By Jerry D. Rose
Romans 13: 11,12 And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
I closed part 1 of this 2–part essay with this Biblical quotation and I finish my “sermon” here on the same “text,” moving from cursing the darkness to putting on the armour of light toward pursuing electoral campaigns from a populist perspective.
Totally expectedly, I have received comments from readers of Part 1 who remain skeptical of the practicality of the kind of strategy of “running against the money” which I propose here. This part of the essay moves toward putting this strategy in what will hopefully be just such a “practical” frame. The “armour” that I’m urging us to don is not that of putting some kind of aura of divine inspiration around ourselves, but rather the application of very hard-nosed principles of political psychology. One critic paid me the compliment of saying I was “too honorable” a person, that I under-estimated the good faith of others who run their lives by non-moral calculations of how they can best achieve their goals. On the contrary, my suggestions are as applicable to the most dishonorable as to the most honorable of people. As a “principled progressive,” I obviously hope that this will be taken as a blueprint for a progressive variety of populist campaigning. But if “tea partiers” for example want to use their own variety of anger against their victimization by the wielders of money power, that’s their party and I’m sure some will, as a matter of necessity, try to find ways to make their own under-funded campaigns successful.
The value of money in the electoral marketplace. This phrase, which ended the first part of this essay, is the beginning of the analysis in this part. The assumption of those cursers of the darkness who decry the out-sized influence of money on our elections is that the amount of money accessed by a campaign has a cumulative effect on chances of electoral success: simply put, the more money you have, the more likely you are to be successful. The more you can buy those expensive TV ads and those expensive direct mailings to voters, the more yard signs and bumper stickers you can put out, etc, the more likely you are to win. I will argue that, if the matter is “smartly approached,” this is simply not true.
To start with an example of electoral effects not directly monetary, I’ll cite a story about Ronald Reagan’s campaign for Governor of California in 1966. His friend, Barry Goldwater, had just come off a disastrous defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and, as Reagan’s campaign started, Goldwater said to him: “Ronnie, if it will help you, I’ll campaign for you. If it will help you more, I’ll campaign against you.” This was a self-effacing recognition by Goldwater that his support was a devalued benefit given his unpopularity as demonstrated in the 64 election. Sometimes your “help” can hurt you more than it can help you. When my children were little and wanted to “help” me with some chore, I sometimes said “Oh let ‘em help me, it will only take twice as long if they help.”
This is precisely the kind of “poison pill” of lavish campaign funding that I am proposing as a very realistic possibility, given the “bad reputation” that Wall Street and other moneyed interests have gained in the population at large with the recent recession and the recent political favoritism toward large corporations. A candidate’s (or an issue campaign’s ) huge war chest of funding may find itself with a severely de-valued product (money): less valuable, indeed, in the search for votes than the relatively penniless candidate’s ability to present himself or herself to the voting public as one who suffers victimization from the plutocracy just as much as does the voter. Dennis Kucinich, in his 04 and 08 presidential campaigns, tried (much too subtly, I believe) to gain electoral support by a repeated biographical statement of his hard times “growing up” when his family had to move from place to place and, a couple of times, they had to sleep in cars. What Kucinich failed to do was to take off the gloves (as he has done so well in confronting the likes of Robert Gates) and hold up his opponents’ bloated campaign funding as a poisoned pill that should have de-valued their claims to the presidency.
Let me be very specific now in outlining the kind of populist low-budget campaign that I think can work. It starts with an electoral opponent or opponents with huge campaign funds at their disposal: maybe something like the $1 million that Bill Moyers said is spent by judicial candidates in New York State. It continues with the kinds and amounts of campaign contributions one will solicit and accept for one’s own campaign: an amount usually much LESS than what campaign funding laws will allow.
For one example, I’m looking for a candidate in a state legislative district in Florida to run a campaign based on $20 maximum contributions from 500 people, raising a total of $10,000—enough to pay for inexpensive flyers, yard signs, filing fees, and a website but avoiding expensive TV ads and direct mailings. In the race in question, the incumbent legislator was elected in 2006 with a total of $125,000 in funds and was re-elected in 2008 on $89,000. With the “flood-gate” of free corporate contributions to “electioneering committees” supporting specific candidates, he could presumably raise more for his 2010 re-election race. So let’s say, the race could be between a $10k candidate and one with, say, $100k, seemingly a David and Goliath match-up. David of course had the “armour of the Lord,” but the 10k man or woman must have a different kind of armour: his or her poverty and identification with the mass of the voters matched against that of the opponent supported by numerous $250 (legal maximum) from countless special interests groups from throughout Florida as well as those out-of-staters who “do business” in the state. These contributions are posted on the State’s Division of Elections after every candidate’s quarterly reports, and should be the populist candidate’s prime exhibit against the opponent, along with the opponent’s voting record (also obtained from Project Vote Smart) on issues of interest to those campaign donors. As well, I’m looking for this candidate to gain a great her of “unearned” (free) media coverage of running this newsworthy shoe-string small-donations campaign, just for the novelty of the thing. This unearned media potential could be magnified if the candidate ran as an “independent” in the November election, bidding to become the ONLY member of the Florida legislature who is not either a Republican or a Democrat (we know how the media love something “historic”).
I have written here as if the populist candidate’s campaign was entirely a matter of money, who has it and who doesn’t have it. This is decidedly not true, as the populist must take the popular side on a great range of issues related to the progressive values of peace, justice and environmental justice and must make himself or herself readily available to constituents on a regular basis, not just at “election time.” This goes “without saying” here because what I’m am trying to say here is that a candidate who runs on a platform that embodies these values need not fear the inability to compete with candidates who are much more well-endowed financially. Whether you are rich or poor does not (and should not) be an overiding determinant of whether you have a chance to be elected to a public office in a democratic “land of opportunity.” All I’m advocating is a leveling of the playing field between the rich and the poor. Once that levelling is achieved, let the best man or woman (or yes or no on a ballot initiative) win, but do not let the amount of money in one’s campaign coffers be an overwhelming determinant of the “best” of candidates.
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Jerry D. Rose is editor of The Sun State Activist
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