
          Getting Money Out of Politics
          Interviewed by Spears,         EllenEllen Spears and Hagens, WinnettWinnett Hagens
          Vol. 20, No. 3, 1998 pp. 16-20
          
          Veteran activsts in Alabama, North_Carolina, and
Louisiana who have been involved in local and state campaigns speak
out about efforts to remove the corrupting influence of money in
politics.
          
            Gwen Patton
            In 1990 we were looking at money and politics and  how it was a barrier for grassroots candidates to get onto the playing field because you had to have all this money-money for placards, television ads, mass mailings. As we looked more and more at that problem, I began to see that the unfinished business of the voting_rights campaign was to get money out of politics.
            We had a conference with long-time community organizers (union activists and rainbow activists) in Waveland,  Mississippi, in 1990 or 1991 to bring this question of money and politics on the table. Of course they balked and said, 'Oh no, not another issue! We have all we can handle trying to deal with pollution in the community.' And they never could see that this money in politics was the thread that went through all of the organizations in terms of why we were not getting the kinds of policies that would be responsive to community needs and community sentiments.
            The more and more we talked about it, the more we  realized that voting_rights were crucial. And everybody saw the importance of the voting_rights movement, the importance of blacks in the political arena, the importance of blacks, Chicanos, and women being elected to various offices. You have to also remember that this is pre-redistricting as well. And why was that?
            The reason was that they couldn't get into the political arena. They might make it through a primary, only to get slapped in the general election by the opposing candidate. But many times the primary was the determinant, especially in non-partisan elections like the city council.
            So, we began looking at this question in earnest and grassroots organizations picked it up, particularly Project South which has done an outstanding study of money in politics in Georgia. The environmental people saw that they could never ever get any kind of fair environmental policies because the polluters, for instance, the chemical industry and the oil industry down in Louisiana, were underwriting the candidates, both black and white. So this  raised a question that went beyond color. Money in politics pollutes not only the political system, but the environment and everything else.
            We saw it as a victory when around 1993, grassroots organizations took this issue to heart. Then it became a struggle with the unions because they felt that they were having an effect with their PACs. Many in the union hierarchy still feel that their PACs make a difference, but when you compare the union PAC money to business PACs, corporate PACs, real estate PACs, and insurance PACs, it's just a drop in the bucket. It's really money being burned up, especially on the local level. We made some breakthroughs with unions, but we still have a long way to go with them.
            Our democratic process should be considered a line item, just as
important as the military budget. We should have public financing of
campaigns. We drafted a model bill that in essence talks about
canvassing in terms of getting signatures that would be the threshold
to say that you are a viable candidate and then from there you would
get small contributions-like five or ten dollars-as part of the
threshold. We would also have an account where the American citizen
would put five or ten dollars into a pot, just like on your regular
income tax. We think it ought to be mandatory and done on the federal
level, with a variation on the state level. With public financing you
would have to meet certain criteria, meet certain thresholds, and then
you would be eligible for matching funds--very much how we have the
presidential elections now. The state of Maine introduced and passed a variation of what I'm talking about.
            Back in '91 and '92 I wrote all of the Alabama legislators and the secretary of state asking them  to sign on to campaign finance reform. They had no intention of having any serious campaign finance reform.
            I can't recall the exact year, maybe it was '92, when Milton McGregor, who owns the dog tracks here in Alabama, gave nearly every state legislator and every senator campaign contributions. And the first item on the agenda when they convened was to put a dog track up there in Birmingham. We already had one in Macon County and one in Greene County-two Black_Belt counties. And we already had the horse race track, but they passed the additional dog track overwhelmingly.
            It's not a black-white issue, it is a democracy issue. This country and all of its political components need to decide if they really revere democracy as something very sacred and worthwhile-to lift up democracy and make it as untainted as possible. Our politicians are practical and grubby. Some politicians initially come out strong on campaign finance reform and when they get in they do a complete turncoat. The point I'm making is it's so damn seductive.
            You see after a while [these politicians] have such a relationship with industrial and corporate types that they're bedfellows. It's no longer where the candidate has to drub up interest in a campaign. The corporate entity has already picked the candidate.
            I see it as a destruction of democracy. What we really have is an oligarchy where you have rich people running themselves or rich people buying who they want to be in political office to set public policy and pass laws that are skewed to their own private interests.
            I used to get mad when people would say 'What difference does it make if I vote?' I used to write letters about voter apathy, in essence blaming the victim. But now I understand the apathy.
            We need to get people primed to understand their full citizenship responsibilities. Otherwise, they [politicians] take it any kind of way-with the money, manipulating the vote- counting programs on voting machines. So, now I do have a little appreciation of folks who say it really doesn't matter, and it's unfortunate that it has come to that.
            We just have to keep plugging about democratically-financed [campaigns]. We have to keep plugging about the sanctity of democracy. They are destroying our democracy. How dare they lift up this country as a model of democracy to Taiwan, the former Soviet Union and around the world when we don't have democracy here. We have a plutocracy. I don't know if we can change them like we did in the civil_rights movement. We have to be very creative in our approach to get the people to recognize that we don't live in a democracy. 
            If it was put to the voters, blacks in particular, fair and
square-all private corporations, unions, and so-called special interest groups should not give money to candidates, that elections should be done in a way that's fair and square so that even if you decide to run as a candidate you will have the opportunity to do so-I think voters would buy that. It would have to be framed that even you, if you would decide to become a candidate, will have a real chance to win. Right now, grassroots black folk know they can't be a candidate. See, the voting_rights movement was not simply for us to be passive participants just through the voting, but we also had the hope that we would be active participants in the political process by becoming candidates and winning.
            We don't live in a democracy. That's what we have to keep hammering out there. If we can get mainstream people to start becoming rabble-rousers, to understand that we don't have a democracy, we can turn it around. Just like the Civil Rights Movement. It resonated with the mainstream. We cannot continue with Jim Crow laws and with Bull Conner beating up on folks and hanging folks and all of that business.  The question of true democracy has to become self-evident to the people.
            Slowly, but surely, there is momentum behind campaign finance reform. When we tie it in as simply and as succinctly as possible, money in politics is the reason for all of this mess, then I think people will start beating the drum. But it will be a long haul.
          
          
            Gwen Patton ran for the U.S. Senate in 1992 as an independent and is now the archivist for Institutional Records and Special Collections of Montgomery's Pioneer Voting_Rights_Activists located at Trenholm State Technical College in Montgomery, Alabama.
          
          
            Interviewed by 
              Hagens, WinnettWinnett
		Hagens and Lee, Barry E.Barry E. Lee
            Vol. 20, No. 3, 1998 pp. 18-19
            North_Carolina now has over 10 million hogs and 7.5 million
people. Hogs priduce five times the waste of humans and it's all
pumped into huge open lagoons. They spray the hog waste onto fields
from where it wshes into rivers. The legal preconditions for the
lagoons were set up by a former state senator, Wendell Murphy, who
became chair of the state senate agiculture committee and who led the
passage of about ten major state laws which gave tax breaks and
regulation exemptions to the hog industry. He now the foremost
corporate hog farmer in the nation.
            folks that live around htese "lagoons" started to complain.These
lagoons are, for the most part, located in majority-black areas of
eastern North_Carolina. One example is Tillery, a black_community
founded during the Depression as part of a resettlement
project. Black farmers were given twenty acres anda mule in North
Carolina. They propered, retired and then found the hog industry
moving into their neighborhood. Gary Grant, directo of Concerned
Citizens of Tillery, said it was like saying you retired with your
house and you're consigned to smell [hog feces] the rest of your
life. You can't sell your house. You can't move out.
            A movement was organized against these corporate hog farmers for
regulation that was put together by the adjacent communities, by the
environmental community because the waste lagoons would
overflow. There was a huge rain in June 1996 and the sides of the
lagoons broke down resulting in a huge sewage spill the equivalent of
the Exxoon Valdez oil spill tow times over. This led to major fish
kills, especially on the Neuse River. This has been an enormous issue
and there was major legislation proposed, a moratorium.
            A group of corporate hog farmers and other intered parties got
together to fight the environmentalists. They were called the Farmers
for Fairness. A moratorium bill passed the Republican
House. According to the Farmers for Fairness, who testified under
oath at a board of elections hearing, there was a meeting of the
group with Speaker of the House Harold Brubaker, his staff, and some
leadership in which Brubaker essentially said the cost of stopping
this bill was at least $200,000. The corporate hog farmers
contributed, but well short of that amount. The bill was passed,
according to Farmers for Fairness, in retaliation against them for
failure to produce enough campaign contributions.
            This bill led to a three-day hearing to a packed house in which
this whole thing was reviewed. But the Farmers for Fairness realized
they were endangering themselves because if they had told all, they
were setting themselves up for attempted bribery. What you had
instead was a three-day meeting in which a columnist said there was
an "amnesia-fest." Nobody could remember what happened even though
they had gone on record and sworn what happened before.
            The Farmers for Fairness also went after some republican
legislators who had fought them. They used issue ads to do
this. Essentially, issue ads are media ads which attack a
politician's position on a particular issue. One target was Cindy
Watson who was from the biggest hog producing county, Duplin
County. They spent $10,000 a week in issue ads against Watson and
eventually defeated her.
            There are two things happening in terms of being able to turn this
around. A lot more organizing still has to be done. Campaign finance
reform is everybody's second issue and has been for a long time. The
fifty groups in the Alliance understand that their main issues are
totally tied to campaign finance. The environmentalists understand
it. The folks dealing with poverty issues are beginning to understand
it. Consumer groups understand it.
            The legislature is almost totally a creature of the business
community. The only way to win this thing is to out organize them and
that is a long-term process. Great strides have been made in
demonstrating the problem of money in politics, but what has to
happen is some people have to start losing elections on this issue
and some people have to win elections on this issue.
            We've had one person, Ellie Kinnaird, a former small town mayor,
win an election on this issue. She is now a state senator from the
Sixteenth District which includes Chapel_Hill and Carrboro. Her
campaign was based on the ideal of not taking big corporate and PAC
contributions so she limited contributions to $100. She took no more
than $250 from PACs and only from those she agreed with on important
issues. She raided the least money and got the most votes. People are
really looking for someone who will get out there on this issue. She
could raise issues that everybody else was afraid to raise--going
after the Department of Transportation, going after bank tax
loopholes--all the sacred cows. They weren't sacred to her because
she wasn't getting any money from them.
            Back during the civil_rights era the situation was that the vote
was the key. Now the situation is that money is the key. The result
is that economic elites run state government and national
government.
            You can put the most uncorruptable people in office, but they
still would have to come up with the money to be re-elected. There
are no partial solutions to this problem. A clean money bill is no
magic bullet. At least there has to be a way people can run and not
be dependent on big money. This is a long hard fight. The campaign
finance reform movement is totally in the tradition of the abolition
movement, the right to vote movement, the women;s suffrage movement,
the labor movement, and the environmental movement. These were all
democratizing movements that gave more power to regular people. It's
not just a situation in which we build on the gains of the past. The
gains of the past keep getting whittled away as the nature of money
and power changes. I don't think people realize that.
          
          
            Pete MacDowell is executive director of Democracy south
in Chapel_Hill, North_Carolina
          
          
            Stephanie Anthony
            Interviewed by Hagens, WinnettWinnett
Hagens and Lee, Barry E.Barry E. Lee
            Vol. 20, No. 3, 1998 pp.19-20
            Back in 1992, I ran for public office. I was tired of not having
the basic services that people expect and deserve--regular garbage
and trash pickup. I live in public housing in historic South Baton
Rouge, just a few miles from the state capitol. On one side of the
district you saw manicured yards, all the trash and leaves picked
up. And then you came to District Ten and there was trash blowing all
in the street, old wood and toilet seats and stuff piled up where the
trash had never been picked up. When it rained it flooded so badly
down there that you couldn't get the kids to the school. The
Councilman was driving a Lexus with his cell phone, and I'm saying,
'Why can he take care of some of this basic stuff?'
            I entered the race [for district ten city council seat]. I put
together my little platform, got together my little volunteers.
            There was the incumbent, the Lexus driver. There was his
assistant, There was a Muslim Sabree, a black Muslim teacher. There
was a pharmaceutical salesperson. And there was one other person I
can't remember. They were all men, all better financed.
            My fundraisers included daily cupcake sales. We called it the
"cupcake campaign." We didn't take any large donations--the
establishment wasn't planning to give us any.
            We went through the chamber of commerce interviews and afterwards
they said in the primary they would not back anyone. This was just
fine with us. We campaigned on the issues. We did the debates and we
were beating everybody on the issues. The chamber of commerce changed
its mind and pumped $25,000 to the incumbent.
            I walked door-to-door, to every door in the district whether they
were registered to vote or not. You soon find out that $25,000 can
make that null and void. In the big scope of things that's not a lot
of money, but it is in a little race where he spent $25,000 and his
assistant spent $10,000. I spent $1000 and came in third. They ran
studio ads and that made a difference. We had to be real creative. We
put out yard signs in one area of the district and the following week
we'd go pull them up and put them in another part of the district
because we only had so many yard signs.
            When you have money, reaching the people can become a matter of a
whole lot of flash and very little substance. The top money people
will always win the primary, unless there is a scandal or
something. It's a sad state of affairs. It's no longer a situation
where you go out and press the flesh, just shake hands
and listen to people's problems and concerns.
            I would favor two approaches [to campaign finance reform]--limits
on campaign spending and public financing of campaigns. Of course the
ideal would be public campaign financing. I think it's ridiculous to
spend more on a race than the person is going to make in the
office. Something's just not right with that picture. It doesn't make
sense to me. If we had a money limit of $5,000 for everybody I could
have raised a thousand and won, but not a thousand to twenty-five or
a thousand to ten.
            In our situation here, we're in a battle about
casino gambling. Part of district ten is on the river. Before long
[after then end of the 1992 campaign] our councilman was lobbying for
one of the three riverboat companies vying to get into Baton
Rouge. We didn't elect him to do that. Those people who voted for
him, that wasn't one of their issues. Their main concerns were
flooding, traffic lights, and garbage pickup. The next thing we knew
he was the main spokesman for one of the casinos. Now we have casinos.
            I think that the grumble is that people fell all their elected
officals are on the take. I don't think that is true, but I do
believe that money is greatly influencing a lot of elected
officials. It can't help but do that because they know that before
the end of their term they've got to raise big bucks to wage the
campaign in order to stay elected. It's very, very hard for new blood
to come in because the money stakes are so high. It's getting to the
point that people are feeling like they might as well not go to the
polls because they really don't have any choices.
            And it affects all parts of their lives from their utility bills
to the water they drink, the air they breath. Something's got to be
done, or nobody will need to go to the polls. And if we don't bring
the cost and direction of these elections into some reasonableness,
good people that do have the best interest of the general public at
heart won't put themselves up to be elected and they won't be
elected. All of the offices will just got to the highest bidder.
            You can't get any elected official to say they are influenced by
money. It's going to take pressure from they constituents, that
enough is enough. People want solutions and they want common sense
solutions, and a common sense solution is let's bring down the cost
of elections. Elections have become a giant business. We've got to
bring it into balance. And I believe the way to do that is to bring
the cost down to something reasonable and to encourage public
financing.
            I think that there is hope. It's not lazy hope. It's hope that has
to be backed up with work and a little sweat. I envision a time when
a service station attendant or a service station owner, or a corner
store owner can offer himself or herself as a public servant and
wouldn't have to mortgage a business or home to do it. I envision a
time when he or she doesn't have to sell values down the tube to the
highest bidder in order to be elected, that elections will make
sense, when people with differing ideals will come to the table, when
there will be open debate, when the general population will be able
to listen to that debate, make a personal evaluation, go to the
polls, cast the vote, and when this process will not be polluted by
funds from interests that have a different agenda than people who
live and work in those communities. Where voters are concerned, they
need to say, "How is this person paying for bring this message to me?"

          
          
            Stephanie Anthony, an organizer and mother of four
children, is the founder and executive director of the Louisiana
Democracy Project in Baton Rouge. She ran for city council in 1992.
          
        
