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Launder Congress, Not Money

Launder Congress, Not Money

David Donnelly

June 27, 2006

David Donnelly is the national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund, a national nonpartisan watchdog organization which fights to pass comprehensive campaign finance reform and works to hold elected officials accountable.

In living rooms, theaters, rented-out bars and assorted other locations, thousands of citizens all across the country will come together this Tuesday night to watch a film Tom DeLay does not want them to see.

It’s “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress.” (Find out where you can watch here.)

The film, co-produced by Texans Jim Schermbeck and Mark Birnbaum and promoted by Brave New Film’s Robert Greenwald, tells the crime story of DeLay’s (so-far) successful scheme to redraw the congressional lines in Texas to gain more Republican seats in Congress. DeLay’s plan was carried out using laundered corporate contributions directed to the local levels in races all across the Lone Star state. Using corporate money to influence elections is illegal in Texas, but that’s just what DeLay and his political allies did. And as a result, in the 2004 elections Republicans gained five additional members of Congress from Texas.

What the filmmakers understand is that this story is but one of many examples of how big money and the thirst for political power undercut American democracy. They understand that as we Americans focus on the corruption scandals involving illegal behavior by those we elect to serve our interests, the real scandal persists: Our current campaign finance system is nothing but legalized bribery. And that is exactly why, working with Brave New Films, they’ve set up Clean Money Day as an organizing tool to support fundamental change in our election laws, such as the clean elections-style public financing laws in Maine and Arizona and in five other states and two cities.

So in the living rooms and theaters around the country, citizens will not simply gather to dance on DeLay’s political grave or to talk about other corrupt politicians. They will fight corruption by helping to promote campaigns to take on this cause, including a just-launched effort to get congressional candidates to sign the Voters First Pledge.

The Voters First Pledge is endorsed by Public Campaign Action Fund, Common Cause, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG. In a mailing to all congressional candidates registered with the FEC, we are asking candidates to put voters before lobbyists by supporting legislation in the next Congress to:

1. Make Elections Fair. Establish and enforce campaign spending limits by providing a set amount of public funding for all candidates who agree to take no private contributions.

2. Restore Accountability. Pass and enforce meaningful new restrictions on gifts and travel from lobbyists and other powerful interests for members of Congress.

3. Protect Voters’ Right To Know. Require full disclosure on the Internet of all lobbyists’ contributions and any fundraising help members of Congress get from lobbyists.

(Citizens at some house screenings will also be updated on state campaigns, like the efforts in California to pass clean elections-style public financing on the ballot.)

Federal candidates ought to take notice. They turn a blind eye to this issue at their own peril. Polling conducted for Public Campaign Action Fund and Common Cause earlier this month by a bipartisan team of research firms found close to three-fourths of likely voters in the 2006 elections support public financing when coupled with spending limits, strict enforcement and an end to the dependence on private money. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Monday striking down Vermont’s spending and contribution limits may leave public financing as the only pathway to real reform for the foreseeable future.

What’s more telling is voters’ willingness to hold candidates accountable on this issue. Candidates who sign the pledge soar in the polls while those who refuse to sign sink as quickly as Jack Abramoff’s career. A generic Democratic candidate gains 13 percentage points and a generic Republican candidate gains 26 percentage points (they have more ground to make up given the national political climate) when they sign and their opponent refuses.

But it is up to citizens to hold candidates’ feet to the fire in local races around the country. Don’t expect party insiders to pick up these themes and run with them. Both major parties are more interested in achieving the political results that the reform mantle provides them than actually embracing the substance of the reform itself. Starting Tuesday night, though, citizens will begin mobilizing, first by watching a compelling movie to remind us of what we’re fighting against, and then by joining together to campaign for the change we want to see.

Tom DeLay may be out of Congress. But, until we organize to change and elect a pro-reform Congress, his legacy of DeLay-ism will live on.