Financing Election Campaigns

Dear Financiers:

Dorothy, below, writes about the campaign finance bills that are currently pending in the city council. What are your ideas about them? Do you see the possibility for any of them to clean up the way election campaigns are financed and run in DC? Are you enthusiastic about any of them? Weigh in now, or get weighed down by them soon.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Clean Elections in the District
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Two articles in The Washington Post in the last two days highlight the need for real campaign finance reform in he District. In his Saturday column, Colbert King writes about the federal investigation of corruption in the District and notes that the "chief focus is the scads of off-the-books money that deep-pocketed special interests have shells out over the years to greedy, financially challenged politicians, shadow political campaigns, and straw donors — to acquire all of the goodwill, and contracts, that money can buy at city hall," http://tinyurl.com/bw5c98w. Nikita Stewart and Mike DeBonis provide new details on the alternate, $653,000, "shadow" campaign that was overseen in 2010 by Vernon Hawkins to get Vincent Gray elected mayor in "Gray Campaign Aide Says He Voiced Concerns to Candidate About How Efforts Were Funded," http://tinyurl.com/bs8my34. Their article raises renewed concerns regarding what and when Gray knew about the illegal, off-the-books campaign that operated out of Union Temple Baptist Church in southeast.

There are five bills regarding campaign finance that are currently pending before the city council: Bill 19-713, Campaign Finance Reform Amendment Act of 2012; Bill 19-730, Money Order Restriction Amendment Act of 2012; Bill 19-933, Public Financing of Elections Act of 2012; and Bill 19-960, Comprehensive Campaign Finance Reform Amendment Act of 2012. Muriel Bowser’s Committee on Government Operations held hearings in the spring and as recently as November 2 on the various bills. In addition, Bowser has also scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday, November 20, at 2:00 p.m., for councilmembers to meet with Attorney General Irv Nathan to discuss Bill 19-960, which is the Gray administration’s proposal for campaign finance reform.

It is clear that, like the ineffective, poorly drafted ethics bill that Bowser and then Council Chairman Kwame Brown rushed through the council last December, a similar effort is underway with regard to campaign finance reform. All of the bills, as currently drafted, are seriously flawed. For example, none of the bills effectively addresses one of the most important campaign issues that has arisen in recent years — the funneling of unreported cash money to candidates and campaigns. Moreover, the discussion to date has failed to recognize the need not just to adopt new laws and regulations but to simultaneously improve the monitoring, policing, and prosecution of the campaign finance laws that already exist. Without enforcement, any number of laws is meaningless.

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Second and Third Parties
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com

With regard to David Schwartzman’s comments in the previous issue of themail [November 14], the real issue is whether or not there can be viable alternatives to the local Democratic Party, the lack of solid platforms for either the dominant party or competitors, and the need for other reforms (which I discussed in themail previously) to create greater diversity of representation. To be taken seriously, second parties need to elect candidates successfully. Third parties just need to influence the discourse. In response to the results of the 2012 presidential election and the reality that the Democratic Party is really the party of cities and metropolitan regions, I wrote another blog entry opining about how to leverage this fact towards a pro-urban national and local agenda. I wrote about how in Vancouver and Montreal, local parties not affiliated with the national parties are competitive, with deep and thorough platforms. In London, the Green Party is a viable third party, albeit with only two elected candidates — it makes sense that in the national capital of the UK, the Green Party has a hard time competing with Labour and Conservatives.

Looking at their respective platforms, I was struck by the lack of thorough platforms for local party politics here in DC, and that includes the dominant party. http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2012/11/repositioning-cities-at-least-on-coasts.html. I’d recommend that the Statehood-Green Party reach out to these parties in other cities and get insight into how to develop a viable path forward. I do think it is difficult, but possible, for non-Democrats to be elected at the ward level, and potentially at large, but it requires an almost permanent campaign, with a very strong community organizing tinge, like the 2008 Obama campaign, the creation of viable alternatives, etc. For example, Gary’s discussion in the preamble to the last edition of themail discusses the city’s new "economic development plan" and how it was developed with no citizen input. Seemingly, that’s a good issue to begin to rally around, in terms of creating credible alternatives. What does a neighborhood-centric development program mean?

In Montreal, Gary would probably not be happy in how Project Montreal advocates for a transit heavy agenda, bike lanes, and what not. But in Plateau-Mont Royal borough, clearly it’s an agenda that resonates, since that party successfully wins elections there. See the Utne Reader article http://www.utne.com/politics/luc-ferrandez-zm0z12jazros.aspx. In the current election cycle, I was surprised to see a bit more "professionalism" or at least design values in ANC campaigns — high quality yard signs and even in the case of Ivan Frishberg in ANC6B, door knockers. None was of the cheap flyers variety that has typified campaigns in previous cycles. Certainly DC’s second and third parties are capable of something similar.

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The Republican Alternative
Mary Brooks Beatty, mbbeatty@aol.com

Gary, you are entirely correct [themail, November ] that this election was "ineffective" in creating change. Your analysis on the result is very astute, and I agree completely. By replacing Michael Brown with David Grosso, the city is just replacing one liberal Democrat with another. But I have a different view as to why this occurred. You state that the DC Republican party is partly to blame and seem to think that is because the candidates tried to distinguish themselves from the national party. As part of your defense you state that I "refused" to say whether I would vote for the Republican candidate for President. On September 20, I stated that I intended to vote for Mitt Romney on Bruce DePuyt’s show (Newstalk, NewsChannel 8). I consider this a fairly public statement of my support for Romney in advance of the election.

So here’s the problem that I see with your argument. You seem to be saying that the only alternative that a Republican candidate in DC can offer is that of the Republican national party platform. In the Ward 5 debate, during which I stated that it was my right to cast my vote in the privacy of the voting booth, the question about who I was voting for President was the fourth in a row of confrontational questions trying to connect me with the national platform. But as I had stated in many forums, Republicans can disagree on policies while agreeing on principles. The principles that make me a proud Republican, and that offered a clear alternative to all other candidates in the race, include limited government, fiscal accountability, free markets, and self-responsibility. Who I vote for President doesn’t tell you much about how I might govern in DC.

The more important part of my answer at the Ward 5 debate was why Democrats in DC should vote for a Republican. That is, that this city needs a two-party system. One-party rule stifles democracy and leads to corruption. The entire city is cheated by Democrats who switch to being independents and thereby cheat our Home Rule law’s intent of allowing a voice for the minority. Don’t blame those Republicans who give up a year of their lives to offer that alternative.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Mendelson at the Federation of Citizens Associations, November 27
Anne Renshaw, milrddc@aol.com

DC City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson will tackle the council’s 2013 legislative challenges at an Assembly of the DC Federation of Citizens Associations on Tuesday evening, November 27 at 6:45 p.m. The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held at All Souls Memorial Episcopal Church Hall, 2300 Cathedral Avenue, NW, near the Woodley Park Metro on the Red Line.

Residents are expected to question Chairman Mendelson about the pending fiscal cliff, possible worsening unemployment, likely tax increases, DC post-"Sandy" public safety readiness, proposed modifications to EMS/Zoning/ABC regulations, Health Insurance Exchange oversight, and ongoing neighborhood crime. Note: Assembly Delegates will also vote on three Policy Positions of the Citizens Federation: campaign contributions, the height act, and the zoning rewrite.