Sean Parnell

What’s your take on publicly financed elections?

Sure, publicly financed elections have great promises behind them. The people who advocate them say that it will change the way legislators vote. No longer will they be voting with the special interests, they’ll be voting for the people, and, and they won’t have to spend time fundraising, and more people will be able to run for office, and it will open up the process, and all of these good things. But, the reality is, it simply doesn’t achieve any of those ends. What it winds up being is simply a way for politicians to tap into the public treasury to fund their political campaigns with no real benefit beyond that.

In that sense, do you feel it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money?

Yeah, I think it is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. When we look at, right now, the Federal budget, the budgets of almost every single state are in deficit, and I, it’s up to the, the people of those states to decide what their spending priorities are, but I kind of expect that when you’re weighing do we fully fund our schools or do we shove a couple million dollars into political campaigns, I’m kind of hoping they’re going to favor schools instead of political campaigns. And, those are the types of choices that these systems have, have taken away, because now you have to take this money and shove it into political campaigns.

What’s your sense on the problem? Do special interests have a big sway on policy making through campaign contributions? Is it a problem?

Not really. I mean, one of the things I learned very early on when I was working in politics, is that there is funding on every side of every issue. You don’t have to, if you’re an elected official, you don’t have to change your vote in order to get money, because there’s going to be somebody, lots of somebodies, usually, who share your perspective. So, for example, if you’re generally a pro-union type of legislator, you don’t have to worry about, “Oh, no. The Chamber of Commerce folks aren’t going to fund me,” because the union folks, the people who share the agenda of the union, they’re going to be able to fund you.

And, the same thing happens on the other side. It happens on almost every significant issue. There’s plenty of money out there, because people have all sorts of different agendas that conflict and contrast with each other, and it’s relatively easy to find funding if you’re a candidate that has certain beliefs, and so you don’t need to change your, your vote. We just finished up some, a study, actually, we released preliminary results of a study in Connecticut where we looked at their taxpayer-financed campaigns and compared the voting records of state legislators before and after.

‘Cause we wanted to see, did the voting patterns change? Did people who used to vote with the Chamber of Commerce all of a sudden start voting against the Chamber of Commerce? And, we just saw no relationship. There was no change. Republicans vote kind of the way people expect Republicans to vote, and Democrats vote kind of the way you expect Democrats to vote with the taxpayer funding having no real impact in changing the way people cast their votes.

What about the idea that it opens up the process to people who might not otherwise be able to participate?

Well, I think that that that belief is really based on a misunderstanding of who runs. I mean, assuming we’re talking about state legislature, this is where all of the, the tests have been so far, there’s three states that have these programs. You don’t see any real change in who is getting elected to office. You do have some new people come into the process that might not run otherwise because they, they buy into the hype, but they don’t wind up getting elected. They end up being marginal candidates, usually. We looked in Maine and Arizona at the professions of legislators before and after taxpayer financing.

Pretty much the same. You’re still drawing mostly from business people and attorneys and in Maine, retired people form the overwhelming bulk of the, the legislators, just as it was before. There’s no real change in that. And, again, depending on what office you’re running for. If you’re running for Congress, it kind of then raises it to another level, but generally speaking, any reasonably qualified candidate who has some connection to their community is going to be able to raise the money that they need to, to get out there and see if they actually do have a viable candidacy.

It’s not that difficult to sort of test the waters. You don’t need a lot of money. And, what the taxpayer financing potentially does is it allows people who really don’t have wide support in the community to nevertheless be able to access tax dollars and run campaigns that they’re going to lose by a significant margin anyways, and, and so there is that waste. It doesn’t really draw a lot of new, credible candidates into the process.

For the House, the average is $1.3 million, and the Senate $8.5 or 8.3 million on average, that’s a lot of money.

It is, but you don’t need all of that money at once. I mean, if you’re considering running for the US House, you do need to have some support, and you need to go out and find people who think, yeah, this person’s a good candidate, I can see them in office, I want to support them. And, my point is, what’s wrong with that being part of the process? Having citizens either sign on or not sign on and say, yes, I believe this person should be a candidate? The process of getting a campaign started doesn’t take $1.8 million.

It takes what any reasonably capable candidate should be able to raise from people that they know in the community. I mean, do we really want people who have no real connection to the community, who have no real accomplishments, being able to get that $1 million or however much it is? What the current campaign finance system does is it allows real, serious, and credible candidates to go out, test the waters, see if there’s any interest in supporting them, and if there is, then they can get the funding. If they can’t, then we have our answer on whether or not this person really should be running for Congress.

Given that candidates still have to look for large sums of money from deep-pocket donors, doesn’t it still make for a problem?

No, not at all. I mean, ultimately it’s about the voters. The voters are the ones who go into the voting booth and say yes or no on any given candidate. The same critique could be made about volunteers. You walk into almost any campaign office in America, and you see volunteers that are usually high school or college students or retired people. That is not all of America is retired people or students. But, that group has a huge disparate influence, I suppose, in campaigns, because of where they’re able to put their volunteer hours.

It’s no different with with campaign contributions. Yes, you do have wealthier people funding more of the campaigns, just like you have more retired people and students volunteering for the campaigns. Everybody makes their own individual type of contribution, whether it’s volunteering, whether it’s writing a letter to the editor, whether it’s making a financial contribution. Ultimately it is the candidate who has to stand before the voters and say, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is why you should vote for me,” and then the voters decide yea or nay on that. So.

Given all this belief that money is influencing politics, is it all misguided or is there a grain of truth?

Well, there’s always a grain of truth to it. I mean, there, you look at Duke Cunningham. You look at Congressman Jefferson, with the, all of the money in his freezer. I mean, yes, there are corrupt politicians, and a very small number of them, you can actually influence the way they vote or earmarks that they introduce with campaign contributions. But, it is nowhere near the level that the advocates of taxpayer financing believe. I mean, if it was, then the studies would show that legislation changes according to who’s contributing to whom.

It doesn’t. I mean, there’s a wealth of academic knowledge that shows that people give to candidates who support the same ideas they do. Candidates don’t change what they do in office according to who gives them money. The research just doesn’t show it.

Why has there been such a tremendous surge in contributions and lobbying from the healthcare industry for the reform bill?

Sure, well, and you asked about lobbying as well. I think it’s obvious why there’s a surge in lobbying, because they’re trying to decide the fate of the industry. I mean, are for-profit insurance companies going to be allowed to continue to exist? I think that we can all recognize that the insurance companies have a very vested interest in saying trying to educate Congress on why they should be allowed to exist. So, the lobbying thing is totally natural, and it would, it would be shocking if they weren’t, at a time when they’re discussing the survival of the industry, it would be shocking if there wasn’t a surge in in lobbying.

On the campaign contributions at this point in time in American history, again, Congress is trying to decide whether this industry is going to be allowed to exist i-in its present form, and if I were a member of that industry, I would want to be contributing to candidates that I knew supported my perspective. I would be trying to let them know that I support you or I don’t support you, and one of the ways I’m going to let you know whether I do or do not support you is where my contributions go to. So, again, it’s totally natural.

But, in that way, you don’t think that would influence anyone’s position? Why show them the support via contribution if it really has no bearing on how they will vote?

Because it helps make sure that they get elected down the road. I mean there, money is what drives campaign messaging. You have to have the funds to air your ads, to send your mailings and so forth. And, the person that is in office today, who has your perspective, who is doing good work, you want to see that person re-elected. So, if I want to see that person get re-elected, I’m going to go ahead and contribute to them.

What about the idea that public funds, a shift towards smaller rather than larger donations, ends up amplifying the voice of more people?

Yeah, I don’t agree with that. Part of these programs is that it they cap, at least the, the state programs, it caps the amount of expenditures. And, usually, it caps the amount of expenditures below what the average is. So, you’re actually, definitely, decreasing the amount of speech. If you’re saying, you used to spend $100,000 in this system of private contributions, but now under taxpayer financing, we’re only going to allow $80,000 to be spent by participating candidates, well, all of a sudden, you’ve definitely reduced the quantity of speech.

But more to the point the idea that candidates are going to vastly expand and change who it is they solicit funding from is, again, simply not shown by the research. What happens with these programs, we’ve seen it in Arizona and in New Jersey’s pilot program, and I suspect if we were to look in Maine and Connecticut, we’d find something very similar, is that candidates continue to go to pretty much the same type of people that they did before. Republicans tend to go to business people, except instead of asking for a $1,000 contribution, now they can only get the $5 contribution, but they’re going to the same people.

And, they might have to go to more individuals, but they’re going to the, more of the same type of people. So, again, if you used to have to go to 100 business people to get your funding for your campaign, or 100 labor organizations or, or labor organizers to get your campaign funding, now you go to 250 business people to get your, your $5 contributions, which qualifies you, then, for the taxpayer subsidy. So it, it hasn’t changed at all the demographics of who it is that’s giving to these candidates. It’s just more of them are, are doing it, and not a whole lot more, though.

I mean depending on the state, in Arizona, I think it’s like 150 people that have to contribute to you. Well, 150 people is probably about where most candidates were before, so it’s not a large increase in the number of people that they’re going to. So, again, it’s just built on all of these myths that it will bring new people in as donors when it really doesn’t. To the extent it does bring in a few new donors, they’re pretty much like the pre-existing donors.

But, couldn’t the 150 people be average citizens of more moderate means, and then could have their voice heard?

Well, the, the thing about of more moderate means or anything, actually, again, they’re going to the same type of people. There’s Republicans are still going to business people Democrats are still going to union activists and, and so forth. So, you’re not actually changing the demographics. And, yeah, maybe more of them come from in-district versus out of district, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s not terribly important. The only thing that’s really important is that everybody who votes for or against that candidate is in the district. That’s what it all gets down to.

So, at the Federal level, there’s no cap being proposed, and it’s voluntary.

Well, it depends on how the program actually winds up being structured, but potentially, you wind up with a situation where the the voluntary program is so generous to those who participate that you basically have to be crazy not to participate in it and where you’re offering significantly more money than what they could raise through the private system. If-if I’m running and I know that my opponent is going to be able to get $2 million from the taxpayers through this system, whereas me, through my hard work, going out there, I’m only going to be able to raise the $400,000 that candidates in my district have traditionally raised, then all of a sudden I’m looking at them getting a significant advantage.

I’m really incented heavily to participate in the program. So, the, voluntary, yes, but there’s some really strong, potentially some really strong incentives for people to participate in the system where opting out basically does not make any sense at all.

What about the idea that it pushes candidates to engage a larger portion of citizens and making them more engaged?

I think Barack Obama did a fabulous job of engaging the citizenry in what was a record-breaking fundraising program that he had. The, the idea that you have to change the way campaigns are financed in order to engage the citizenry is simply, I don’t think, true. Again, look at what Barack Obama did. Look at what Howard Dean did in 2004. It depends on the candidate, and it depends on their message, and how they’re able to excite and mobilize voters and volunteers and donors and other people that want to get involved in politics.

Again, these programs, the, we were at the Brookings event, and Michael Malben was talking about how fabulous it is that in Minnesota, 4% of people are now contributing. Well, okay, what about the other 96%? Is there, I mean, the idea that going from 2% contri- of the population contributing to state legislators to going to 4% contributing to state legislators, or members of Congress, or whatever office it is we’re talking about, I don’t see that in any way, shape, or form, as necessarily making any sort of quantum leap in citizen engagement.

I think what Barack Obama did, that was a quantum leap in citizen engagement. I think what Howard Dean did with the social networking, with the use of all of this electronic media that’s how you engage citizens. You have exciting candidates who can take advantage of the media opportunities and media platforms that are available to them.

With Barack, though, it’s a lot about charisma, and a lot of people running for Congress don’t have that kind of power.

Well, and on that, actually, that, it’s kind of interesting that you say that because what a lot of these programs are based on is that, sort, looking at Barack Obama and saying, what if we could drag that into the taxpayer financing system, all of this excitement and you’re right. Most candidates don’t have Barack Obama’s charisma. So, how are they possibly going to be able to drag his charisma into this system for other candidates who lack the assets that he had? It, it just, I don’t see it as being very realistic.

What’s your take on this Citizens United ruling? Is it going to unleash the special interests?

Yeah, well, obviously we think Citizens United was a great decision. It freed up corporations, unions, non-profits, trade associations, professional associations, to be able to weigh in on behalf of their members, their shareholders on important public policy topics. And the reaction to Citizens United has been driven by a great deal of hysteria and misunderstanding of what the decision means. The other side claims that this is going to unleash the billions of dollars in corporate spending.

Well, the fact is, corporations have always had the opportunity to unleash their billions of dollars into the system. Through lobbying once upon a time through soft money contributions, through 527 groups, through giving to C4 organizations. I mean, there’s always been tremendous opportunities for corporations and unions to spend money in politics. And, they haven’t done it to the degree that that a lot of people in Congress and a lot of people in the so-called reform community are concerned about. ExxonMobil is not going to liquidate themselves in order to fund ads running against Congress, because then they wouldn’t have ExxonMobil anymore.

I mean, you hear people talk about how corporations have $22 trillion in assets available to them. That’s simply absurd. I mean, in order to believe that there’s $22 billion available for corporations to spend, you would have to believe that they would liquidate themselves, intentionally go out of business in order to spend that money. That’s obviously not going to happen, and the use of that sort of statistic, the fact that there’s $22 billion in corporate wealth out there, the, the fact that people are using that should give you some idea of just how much hysteria and fear mongering there is when they’re trotting out these absurd and ridiculous examples.

What drives you?

Well, obviously I believe very strongly in the First Amendment. I believe that in order to have an informed citizenry, you have to basically unleash political speech. You have to allow everybody the opportunity to make their views known, and there are lots of different ways that people make their views known. Sometimes it’s by giving money to a candidate or an organization they believe in. Sometimes it’s by writing a letter to the editor. Sometimes it’s by running for office. Sometimes it’s by doing a documentary like “Fahrenheit 9/11″, or writing a song like “Imagine” by John Lennon. People communicate political ideas through a broad variety of ways.

And, what the so-called campaign finance reform movement really seeks to do is to de-legitimize and shut out one way in which some citizens try and speak in politics while leaving out other people. We’re never going to have, and we certainly don’t want to have a system where it’s illegal to air “Imagine” in the run up to an election where one of the candidates is talking about some of the ideas and concepts that John Lennon sang about. You don’t want the government picking and choosing how individual citizens, acting together or acting alone, are able to communicate their political messages to a broader public.

I don’t think that you can really have a free society if you have a system where the government says, “No, you’re not allowed to hear the perspective of these people, we think there’s something tainted about people spending money, but it’s okay for you to go to a concert and listen to, to Bono talk about political issues, or, or some other person.”

Did you study Constitutional law in school?

No, actually I’m sort of by education a free market economist type and I just, I got involved in politics, and one of the things that became very obvious to me when I was actually in politics working on campaigns, was that we have 300 million people plus in this country, and they all hold widely varying views on almost every topic. And, the only way that in a free system we can allow those 300 million people to, to communicate with each other and talk about what they believe in, is simply to lift all of the restraints, and not allow the government to decide who gets to speak, in what manner they get to speak, when, to whom, on what topics.

And, what campaign finance regulation does is it says, we’re not going to allow people to speak in this particular manner, by spending money saying, I think this person’s a good candidate, or this is bad policy, or whatever the case may be. But at the same time that you’re trying to discriminate against people who are trying to spend money in politics, you’re allowing all of these other people to talk about politics. You’re allowing Barbara Streisand to go on television and give an interview and say what she thinks of George W. Bush. You’re allowing a famous economist to give a speech somewhere, talking about how tax cuts are good for the economy.

You’re allowing all of these other people to have the opportunity to speak, which is great. But, what campaign finance regulation is trying to do is say, if all that you can do is give money to a cause that you support, no, we don’t really think that your voice should be heard. And, that really bothers me. I don’t think you can have a free system if that’s the way things are operated.

How is the Center funded?

Sure. We’re funded by American citizens and foundations who share our perspective on the First Amendment and competition in politics. I always get the question, of course, are we funded by e- big, evil corporations. We have received a total of two contributions in the five-year history of the organization, both amounting to less than 1% of our annual budget. We get almost all of our money from individuals and from foundations that look at us, look at our view on the First Amendment and the things that we do to defend it and say, I want to put my money there.

And, it’s no different, actually, than people who give their money to the ACLU, or to the National Rifle Association, or to NARAL, Pro-Choice America. Americans associate with each other in a myriad of ways, and Americans have the right to give their money to those causes that they believe in in order to amplify their voices.

So, it’s not all CEOs?

It’s not all CEOs.

Is it public information, though, actually?

No, it’s not, actually. C3 organizations do not have to disclose their donors, and we respect their privacy, as do almost all organizations that are organized as C3.

How do you suppose the Founders would feel about the recent Supreme Court ruling?

I think that they would view it very favorably.

I do believe, very strongly, that the Founders would support the Citizens United decision. If you read James Madison in Federalist 10, he talks about faction. And, faction was what they called special interests back in those days. And what he very specifically said is the problem of faction is not to be solved by trying to stifle factions, it’s to be found in freeing factions, because you have competing factions that will argue with each other, that will cancel each other out, that will represent different Americans’ interests to their government.

So, when you, when you look at the rhetoric around Citizens United, it’s about stopping corporations, a faction, if you will, from speaking. And, I, I think Madison, in Federalist 10 is pretty clear. The answer is not to stifle speech. It’s not to limit who can and can’t speak. It’s simply to open up the process so that more people can speak, so that factions can compete.

What do you think the Founders would have thought about publicly financed elections?

I don’t believe that Thomas Jefferson would, at all, support taxpayer-financed campaigns.

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