Cash vs. CitizensThe campaign season is in full swing, but the race
to watch is the one between contributors and voters.
Can Illinois put an end to the rising power of money in politics?
Essay by Mark Brown
William G. Stratton was the only Illinois governor to face criminal charges for converting campaign funds to personal use. The Republican from Morris was the state's chief executive from 1953 to 1961, a period in which campaign donations-often made in cash and stuffed in envelopes-did not need to be publicly reported and were hardly distinguishable from bribes.
Stratton would stash piles of cash in a combination-locked vault in the governor's mansion. When the piles got too high, his wife would move the money to a safe deposit box at a Springfield bank. The federal government became suspicious that the high-living governor was spending more than he could account for from legitimate sources and brought tax evasion charges against him after he left office. The IRS calculated Stratton owed $41,000 in taxes, real money in those days, on income he failed to report during his second term alone.
Stratton's defense at his 1965 trial was twofold: that the expenditures were really indirect campaign expenses to enhance his public image (such as dresses for his wife and renovations on his house) and that the more than $100,000 he had pocketed weren't campaign contributions at all but were unrestricted gifts from his many admirers.
U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen and other top Republicans testified that Stratton's conduct was routine and within the law, which seemed a reasonable defense, given that there weren't any restrictions on campaign finances at the time. The jury must have thought so, too, because they acquitted Stratton, proving once again why successful criminal defendants are referred to as "not guilty" instead of "innocent." A later civil trial forced him to pay some of the back taxes.
Still, Stratton's practices weren't enough to prompt Illinois legislators to place restrictions on personal use of campaign donations. In fact, even the state's simple campaign finance disclosure law, which requires itemized reports on all expenditures and receipts of $150 or more, didn't come about until the post-Watergate reforms of 1974, long after his trial.
In one of those only-in-Illinois ironies, however, the 84-year-old Stratton got to play a minor role in campaign finance reform, the centerpiece of which is a provision that will eventually prohibit politicians from using their campaign funds as personal piggy banks as he did. Tabbed as the Republican to serve as co-chairman with former Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul Simon on the Illinois Campaign Finance Task Force from 1995 to 1997, Stratton helped front that group's proposals. Simon stayed actively involved in reform efforts, and this year's bill was generally regarded as the most significant campaign finance measure since the 1974 disclosure law.
Now the big question is: Will it take another quarter century before Illinois' political leaders take the next big step? And what is the next big step anyway? The answer seems to be that there is too much percolating on the campaign finance front to wait another 24 years. But a lack of consensus in the activist community on what direction to take, coupled with continued stiff resistance from the legislature and formidable skepticism from the public, could keep the subject from forcing its way back to the top of the legislative agenda anytime soon.
In the meantime, the chicken-or-egg dilemma will continue. As special interests continue to get a leg up by plowing their resources into political campaigns, voters' perception of impotency will increase and they will continue to withdraw from the process. But until the voting public takes a real interest in its government, is there any legitimate hope that passing laws will make a difference?
Strangely enough, the reforms the governor signed last summer have done nothing to satisfy the people who have been clamoring loudest for changes in how money and special interests influence Illinois politics. And, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, they are ratcheting up their push for more far-reaching legislation.
"Without minimizing what the legislature was able to accomplish, I think it's fair to say the surface has just been scratched," says Larry Hansen, vice president of the Joyce Foundation, the nonprofit group that is using its grant monies to fuel campaign finance reform efforts in seven Midwestern states. Look behind most any individual or group at the forefront of changing Illinois' campaign finance laws, and you'll find the Joyce Foundation's money.
Hansen is optimistic that it won't be much longer before the General Assembly takes another stab at strengthening the campaign finance laws, but he doesn't seem to be
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planning on any bill signing ceremonies right away either.
"I don't expect an epiphany on this issue in January of next year, but I think there's a continuous buildup of public interest," Hansen says. "All you need is a couple of guys to lose where you can plausibly say this issue pushed a significant amount of voters one way or another."
The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, perhaps the main Joyce-funded vehicle in the state, is already pursuing the latter strategy by holding town meetings in hot legislative districts and trying to get candidates to take a stand. But what would the campaign finance reformers want from the legislature in the unlikely event they could add 10 more legislators to their stable of supporters?
Many think the next step for Illinois is to establish some limits on contributions. Illinois is one of the last states in the country that allows anybody to give as much money as they want to the politician of their choice. A Federal Election Commission survey of the 50 states found that only Idaho is as wide open as Illinois, a curious pairing for two states that would otherwise seem to have so little in common. But Illinois is truly in the Wild West when it comes to election funding.
Readers of this publication probably know the major provisions of Illinois campaign finance law by heart, but it bears repeating that the state hasn't adopted a single major step taken by the federal government or most other states. There are no restrictions here on contributions from corporations or labor unions or regulated industries or political action committees. There is no dollar limit on what individual contributors can donate. There are no limits on what candidates and their families can contribute to their own campaigns.
Even the city of Chicago, a place that many people in this state assume still "ain't ready for reform," has for several years now operated under an ordinance limiting donations by city contractors in municipal elections. Cook County has a similar ordinance.
But the snail's pace at which Illinois has moved toward tougher campaign finance regulations has had the unintended effect of allowing the state's politicians to see how everybody else's laws work. And that's become a problem, too. What lawmakers have seen is that none of the finger-in-the-dike approaches have been able to withstand over time the wily imaginations of their counterparts in other political jurisdictions.
The "soft money" ploy in federal elections, for instance, has made a mockery of what was once a fairly well-functioning law. Anybody who makes it a practice to study campaign finance reports can tell you that the federal disclosure forms of an Illinois candidate for the U.S. Senate are generally quite boring compared to the state disclosure forms of an Illinois candidate for any statewide office. That's because the federal candidates have to take their money in $1,000 chunks from individuals and $5,000 from PACs, while a statewide candidate can take unlimited sums from anybody, making each report a road map to potential governmental mischief. It's a good rule of thumb that boring campaign finance reports make for cleaner elections. But now the federal candidates channel their oversized contributions through their respective party apparatuses - the so-called soft money - who then plow it back into the campaigns in a sleight-of-hand that isn't fooling anyone.
Just as disturbing was a report in The New York Times in July on how Wisconsin, once a leader in campaign finance reform, is now at the forefront of inventing techniques to evade restrictions on donors. The story described the widespread use of "conduits," a variation on bundling that helps groups avoid limits on PACs and parties, and "megaPACs," a variation on independent expenditure campaigns that also are used to skirt PAC limits. All of this from a state where it is usually presumed government is on the legit. Imagine what we'd get from the crafty Illinois lawyers who for so many years were able to successfully argue that campaign funds of Chicago ward committeemen were exempt from disclosure.
"Money in the process is like water. You dam it someplace. It flows somewhere else," admits University of Illinois at Springfield political scientist Kent Redfield, who nevertheless advocates "reasonable limits" on campaign contributions and transfers. "I think some limit is important, at least symbolically," he says.
The shortcomings of limits have been on display in the Democratic gubernatorial campaign of U.S. Rep. Glenn Poshard, who sought the reform mantle by voluntarily embracing the Simon group's standards but then tied himself in knots in his efforts to get around the restrictions to stay competitive. Poshard said he wouldn't take special interest money, but one-fifth of his first $1.3 million came from trial lawyers, the most potent Democratic insiders of the past decade. The trial lawyers complied with Poshard's limits by giving dozens of individual donations instead of one large check from their law firms, something easily balanced out when those firms later determine compensation.
And he has taken large donations from the political coffers of other officeholders who have no similar restrictions on the source of their funds. He allowed House Speaker Michael Madigan to help him get around his limit on transfers from other political committees by letting Madigan line up donations from other House Democrats. All that said, Poshard's puny war chest is certainly the ethical equal of Republican George Ryan's whopping $10 million-plus campaign, which has been stoked by contributions from gambling interests, secretary of state employees, state contractors and businesses that need help from the secretary of state.
Redfield is a principal proponent of limiting transfers between political committees as a means of reining in the power of the four top leaders in the General Assembly. Redfield's research has shown how the leaders
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have tightened their grip on their party caucuses by establishing themselves as a clearinghouse for donations to individual legislators. Candidates in targeted races received nearly 59 percent of their funding from legislative leaders and other party committees during the 1995-96 election cycle, Redfield's data shows. In the five most expensive Senate races from that general election, leadership contributions accounted for 70 percent of total expenditures, according to Redfield.
Cynthia Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, says the group plans to concentrate its efforts on reducing leadership control of money in legislative races. Nobody thinks that will be easy. "This is their turf, and this is their power base. But this is also something the rank-and-file are concerned about," Canary says. "Whether the rank-and-file is bold enough to say anything and do anything is another thing." As the Poshard campaign has shown, however, the leaders can't be effectively controlled unless all transfers are limited. And even then, where there's a will, there will be a way.
A real roadblock to reform by limits is the U.S. Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Buckley v.Valeo. The court ruled that mandatory spending limits, limits on candidates' contributions to themselves and limits on independent expenditures are unconstitutional because they place an unfair burden on freedom of political speech. It's that ruling that gives an advantage to wealthy federal candidates such as Republican Senate nominee Peter Fitzgerald and former nominee Al Salvi, who can spend as much of their own money as they want while their opponents are bound by limits. That's a prospect that displeases politicians as they contemplate the impact of limits on state and local races.
Some would prefer to skip the progression to limits and jump right to some form of public financing. "The futility of the in-between steps in our opinion is that they don't work," says John Cameron, Illinois director of Citizen Action.
Not many see that as realistic, or necessarily desirable. "Given the realities of Illinois, public financing is a non-starter," says Hansen, who is funding the push for public financing in other states.
The campaign finance reform movement might be best served by trying to go back and tighten up this year's bill. The grandfather clause that will create a two-tier class of politicians - veterans who can pocket their campaign funds and newcomers who can't - was the necessary price of putting the provision on the books.
But allowing current politicians to continue abusing their campaign funds is an outrage that will invite voter disgust well into the next century before the last of the 1998 officeholders calls it quits. The grandfather clause must be repealed.
Legislators also should curtail some of the other dubious ways Illinois politicians spend their campaign funds that were not addressed by this year's reform law. They could start by eliminating the use of campaign money to purchase tickets to professional sporting events, a practice that sets them apart from their constituents. Many politicians in the state are season ticketholders to the Bulls, Cubs, Sox or Bears, courtesy of someone else's cash. Then they could ban the use of campaign funds for legal defenses in criminal cases, another loophole in this year's legislation. And they could require public disclosure of contributions to legal defense funds politicians often establish independently of their campaign committees. Disclosure of such funds is already required of federal officeholders.
Also, there's a question of whether this year's bill fails to prohibit politicians from making personal loans to themselves from campaign kitties, a loophole big enough to swallow the ban on personal use of campaign funds if allowed to stand. In addition, Redfield is concerned that an exemption allowing politicians to use campaign monies to pay themselves or family members a salary for "services actually rendered" is open to abuse.
Unfortunately, it will probably take a few well-publicized abuses to put any of these matters on the front burner. Hansen has a plan for that, too. He's trying to convince one of his grantees to establish a regular P.U. (Personal Use) Alert to highlight stinky political fund expenditures.
Not everyone is convinced, however, that additional laws are the answer, most notably a majority of legislators who balked at putting anything stronger in this year's bill. "The key in all this to me is to get citizens back involved in their government," says Mike Lawrence, Gov. Jim Edgar's former press secretary and now associate director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University with Simon. Lawrence, who helped engineer passage of the new law and has been a little irritated at the rush by other campaign finance reformers to supplant it, believes the reform groups should concentrate on energizing grass-roots support for change.
"That may be the most important thing they can accomplish: to get people back involved in the government," Lawrence says. "Even if you totally barred campaign contributions, the interest groups would still be influential unless the public got engaged. ... If people think there are simple solutions that are going to dramatically improve our political system, they're dead wrong."
Lawrence is right, of course. When the public is paying attention, it doesn't matter whether a pattern of conduct is within the law or not. An informed public exacts its own punishment, often in the voting booth. The problem is that the gap is widening between what the special interests know about the government and what the public knows.
Mark Brown is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. He regularly reports on campaign finance issues at the state and local level.
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