Ben Barr

Your organization is a defender of the right of deep-pocket special interests to bankroll the election campaigns of political candidates, why?

Expenditures for speech have always been recognized with the highest level of First Amendment protection and we can’t place limits on, for example, on independent expenditures or on issue advocacy; this type of speech that we see going on during the electoral process.

So political speech is at the very heart of the First Amendment and is sacred in a sense, and coming back to the Declaration of Independence where we talked about every man is created equal, we’re really interpreting that as equal protection under the law for every individual. I think that fits hand in hand with the First Amendment; treat every group every organization equally.

According to the First Amendment and I think you’re in a free, open society, and in terms of spending as a positive attribute of campaign finance, that as you increase spending that you see that in fact people become more knowledgeable about candidates, they become more interested in campaigns, so this is a healthy thing in that sense.

But what of the trends showing that the candidate who raises the most money wins most of the time; is that always a good thing?

Some studies do in fact yes show that the candidate with the money would win in fact. Money often serves as a proxy for support so candidates have to in a privately financed system have to be able to go out to their citizens to citizens that are banded together in whatever form and be able convince them of their worthiness to hold public office and so being able to deliver and generate those kind of funds typically shows acts as a sign of public support for the candidates who we shouldn’t be surprised if that connection is valid that those with the most money are well they’re really the people with the most public support they’ve been able to go out and convince the electorate a to donate money to them and to support them, so I don’t think that’s necessarily a negative trait.

But what if this money is not really from lots of citizens, but mostly from a few deep-pocket donors, do you see no problem with this for democracy?

There first of all it’s quite possible there are aberrations in the data that you may find instances where special interest have indeed corrupted a certain individual and caused a vote change I have no doubt in that.  But by and large what of most of the scholars are saying is that we need further research on this we’re not finding any statistical correlation between the two. You may have a couple hang off studies here and there that find them, but by and large the overall consensus by scholars in the field is that we need more research into this. It’s not clear right now that there’s any empirical support for public financing that it reaches any of the goals that we discussed.

That being said, I come at this from a constitutional perspective under the first amendment and preserving the right of association in American preserving the right of free speech is fundamental and I think reform advocates and free speech advocates come at it from entirely different world views. I come at it from a very longstanding historical perspective.

Do you think the Founders of our democracy would not be concerned today given the immense role of big-money campaign contributions in our elections?

The framers of this country were very sophisticated group of folks, very successful politicians they understood about the role of money in politics and about the possibility of corruption and whatnot. This isn’t a new trend a new concept but we trust the democratic process to work, we trust our individual citizens with this liberty, with this free speech so I’m confident to uphold that.

Do you think that the interests of less wealthy interests need to be protected?

Well, I’ll tell you does the government have a responsibility to protect weaker interest from stronger interests? I think that becomes a very subjective place for the government to be. What are what are the weaker interests? Is it going to be right to life organizations? Is it going to be eco-activists?  I don’t think we want to put government in a role where they can benefit certain points of view that are an idea behind the first amendment that’s very strong. We can’t have this kind of viewpoint discrimination, but getting government out of that allows these small, weaker interests to go out and convince fellow citizens of the accuracy of their views.

But that takes money, does it not?

If I’m a small organization and I’m trying to become popular well the way that I get more money and the way I get more support is by going out and convincing fellow citizens hey this is important we need reform on this issue you need to donate we need to move on this and if you can if you can do that if you’re able to attract a broader interest you can become more successful better funded and you’ll have efficacy in terms of promoting your policy. That’s how a democracy works it’s not the role of government.

It’s a top down versus a bottom up approach so we could we could surrender the first amendment and obliterate it’s protection and allow government to decide what the right level of speech is but people like the Judge Leonard Hamm cautioned against that, he said, if I could have a bevy of plutonic guardians to watch my every step and to figure out these issues I’m not sure that I’d have so. I treasure my liberty so I come at it from that perspective bottom up; let’s all work together, let’s have the pro-life voice and the pro-choice voice out there, let’s have the unions and the corporations, let’s have ‘em go at it.  That’s what we envisioned.

It seems to me what you want to protect is really just a very uneven playing field.  Giant industries have so much more money to influence elections and to lobby the government.

You reconcile that but in fact yes there are a number of foundations from far left to far left and in between that are interested in a whole host of causes and in funding these types of activities and so I don’t think there’s a shortage of money in the political process in terms of bringing these issues up and having them having them discussed so it’s not just the responsibility of the town itself to fund it but it can go out and find that type of support.

The Goldwater Institute has been in agreement with those who every years want to repeal Arizona’s Clean Election law, saying that the public funding option is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Is the public financing of tax of campaigns a waste of taxpayer dollar?  Well, if the empirical studies show that there’s really no correlation between contributions that in fact public financed elections haven’t been effective at reaching their goals then I would say by definition it’s a waste and that’s just not my opinion.

You can look to the U.S. General Accounting Office they did a report in 2003 that looked at the efficacy of Arizona’s system they said well let’s look at competitiveness do we have more candidates that are running let’s look before Clean Election was enacted, let’s look after, no statistical change. Look at the Clean Elections Commission’s own numbers right now. Look at the number of candidates running in legislative primary races, they’re down it’s a downward trend. We don’t see more competition we see less. Incumbency rates, no statistical difference.

You can look at the Goldwater Institute report we did one in 2001 analyzing voting trends we found no difference in the way that clean elections funded candidates voted versus privately financed candidates. So looking at all these different types of factors has clean elections been effective? Has the public financing of campaigns been effective?  The answer seems to be no, so it has to be essentially a waste in that sense.

Barry Goldwater is the namesake of your Institute, right?  How do you reconcile what you are saying with his classic quote from 1987:  “To be successful, representative government assumes that elections will be controlled by the citizenry at large, not by those who give the most money. Electors must believe their vote counts. Elected officials must owe their allegiance to the people, not to their own wealth or to the wealth of interest groups who speak only for the selfish fringes of the whole community.”

Barry had a cautionary tale, well, to look out for the role this. The question is what’s the remedy how do we address that, and I don’t know that public financing a system that’s involuntary and it coerces public support is really the answer. The Goldwater Institute fully supports disclosure that provides information about where contributions are going from and to that allows citizens to get involved and to find out is this candidate owned by the oil industry.  We may share some of the concerns that Senator Goldwater raised in that quote the question is does it does it necessarily lead to the full sale adoption of public publicly funded elections, I don’t think that it does.

What then is the safeguard for what Barry Goldwater warned us about: that “elected officials must owe their allegiance to the people, not to their own wealth or to the wealth of interest groups?”

I believe that citizens should be able to spend however much they want to whomever they want whenever they want be able to provide full disclosure to the public be able to track the money track the funds. Justice Brandeis said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So that that’s the approach that we go from that’s the approach that really honors the very text of the first amendment it honors citizen participation it honors free speech. It allows all of the interests to get their views out there and it allows citizens to be able to then make sense of it and put together who do I want to vote for, who best represents me that’s I think the best type of system.

I think that also produces competitiveness in the electoral arena which is a good thing by allowing citizen’s groups and associations and candidates to really get in the fray and get that that message out they have to do more spending and as Professor Coleman, University of Wisconsin noted, more spending is a good thing–it gets people interested in politics it makes them more aware so I think that promotes a healthy democracy. So I think what we see in in the realm of public financing campaign finance reform a lot of the steps that are fundamentally unhealthy for democracy and really scaling them back promoting disclosure and allowing democracy to work is really the approach that’s best.

How do you figure the First Amendment protects the inordinate “free speech” influence of big money donors without regard for whether this speech might be misinforming?

See the First Amendment, you have to understand the First Amendment is what we call a negative liberty it protects citizens from government interference with their rights it doesn’t grant them a right to information to access and the like so in terms of understanding the First Amendment it’s up to the citizen to become involved it’s their civic responsibility to go out and get involved in the electoral process by providing disclosure that’s a step in aiding electoral knowledge getting citizens well informed about the issues and letting them participate in a healthy democracy.

Do you see any troublesome ties between fundraising and the lobbying?  One of the “Clean Elections” candidate we spoke with, Meg Burton-Cahill, told us that the public funding option has freed her from the necessity of dealing with lobbyists, which she likened to losing “a thousand-pound monkey” on her back.

Well, first of all, lobbying and campaign finance reform are two fundamentally different areas but in in terms of lobbying I fully support just as I just spoke about campaign finance reform disclosure full disclosure to the public to be able to see if a candidate truly is bought and to allow the democratic process to work and to correct that that procedure. Now you say that Representative Burton Cahill had in a sense freed herself from the lobbyist and the thousand pound monkey on her back.

Well the thousand pound monkey is also an informer. Lobbyist provide relevant information really from both sides of the aisle so if there’s a bill coming up on medical malpractice reform you might expect to see memoranda treating those issues from both the trial attorney’s and the ah doctor’s lobby coming into a desk and that really allows the legislator to be able to pick and figure out their position from educated people who put together this this information.

But don’t you think that a candidate who is taking big money from some special interest, like the local real estate industry, is going to be very careful of voting on a bill that affects that industry?

I don’t know that they’re necessarily beholden to that interest. I know that disclosure is an area I know Representative Flake is pushing forth several reform efforts at the federal level to make sure that there’s not pork barreling going on if there’s anything that’s earmarked that it’s in the actual legislative texts it’s not appended at the last minute there’s open and free debate I think those are sensible ways to approach the lobbying issue.

Getting back to Representative Meg Burton-Cahill, she says she has the freedom to spend much more time on issues that affect average citizens in her district, rather than the special interests represented by lobbyists.

Well, and I’m certainly glad that anecdotally that Representative Burton Cahill has had the time to engage in a deliberate process and if she feels great that she’s freed from lobbyist that’s wonderful for her but by and large the question from the scholarly perspective is once you free candidates of lobbyist or of quote special interest then what is the effect what changes and there’s no empirical evidence that it somehow makes legislators better that is the thought is well if we free candidates from special interest or from lobbyist they’re gonna spend more time researching issues they’re gonna be out talking to their constituents they’re going to be doing all these positive things well those are kind of unfounded.

What we find is well maybe they like to spend time at home maybe there’s less pressure less accountability to public and to interest groups which do represent citizens in the community who do have a right to petition government so we may find in fact a less responsive government in that set less responsive candidates.

We’ve seen some abuses in the Arizona process as well. Citizens were sold this kind of bill of goods that we were going to have a very clean open system and some of the things that you see is for example third party candidates who went out and they spend public funds on swanky nightclubs having parties and the like. I don’t know that that’s really an indication of a healthy democracy.

We also see a very intricate regulatory system that gets caught up in very detailed minute questions about whether haircuts count as expenditures whether hors d’oeuvres, how you calculate those in into that. So I think that a regulatory system that’s complex is inherently dangerous to a free society in which politics move very quickly and if you need resolution of an issue and you have to a slow moving regulatory body I think that’s fundamentally at odds with having a healthy democracy where you can quickly get out there spend money freely and inform the citizenry.

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