Growing power of small money
FOR THREE DECADES, ever since Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign raised bushels of corporate money and overwhelmed George McGovern, liberal activists and candidates have had two opposite fantasies about how to level the financial playing field. The first was to get big money out of politics. The second was to mobilize small money in a big way.
The first fantasy was largely sidetracked when the Supreme Court overturned much of the post-Watergate reform law in 1976. The fantasy finally died, paradoxically, with passage of a stunted version of the McCain-Feingold bill in 2002. This latest reform, as enacted, did prohibit unlimited donations of money to political parties, but it kept alive other avenues to enable wealthy people to invest strategically in politics.
Most congressional incumbents voting on McCain-Feingold had little appetite for more radical reform. And short of a constitutional amendment redefining the relationship of money outlays to free speech, it is hard to imagine a remedy that would both do the job and pass muster with the Supreme Court.
A few states, most notably Maine, have shown that it's possible to enact voluntary "clean elections" options, which give financial rewards to candidates who opt for public funding. But this promising approach has gained little traction in Congress. Now, however, for the first time, a major candidate has realized the second fantasy -- of small money beating big money. More precisely, Howard Dean became the leading Democratic candidate by using the Internet to mobilize thousands of enthusiasts who in turn become small donors (average third-quarter Dean donation: $73.69.) The progressive Web-based group, MoveOn.org, has done much the same thing.
This innovation has revolutionized American political fund-raising and revived grassroots politics. If a Democratic candidate can enlist, say 2 million activists -- 1 percent of eligible voters -- to donate $70 each, that's $140 million and a roughly level playing field. Any candidate squawking about Dean's decision to forgo public funds and rely on his legions of small donors is an envious hypocrite. They would all do the same, if they had Dean's base. Eventually, every successful candidate will learn this approach.
Public financing, after all, had two rationales. First, it was intended to release candidates from dependence on self-interested, large contributors and, second, to enable underdogs to win or lose on the merits of their message, not on the thickness of their wallets. A candidate underwritten by legions of small donors is even better able to compete than one funded by public money, because a citizen mobilized to write a small check is, first, a citizen mobilized to be an activist.
The Dean phenomenon has been widely misunderstood. It's not that Dean invented a better website. Rather, Dean offered his supporters an energizing message that generated excitement and loyalty; second, he used the Internet in a way that played to that medium's natural strength. If a group of Dean volunteers somewhere wanted to organize their own website, Dean headquarters just let it bubble up, Web-fashion, rather than insisting on central control. Affection turned into dollars.
But there's another irony. The McCain-Feingold era has not only coincided with the Internet era of "viral" campaigning and small-donor fund-raising. The McCain-Feingold loopholes have also stimulated the return of the very large donor.
The law permits unlimited donations to voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, as long as these are not part of candidate organizations. George Soros, the richest of the liberal philanthropists, has publicly declared that his good work on behalf of building "open societies" worldwide is at risk because of George Bush's assaults on an open society at home. So Soros will spend about $100 million trying to oust Bush.
He can legally do this by backing targeted voter education and registration efforts, anti-Bush advertising, and advocacy groups, as long as he doesn't do it through the Democratic Party. A coalition of 24 national progressive mass-membership groups, ranging from the Sierra Club to the NAACP, have joined forces under the name, America Votes. Another new progressive coalition, America Coming Together, will spend $75 million to $90 million, mostly from large donors and unions, mobilizing voters.
This is hardly what money-and-politics reformers, who once included the same George Soros, ideally wanted. It's also a little unnerving, but hardly unprecedented, to have liberal politics depend partly on the caprices of beneficent billionaires. But the end result -- Dean-style organizing plus philanthropists underwriting voter mobilization -- will get more citizens engaged in politics, give liberals nearly the resources conservatives enjoy, and maybe even give America a new president.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of the American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
