerrymandering theres some speculation that there so many states where your vote does not matter. If you live in the middle of nebraska, your vote probably doesnt matter and maybe you dont other to vote in the president ial race. Because there are more and more people who feel like that, its got to have an effect on participation and everybody in the country, no matter how they are concerned, everybody believes in maximizing participation. And yet the institutions which do that are consistently, as we have been hearing, hobbled in their ability to do that. I go back to when howard dean was chairman of the democratic National Committee iran something called the 50 state strategy. The first thing he did was there were some states that were in such had state that such a bad state that they could not afford a lawyer or accountant. So he did simple, Building Block infrastructure things like that. The second thing he did was he looked for blue voters in red states, which i thought was a big, big change. Most people now think his holding of the party held the democrats get out of their slump to take over the congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. I think there is some evidence that parties really can increase participation and increase that connection to elections in a way that the super pacs cannot. I agree with ray now to think act on the scandals, the lincoln bedroom compared to dark money, compared to the koch brothers, many difference organizations and what they are doing, i think there are bad things that happen all the time and we might be looking at them much lesser of two evils. Other comments . Eliza just briefly, i want to go back to the idea of the risk of corruption and appearance of corruption. If voters see they are raising the kind of money that would go to super pacs, that is what i worry about. I love the parties as much as everyone else and a door engagement and i would hate to see voters turn away from the parties because they perceive them to be doing this. John i would agree to that but theres a lobby for what is termed campaignfinance reform. It is frankly folks with a position that they want less money in politics and they are hellbent on convincing the public that money equals corruption. Frankly, thats not the case. The appearance of corruption could be there. Dce lobbyists to have a stake in that game are convincing people money equals corruption. I wouldnt give too much credence to that sort of argument. Elaine any other comments . Why dont we go to the floor. There somebody with a microphone. Why dont we start in the back of the room . I saw the oped in the New York Times several days ago, can the Sanders Campaign go local . Im wondering what the role of the state parties would be in allowing and insurgents to play a role in the campaign . We ask that and what they say is that its not