Revolution required

Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen, R-Modesto, and Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, were finding plenty of common ground during a recent panel on the state of bipartisanship in the California Legislature. Listening to them, it was hard to escape the impression that the state would be able to address its big issues — tax, pension, education, environmental-law reforms. If only we had more serious-minded and solution-oriented representatives like these two Assembly members.

But there was one issue that left them at polar extremes.

And it was the one area in which I thought each of their solutions was hopelessly inadequate.

It was the issue of what to do about campaignfinance reform in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that effectively declared that corporations, labor unions and other interest groups have a right to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns as a matter of free speech. The court left intact disclosure and dollar limits on direct contributions to candidates, but that distinction quickly became meaningless as so-called independent groups were formed to fund political campaigns without restraint. Olsen’s solution? “I have come to believe — and this is not necessarily a popular opinion — that the only proper campaign-finance reform is to lift all limits and require 24-hour disclosure of every dime of every dollar to a candidate,” Olsen said during the session put on by the Redwood City-San Mateo County Chamber of Commerce. Mullin’s solution? “I’m pretty left on this one,” he said. “I support full public financing of campaigns. Too much time, too much effort is spent on fundraising, period, and it plays too much of a role in our politics,” he said.

Here’s the problem with each approach: As long as the Citizens United ruling stands, there is no way to keep a few deep-pocketed contributors from overwhelming an election. Olsen is right that campaign laws tend to move the money to “independent expenditures” from unaccountable, often unidentifiable sources — but that’s happening more and more precisely because the Citizens United ruling has shielded such schemes from regulation.

A lifting of donation limits on candidates, as Olsen has proposed, would not necessarily compel corporations or interest groups to give directly to candidates instead of running their independent campaigns.

As for Mullin’s alternative, public financing is no panacea in this post-Citizens United era either. It could not stop wealthy individuals from embarking on self-financed campaigns or special interests from pouring huge sums into campaigns.

Each of these very pragmatic Assembly members acknowledged that her and his idea is not likely to become law anytime soon. If Olsen were to introduce her measure now, “I think people would come unglued,” she said. Mullin also conceded that public opinion would need to shift before government financing of elections could occur.

Two developments in the last week underscore the struggle to enact even the most modest campaign-finance laws in the current environment.

In Sacramento, the Assembly Elections Committee approved AB700, which requires forthright disclosure on the funding sources for ballot measures, with a 5-to-2 vote, with Republicans opposed. But here’s the telling sign of how little interest incumbents, even Democrats, have in truly changing the status quo: It did not include groups that spent money for or against candidates. Even so, its passage was a struggle.

Also last week, the same U.S. Supreme Court that has been steadily eviscerating the post-Watergate notion that Americans should limit the size and chicanery in campaign donations actually found a restriction it could agree with: On a 5-to-4 vote, the high court upheld a Florida rule that banned judicial candidates from personally asking donors for contributions.

“Judges are not politicians,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in rationalizing his distinction from the court’s almost-anything-goes approach to the funding of other elected offices. Yet there is nothing in the ruling to keep judges from creating campaign committees that accept donations from lawyers and others who might have business in the court — the judges merely cannot make the direct pitch.

“Look, any time we can get a campaign finance victory from this Supreme Court majority, the response should be ‘hallelujah,’ ” said Democracy 21’s Fred Wertheimer, a veteran of the reform wars.

Americans should not be left at the mercy of any Supreme Court to decide whether we, as taxpayers and citizens, have a right to limit the influence of money in elections. “Our democracy is at a crisis point,” Mullin said, citing depressed turnout and general disenchantment with the electoral process.

The only enduring solution would be a constitutional amendment that clearly spelled out the right of the people to regulate campaign spending. Anything less is doomed to be avoided and exploited.