Campaign Finance I

For Wednesday, read Schatzinger and the Vogel-Goldmacher article that I emailed you this morning.

 

Federal spending in 2020 cycle: $14.4 billion

How it works (DCCC at 14:00)

Milestones

• FECA 1971 and 1974
• Buckley v. Valeo and the part of the decision that allowed for Bloomberg (Hershey 274):
• 2. Limitation on Expenditures by Candidates from Personal or Family Resources. The Act also sets limits on expenditures by a candidate "from his personal funds, or the personal funds of his immediate family, in connection with his campaigns during any calendar year." ...  The primary governmental interest served by the Act -- the prevention of actual and apparent corruption of the political process -- does not support the limitation on the candidate's expenditure of his own personal funds. As the Court of Appeals concluded:" Manifestly, the core problem of avoiding undisclosed and undue influence on candidates from outside interests has lesser application when the monies involved come from the candidate himself or from his immediate family."171 U.S.App.D.C. at 206, 519 F.2d at 855. Indeed, the use of personal funds reduces the candidate's dependence on outside contributions, and thereby counteracts the coercive pressures and attendant risks of abuse to which the Act's contribution limitations are directed. [Footnote 59] The ancillary interest in equalizing the relative financial resources of candidates competing for elective office, therefore, provides the sole relevant rationale for § 608(a)'s expenditure ceiling. That interest is clearly not sufficient to justify the provision's infringement of fundamental First Amendment rights. First, the limitation may fail to promote financial equality among candidates. A candidate who spends less of his personal resources on his campaign may nonetheless outspend his rival as a result of more successful fundraising efforts. Indeed, a candidate's personal wealth may impede his efforts to persuade others that he needs their financial contributions or volunteer efforts to conduct an effective campaign. Second, and more fundamentally, the First Amendment simply cannot tolerate § 608(a)'s restriction upon the freedom of a candidate to speak without legislative limit on behalf of his own candidacy. We therefore hold that § 608(a)'s restriction on a candidate's personal expenditures is unconstitutional.
• "Magic Words," Footnote 52 and Soft Money (Hershey 275-276)
• Colorado I and II:  party coordinated and independent expenditures
• BCRA and McConnell v. FEC: "We are under no illusion that BCRA will be the last congressional statement on the matter. Money, like water, will always find an outlet."
• Bundling -- at the state level
• Citizens United and SpeechNow  -- also big impact on state and local elections 
• McCutcheon v. FEC and "victory committees," joint fundraising committees (or JFCs)

• IRS approves 501(c)(4) status of Crossroads GPS  -- just in time for the successor organization, One Nation

Trump got nearly $5 billion in free media:

FEC limits and special party rules

Outside spending: an overview

Following the Money

• FEC Database
• California Data
• State campaign finance
• GuideStar and A Form 990

Second Assignment, Spring 2022

 Pick one:

• Pick a demographic group whose voting behavior changed between 2016 and 2020.  Explain, with reference to surveys and other data.
• Pick any Super PAC in the 2020 campaign and appraise its performance.  What were its goals?  How well did it achieve these goals?  What accounts for its success or failure?
• Propose and defend one reform of federal campaign finance law.  Be specific about what goal you are trying to achieve.  What would opponents of the proposal say?  What practical and political obstacles stand in the way. 

Essays should reflect an understanding of class readings and discussions. Many resources, including CQ Weekly and Politics in America are at Honnold Library/Databases/CQ Library. You should check other sources as well. See:

• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/elect.htm 
• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/dempub.html

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. Please submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. If you have proper endnotes, you do not need to include a bibliography. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Friday, March 11. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

WRITING AND RESEARCH

Party Organization II

For Monday, read Hershey, ch. 12: Wed. readings will be on Sakai.

Questions on the assignment?

National Committees

DNC and RNC

Hill Committees

DCCC and NRCC

DSCC and NRSC

1990: NRCC v. RNC

The 527 Groups 

• RGA: Republican Governors Association
• DGA: Democratic Governors Association
• RAGA: Republican Attorneys General Association
• DAGA: Democratic Attorneys General Association
• RSLC:  Republican State Leadership Committee 
• DLCC: Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

Incentives for Activism

• Material: traditional party organization
• Solidary: social connections
• Purposive:  issues and ideologies

Voter turnout and duty

My generation v. yours

Voter demographics  

Most people do not engage beyond talking and voting

Young adults

• Civic activism
• Engagement on issues such as climate change
• Skepticism about parties

Prags v. Purists:  Polarization means activism

Clear statement of transactional relationship (at 2:00)

Jesus and John Wayne

Getting Religion from Politics:

At the same time, their priorities have begun to shift. Dr. Burge pointed to an analysis of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study he’d conducted, in which white evangelicals ranked political issues by importance. Same-sex marriage — once a point of bitter contention between white evangelicals and some of their moderate Republican allies — came in last, after jobs, crime, gun control and a variety of other matters. Abortion, too, came in surprisingly low on white evangelicals’ ranking of priorities — underneath, for example, immigration. According to Mr. Smith, Pew found this year that “81 percent of white evangelical Protestants said that the economy would be a very important issue in making their decision about who to vote for in the 2020 presidential election, while 61 percent said the same about abortion.” In 2016, he added, a similar finding also held.

“I think what happened was, over time, white evangelical orthodoxy on politics sort of just melded into Republican orthodoxy, and there’s no difference anymore,” Dr. Burge told me. “We used to always believe that religion was the first cause and then politics was downstream of religion,” but newer studies suggest that “those two lenses have switched places now and that partisanship is the first cause and now religion is downstream of partisanship.”

Party Organization I

For Wednesday, Hershey ch. 5.

The APSA report;

• American Political Science Association,  "Toward a More Responsible Two-party System. A Report of the Committee on Political Parties" (supplement to American Political Science Review 44, 3 (September, 1950)), http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/apsa.pdf.

Volunteer for

• California GOP 
• California Democrats
• California Libertarians
• California Greens

"Honest Graft" and machines (See Hershey 62-64)

Plunkitt of Tammny Hall (esp. pp. 1-2)

Short video on immigrants and machines

State Party Organizations (and an aside on citing Wikipedia):

• GOP state parties
• Democratic state parties

Sometimes extreme figures take over party organizations

State Election Law

• Partisan v. Nonpartisan local elections  and 2021 data
• Primaries
• Contribution limits

Supreme Court decisions curb patronage

Party Services and Party Money (Hershey pp. 87-88)

Example of contemporary state party activity:

 

National Committees

DNC and RNC

Hill Committees

DCCC and NRCC

DSCC and NRSC

The 527 Groups 

• RGA: Republican Governors Association
• DGA: Democratic Governors Association
• RAGA: Republican Attorneys General Association
• DAGA: Democratic Attorneys General Association
• RSLC:  Republican State Leadership Committee 
• DLCC: Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

Parties to the Present

For Monday:  Hershey, ch. 3, 4.

Recap:  things are about to end the four-party system.

• The Cold War will end with the closing of the USSR on Christmas Day 1991.
• Reagan signs immigration reform (with amnesty!) in 1986.  lmmigration will increase.
• Educational attainment and the new class.
• A recession dooms Bush in 1992.  The paradox of the fortunate fall:  as Gingrich said, the outcome represented a "liberation from the tentacles of the Bush administration."  Presidential parties lose seats over time.

Party organizations as service providers: more next week.

DLC (275) and Clintonism 



DLC fades with the disappearance of conservative Southern Democrats. Democratic share of Southern (CQ def) House seats

87th Congress (1961-62).....93.4%
103d Congress (1993-94)....61.6%
104th Congress (1994-96)...48.8% -- Gingrich
115th Congress (2017-217)..28.0%

African Americans: the Democratic nominating wing.

Meanwhile, back at the GOP...

Governing Team Day - a little-remembered foreshadowing of what was to come

 Reflect on the Rosenfeld and responsible parties:  Newt on Governing Team Day, Congressional Record, September 8, 1980, 24683

A wide range of political scientists including James McGregor Burns, Frederick Sonntag, Manning Dauer, Jack Saloma and others, have urged steps to strengthen the party system. There is a growing consensus that a weak party system leads to irresponsibility, to single issue politics and to domination by special interests. Furthermore, there is a growing belief that personality politics focused on individual candidates heightens irresponsibility and the lack of accountability

Rep. Dan Lungren (next page):

Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has pointed out to us the significance that we hope to establish with respect to our activities on September 15. Whatever the failings that the parliamentary systems of European democracies may have, they are superior to our more loosely knit representative system in one respect: That respect the gentleman has referred to as accountability.

When a British worker goes to cast his vote for his representatives in the House of Commons, there is little doubt in his mind as to which party to hold accountable for the current state of affairs in his country. But here in our country, where legislators are responsible for myriad constituent services; where regional, State, and ethnic identities are strong; where members of the legislative branch are not structurally tied to the Chief Executive of their own party, the accountability for the current state of affairs tends to be blurred in the minds of the citizenry.

1994: Contract with America

Iron law of emulation: "From 1995 to 2006, Republicans in control of Congress took the centralizing the discipline-bolstering tactics pioneered by Democrats and dramatically expanded their use" (Rosenfeld 271).  More when we get to party in government.

Hollowness of parties (284): Weak parties and strong partisanship

Another look at polarization in PIE

Violence "woke communists"

Divided Government and Beyond

 For Wednesday, read Rosenfeld, ch. 8 and conclusion.

The "Welfare Shift"

Before the 1970s, tax cuts were not central to the GOP message.  In fact, Republicans opposed JFK's tax but proposal!

Oil shocks (1973 OPEC and 1979 Iran) begat inflation, which begat rising nominal property values and bracket creep, which begat Prop 13 (1978) and Kemp-Roth


"Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas."  -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan 1981

By the end of the decade, liberal calls abounded for the explicit emulation of conservative organizational innovations from the 1960s and 1970s" (Rosenfeld 248)

Democratic Social Organizing Committee (Rosenfeld 230-233) begets Democratic Socialists of America

The 1980s and the Legacy of the Reverends

• Pat Robertson (very brief mention on 203) 1988 Campaign and the Christian Coalition, which succeeds Moral Majority
• Jesse Jackson, symbolic race in 1984, serious race in 1988.
• A familiar figure supports Jackson
• ...and remained in the Democratic Party

The 1988 election seemed to confirm the four-party system.

• Bush won by a bigger margin than anyone who succeeded him.
• Democrats retain Senate, winning in Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Republicans win California, Delaware, and Rhode Island.
• Democrats gain seats in the House.  One third of districts split between House and presidential races.

But things are about to end the four-party system.

• The Cold War will end with the closing of the USSR on Christmas Day 1991.
• Reagan signs immigration reform (with amnesty!) in 1986.  lmmigration will increase.
• Educational attainment and the new class.
• A recession dooms Bush in 1992.  The paradox of the fortunate fall:  as Gingrich said, the outcome represented a "liberation from the tentacles of the Bush administration."  Presidential parties weaken over time.

Vanguards and the Iron Law of Emulation

For Monday, read Rosenfeld ch. 7 and Drutman ch. 4.

The Great Reordering

New Left and the 1972 D platform: "We must restructure the social, political and economic relationships throughout the entire society in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power."

The 1972 election:  president by county

Incomplete Reordering : The 1972 election in the House



NIXON DID NOT REALLY GIVE A [EXPLETIVE DELETED] ABOUT CONGRESS

Carter and the New South



The third-party flirtation (Rosenfeld 188-190).

In California, the confusing legacy of the American Independent Party.

Present at the creation (Rosenfeld 190-191). Paul Weyrich, who founded Heritage and the Free Congress Foundation, spoke of the moment of inspiration in 1969, when he was a staffer for Senator Gordon Allott (R-CO).

Start at 24:20



Drives home two key points:

• Parties as networks, and the rise of the partisan outside groups.
• The Iron Law of Emulation -- the Kingston Group.  [And see below...]

Other Publications and Groups

• The Public Interest (1965)
• Copying  DSG, House conservatives  in 1973 found the Republican Study Committee (Rosenfeld 190-191)
• Cato (1977)

Thanks to primaries, Reagan comes very close to defeating Ford for the 1976 nomination.  The delegate count:

• Gerald Ford........... 1,187 52.57%
• Ronald Reagan...... 1,070 47.39%

Not photoshopped:  outgoing vp Nelson Rockefeller expresses his view of the New Right.

Carter years 

• Bill Brock at RNC (Rosenfeld 200-204)
• Moral, Majority (1979) and the culture war-- less abortion than civil rights moves against schools
• Inflation leads to artificial increases in housing values, and income-tax bracket creep -- Supply side economics

(Currently around 7 percent)


"Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas."  -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan 1981

Looking ahead to next week: "By the end of the decade, liberal calls abounded for the explicit emulation of conservative organizational innovations from the 1960s and 1970s" (Rosenfeld 248)

First Writing Assignment, Spring 2022

 Pick one:

• Compare and contrast a Democratic or Republican platform from 1948-1964 with the same party's 2016 OR 2020 platform. (The GOP did not have one in 2020.) What do the similarities and differences tell you about how the national party has changed?  (Platform texts here.)
• Pick any national party chair in the postwar era.  (GOP list, Democratic list).  What did this leader try to do?  How did she or he fare?  In your answer, keep in mind the resources and constraints facing this leader.  Also remember that out-party chairs usually have more flexibility than in-party chairs.
• For people with an interest in foreign policy:  did the 1952 Taft-Eisenhower split on foreign policy foreshadow future Republican divisions?  How did Robert A. Taft both resemble and differ from supporters of the Trump administration?
• The conclusion of the Rosenfeld book is brief.  Drawing on what we have learned since 2016, write an addendum.  That is, have we witnessed a continuation of the trends that the book describes?  Or has polarization taken new forms?  Explain.

Essays should reflect an understanding of class readings and discussions. Many resources, including CQ Weekly and Politics in America, are at Honnold Library/Databases/CQ Library. You should check other sources as well. See:

• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/elect.htm 
• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/dempub.html  

PLEASE EMAIL ME IF ANY LINKS ARE BROKEN!

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. Please submit essays as Word documents, not pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11: 59 PM, Friday, February 25. I reserve the right to dock papers one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

• READ STRUNK AND WHITE FIRST.
• LOOK AT MY WRITING AND RESEARCH PAGE
• WATCH MY WRITING LECTURE.

The 1960s and 1970s

For Wednesday, read Drutman, ch. 3.

FIRST FOUR-PAGE ESSAY ASSIGNED FEB 9, DUE IN SAKAI DROPBOX BY FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25.   

READ STRUNK AND WHITE FIRST.  

AND WATCH MY WRITING LECTURE.

The "censure"

The 1960s in numbers.



In 1965, LBJ got Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.  The effect was dramatic.  In 1972, Rev. Andrew Young (D-Georgia) became the first African-American representative from the Deep South since Reconstruction.  He later said:

“It used to be Southern politics was just ‘n-----’ politics, who could ‘outn-----’ the other—then you registered 10 to 15 percent in the community and folks would start saying ‘Nigra,’ and then you get 35 to 40 percent registered and it’s amazing how quick they learned how to say ‘Nee-grow,’ and now that we’ve got 50, 60, 70 percent of the black votes registered in the South, everybody’s proud to be associated with their black brothers and sisters.”

By 1966, however, the civil rights consensus was already fraying:






1968 Convention

McGovern-Fraser

Daley excluded in 1972 (See Rosenfeld 147)

Party regulars did not have a deep commitment to the old system (Rosenfeld 143). "Opponents of reform could not articulate a plausible argument for existing arrangements..." (144)

From Choosing Presidential Candidates

Definition of "loophole primary"

Irony:  Democratic reforms indirectly strengthened the rising conservative wing of the GOP

• Delegate selection process gave voice to the grassroots;
• On Capitol Hill, power shifted from committee chairs to leadership, and conservatives would gradually capture GOP leadership posts.

Right, Left, and Foreshocks of Polarization

For Monday, read Rosenfeld, ch. 5-6.

Thomas Wright on Taft:

There are particular echoes of Sen. Robert Taft, who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination in 1940, 1948 and 1952, and was widely seen as the leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Taft was a staunch isolationist and mercantilist who opposed U.S. aid for Britain before 1941. After the war, he opposed President Harry Truman’s efforts to expand trade. Despite being an anti-communist, he opposed containment of the Soviet Union, believing that the United States had few interests in Western Europe. He opposed the creation of NATO as overly provocative. Taft’s speeches are the last time a major American politician has offered a substantive and comprehensive critique of America’s alliances.

Taft opposed the Nuremberg Trials -- but supported public housing and social security. 

 Taft v. Eisenhower

McCarthy and Cohn

Buckley, National Review and the conservative movement (Rosenfeld 76-86).

• Buckley supported Joe McCarthy
• Diverged from Taft on NATO, trade, and containment
• Explicitly white supremacist in its first years -- a view that Buckley later renounced.

The fringe

From the "Keep America Committee" 

John Birch Society

1960

Goldwater emerges

"The Treaty of Fifth Avenue"

Nixon and JFK:  domestic policy as foreign policy

Soviets and Civil Rights  -- the Kennedy Administration sees segregation as a front in the Cold war

The Sharon Statement v. The Port Huron Statement (Rosenfeld 95-99)

Goldwater and a Claremont connection:




The politics of congressional consensus:  the 1964 Civil Rights Act

But LBJ understood that victory is fleeting:

When you win big you can have anything you want for a time. You come home with that big landslide and there isn’t a one of them [in Congress] who’ll stand in your way. No, they’ll be glad to be aboard and to have their photograph taken with you and be part of all that victory. They’ll come along and they’ll give you almost everything you want for a while and then they’ll turn on you. They always do. They’ll lay in waiting, waiting for you to make a slip and you will. They’ll give you almost everything and then they’ll make you pay for it. They’ll get tired of all those columnists writing how smart you are and how weak they are and then the pendulum will swing back. 

Dramatized here (1:30):