Congressman has an idea to empower small political donors
In 2006, shortly after being elected to Congress — indeed, as he recalls it, before he had even taken his oath of office — John Sarbanes was approached by several Washington lobbyists. “They offered to do a fundraiser for me,” he said. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to start down this road.’ ” So he put the lobbyists off.
Still, it got Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland (and the eldest son of the state’s former senator, Paul Sarbanes) thinking — obsessing, really — about the role of money in politics. As he spent more time in Congress, he watched the insidious influence of money. “There is a lot of discussion about how money is targeting elections, but what tends to be neglected is the influence on the governing that takes place afterwards,” he told me the other day. “I may raise enough to beat back a super-PAC, but what dependencies does that create?
“I’m not talking about quid pro quos,“he added. “I am talking about human nature. When you need to raise a lot of money, part of you is always thinking, ‘ What would my patron think?’ ”
As Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos, an assistant law professor at the University of Chicago, put it in an article last year in the Columbia Law Review: “There is near consensus in the empirical literature that politicians’ positions more accurately reflect the views of their donors than those of their constituents.“
At the same time, Sarbanes watched as the Supreme Court made a series of rulings that equated money in politics with speech, and began to undo the rules that were meant to prevent big money from overwhelming the system. The best-known of these decisions was Citizens United in 2010, of course, but just last month, in McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission, the court struck down the aggregate federal limit of $123,200 that individuals could contribute to candidates and parties during a two-year election cycle.
Finally, Sarbanes watched with dismay as his constituents reacted to the influx of big money into politics. “People are convinced that Washington, D.C., is bought and sold and that their voices count for nothing. The question is: What do you do about it?”
For decades, the answer for those in the campaign-finance-reform movement had always been to try to limit the amount of money any one person could contribute. Although individual contribution limits per candidate are still on the books, that general approach clearly is not viable in the age of the Roberts court.
So Sarbanes and other reformers began to come at the problem from the opposite direction: magnifying the role of the small donor, rather than trying to diminish the role of the large donor. In February, Sarbanes sponsored a bill that tries to do just that, at least for congressional races.
It has three main components. First is a $50 tax credit per donor per election cycle. Second is a voluntary matching-fund system. People who donate up to $150 to a candidate who has agreed to lower contribution limits and the full disclosure of all donations will have that donation matched 6 to 1 with federal funds. If the candidate agrees to take no contributions higher than $150, the match rises to 9 to 1. And finally, it allows candidates to raise additional matching funds in the last 60 days of the election if the candidate feels he needs it to ward off a last-minute advertising blitz. (The bill has disincentives to keep that additional money from being used unless it is really needed.)
“There is a general consensus that the way to go is a multiple matching system,” said Fred Wertheimer, the head of Democracy 21 and one of the grand old men of campaign-finance reform. For one thing, it engages small donors in the political process — and gives them an incentive because their money is being maximized. But Sarbanes also likes it for another reason: It forces members of Congress and would-be members of Congress to actively solicit the money — and thus the views — of their constituents. “Because it rewards finding small donors, your priorities change,” he said. “You don’t get co-opted.”
It is not going to become law today, or even next year, but it stands as a beacon of hope for a frustrated electorate.
Joe Nocera writes for The New York Times.