Into Darkness: Campaign Finance

 For Tuesday, read Hershey, ch. 6 and 7.

Simulation

Types of advocacy groups (Schatzinger and Hershey 279-285)

PACs and Super PACs

Dark Money and Democrats (But GOP spent more in 2022)

Democracy Alliance

As part of their membership in the Democracy Alliance, donors agree to giving $200,000 per year to a list of preapproved organizations, in addition to dues that fund the operations of the group itself, according to a spokesperson. The alliance has supported the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America and the American Constitution Society, a liberal counterpart to the conservative Federalist Society.

 Non-Coordination Coordination (See Schatzinger)

• Interlocking directorates
• Common vendors
• Microsites and Redboxing
• Evading coordination limits by Microsite B-Roll:

(Same with Mitch)

Dark Money and January 6 (and CPAC)

RAGA

Foreign money is illegal, but... Russia plays, too.

From the Mueller report:

The IRA [Internet Research Agency, Russian troll farm in St. Petersberg] organized and promoted political rallies inside the United States while posing as U.S. grassroots activists. First, the IRA used one of its preexisting social media personas (Facebook groups and Twitter accounts, for example) to announce and promote the event. The
IRA then sent a large number of direct messages to followers of its social media account asking them to attend the event. From those who responded with interest in attending, the IRA then sought a U.S. person to serve as the event's coordinator. In most cases, the IRA account operator would tell the U.S. person that they personally could not attend the event due to some preexisting conflict or because they were somewhere else in the United States. The IRA then further promoted the event by contacting U.S. media about the event and directing them to speak with the coordinator. After the event, the IRA posted videos and photographs of the event to the IRA's social media accounts.


The Office identified dozens of U.S. rallies organized by the IRA. The earliest evidence of a rally was a "confederate rally" in November 2015. ... From June 2016 until the end of the presidential campaign, almost all of the U.S. rallies organized by the IRA focused on the U.S. election, often promoting the Trump Campaign and opposing the Clinton Campaign. Pro-Trump rallies included three in New York; a series of pro-Trump rallies in Florida in August 2016; and a series of pro-Trump rallies in October 2016 in Pennsylvania. The Florida rallies drew the attention of the Trump Campaign, which posted about the Miami rally on candidate Trump's Facebook account (as discussed below).

This ad, created in October 2016, targeted, people age 18 to 65+ interested in Christianity, Jesus, God, Ron Paul and media personalities such as Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Mike Savage, among other topics. | Democratic House members

Posted on: Facebook
Created: October 2016
Ad spend: 64 rubles ($1.10)

IT CONTINUED IN 2020

AND THE RUSSIANS ARE STILL AT IT.

Money!

Questions on the assignment?

Start thinking about simulation and the research assignment/oral presentation.

For Thursday, read the Game Changers excerpt and

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-02-24/lobbying-donations-california-legislature-congress-influence 

How to raise money

Fundraising emails

A Valentine

Triple-matched!

The governor was neither kidding nor exaggerating. See this 60 Minutes report at about 43:00:

John Oliver interviews Democrat Steve Israel (about 14:00):

 

Federal spending in 2020 cycle: $14.4 billion

And the 2022 midterm: $8.9 billion.

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)

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

 Pick one:

• Pick a demographic group that is up for grabs in the 2024 election .  Explain why it is in play, with reference to surveys and other data. Examples include Arab Americans, working-class whites, Black men, and young people.  Will many members of the group shift between red and blue, vote third party, or stay home? What are the consequences for the November election?
• Pick any Super PAC in the 2022 campaign and appraise its performance.  What were its goals?  How well did it achieve these goals?  What accounts for its success or failure?
• Make the case for one current proposed 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 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 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.
•  Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism and will result in severe consequences
• Please read my comments on your previous paper.  Repetition of errors makes me grouchy.
• 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 8. I reserve the right to dock papers one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

WRITING A

PO II

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

Suggests for the next assignment?

Candace Valenzuela at Ath

Research paper option:  take a role in the simulation

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

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

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

Short video on immigrants and machines

Supreme Court decisions curb patronage

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

• GOP state parties
• Democratic state parties

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

Incentives for Activism

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

Voter turnout and duty

My generation v. yours

Most people do not engage beyond talking and voting

Young adult activism

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.”

PO

 For Thursday, Hershey ch. 5.

The APSA report that Rosenfeld discusses:

• 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

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

Loopholes!

• Super PACs
• Colbert Super PAC(start at 3:30)
• Dark Money
• Alchemy
• Transfer to Super PACs
• JFC
• Trump legal bills

"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:

Political Parties to the Present

 

For Tuesday :  Hershey, ch. 3, 4.

A special guest on Tuesday!

Recap: things are about to end the four-party system (each party having "congressional" and "presidential" wings).

• 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." In-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 (1995-96)...48.8% -- Gingrich
117th Congress (2021-22)....35.0%

African Americans: the Democratic nominating wing.

In 2020, Biden won 61% of the Black vote, which made up 56% of the Democratic primary electorate, according to CNN exit polling.

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.

Christian Right in the GOP (p. 274)

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

Another look at polarization in PIE

Violence "woke communists"

The Road to Reagan

Most filing deadlines have passed. 

Biden could step aside (unlikely)

RFK Super Bowl

It is simply a 1960 JFK ad with RFK Jr's face:

Family members were not happy.

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

Review from last week:

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

In the background: The "Welfare Shift"

Several different currents in the Democratic Party:

The Center

Reaction to McGovern's defeat

But the rightward shift in Congress was limited. Who were the "Watergate babies"?

Carter's center-right policies:

• Decontrol oil prices;
• Deregulate transportation
• Reform civil service.

The 1979 oil shock causes a recession, and the hostage crisis gives Carter a temporary bump but eventually brings down approval numbers.

On the progressive left:

"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 -- whose members include AOC.

But the problem was "elite, staff-dominated letterhead organizations" (250).

What was the role of UAW and other labor unions?

But the composition of organized labor is changing:

The Kennedy challenge (255-56).  Note dramatic change of tone between the beginning and the end.

New element of the Democratic coalition:  suburban liberals: still liberal on social policy but open to pro-market domestic policies.

1978: Gingrich and Clinton enter the scene

Vanguards

IN WRITING ABOUT HISTORICAL COMPARISONS, ALWAYS REMEMBER THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

 For Tuesday, read Rosenfeld ch. 7 .

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)
• The Thatcher model (p. 208).
• Explicitly worked to tie the GOP to supply-side economics.
• Moral Majority (1979) and the culture war-- less abortion than civil rights moves against schools
• ERA
• 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)

"The Whole World Is Watching"

 For Thursday, catch up on Rosenfeld through ch. 6.

The 1960s in numbers.


Vietnam has lingered over the decades in US politics:

• 1988 -- Quayle
• 1992 -- Clinton
• 2000 -- Bush 43  
• 2004 -- Kerry and swift boats
• 2008 -- McCain as POW
• 2016 -- Trump's bone spurs

"POLICIES MAKE POLITICS."  -- E.E. SCHATTSCHNEIDER

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.

Outcome of 1972 election

Right and Left in the 1960s

 For Monday, read Rosenfeld, ch. 5-6.

Thomas Wright on Trump & 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. 

McCarthy and Cohn

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

• Buckley supported Joe McCarthy
• Diverged from Taft on NATO, trade, and containment
• Explicitly white supremacist in its first years 
• Buckley-Baldwin debate (see starting about 41:00).
• Buckley later moderated his views.

The fringe.  

From the "Keep America Committee" 

John Birch Society (Rosenfeld 103)

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)

Rocky (Rosenfeld 92-93) gets boos at the 1964 convention

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):