The Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) recently released a report on so-called campaign finance “reform” in Los Angeles, Money and Power in the City of Angels. The report is a look at the “effectiveness of Los Angeles municipal campaign finance reforms” and the authors also “suggest additional reforms to strengthen existing campaign finance laws.”
Los Angeles already has many of the features of campaign finance “reform” that advocates claim are necessary to ward off corruption, or the appearance of, or undue influence, or unfairness in politics, or achy joints, or whatever the collection of clichés being used that day are.
Among other things, Los Angeles limits city council candidates to no more than $500 and citywide candidates no more than $1,000 from any one citizen, an aggregate limit that varies from election to election based on a formula (in 2009, the limit was $7,000), a prohibition on lobbyists contributing to candidates. Los Angeles also has a program to funnel taxpayer dollars into the campaign accounts of politicians, which dished out $1.8 million in 2009.
Towards the end, noting that incumbents raised approximately 19 times more than challengers in the 2009 campaign, CGS notes:
The passage of campaign finance reforms in the 1980s and 1990s for Los Angeles municipal elections limited and stemmed the massive flow of contributions from organizations and fundamentally altered the candidate contribution landscape… Challengers nonetheless continue to face almost insurmountable obstacles when competing with incumbents in fundraising or at the polls.
Regarding the use of the term “nonetheless,” I’m tempted to tell CGS that “I do not think it means what you think it means.” But I suspect they do, they simply find it Inconceivable! that imposing limits on candidates harms challengers more than incumbents, despite the obvious fact that incumbents generally already have a wide network of donors to call on for contributions, and also enjoy the perks of incumbency like higher name recognition and media attention.
I shouldn’t make too much fun of CGS for this obvious perception bias, as the report actually has some very interesting information and observations. Among other nuggets one can find in the report:
- In the first seven months of 2009, Los Angeles City Council members voted 1,854 times – and only 13 times (.007%) were there dissenting votes… According to council insiders, members face retribution for casting votes against the projects of other council members. If a city council member votes against an ordinance for another member’s district, he or she can expect that member to oppose ordinances that will improve their own district in the future. (p. 5)
- It is worth noting that not a single incumbent was defeated or even seriously challenged in the 2009 municipal election. (p. 14)
- One result of contribution limits has been the growing proliferation of independent expenditures as a form of political participation and a means of influencing electoral outcomes. (p. 16)
- While there is little quantitative evidence that campaign contributions impact legislative voting, the general public believes that campaign contributions influence lawmakers at all levels of government and this leads to the appearance of corruption. (p. 23)
- Some of the most powerful interest groups participating in the political process are labor unions. In the 2009 Los Angeles municipal races, unions were responsible for almost $800,000 (45%) of the $1.77 million in independent expenditures. (p. 25)
These last two points bear particular attention, and it is to the credit of CGS that they do not try to hide inconvenient facts like most self-styled campaign finance “reform” groups, who assert that it is self-evident that campaign contributions “buy” votes in the legislative process and would generally have the public believe that it is businesses (specifically corporations) that wield undue influence by participating in the political process while unions are vastly outspent, and really aren’t “special interests” anyways. It is this honesty on the part of CGS that makes reading this report less of a chore than most from the “reform” community.
Despite recognizing and acknowledging these truths, however, the authors just can’t help themselves from going back for another serving of “reform,” calling for clamping down on candidate-controlled ballot measure committees by imposing contribution limits on them, and prohibiting lobbyists from delivering the campaign contributions of their clients.
In the end, it is clear that campaign finance “reform” is on its last legs, at least in Los Angeles. Twenty years after passing Proposition H and enacting a good chunk of the “reform” wish-list such as low contribution limits, taxpayer money for political campaigns, and prohibitions on lobbyist contributions, there just isn’t much left for “reformers” in Los Angeles to push for, while there seems little to celebrate regarding the competitiveness of elections or improved, transparent governance, or a reduction in the ability of organized interest groups to petition government.
Not that this will stop them from trying, of course: it would be Inconceivable! for them not to.