If money is speech, most of us have laryngitis.
Losing propositions
By
Ed Garvey
Long before the Koch brothers invaded our space (Wisconsin), I had spent lots of time fighting for public funding of campaigns. Having run for the Senate, I understood how demeaning fundraising is to the candidate. Start with my parents. They taught my sisters and me that we should be givers not takers. When you run for office you learn just the opposite lesson. Candidates are takers not givers. First thing you get is a tin cup to hold.
You will be schooled on the techniques of fundraising. You want to talk about the need to end the war (there is always a war) but you are told that your views on the war are irrelevant or worse — they might turn off a potential contributor.
Your campaign will give you index cards with names and phone numbers, and important information about each person on your “call” list. Oops, I forgot to mention that fundraising is a full-time occupation. If you have a speech in Superior, you have lots of drive time with a volunteer. As a candidate you think the long drive will give you time to polish your speech, but no, it is “call time.” You are expected to make a dozen or more calls per day begging for dollars. You won’t recognize many of the names on the cards but, hey, they won’t recognize your name either. But the strangers are Big Donors from Chicago, New York, LA, and Seattle. Make those calls! You need those dollars to pay, you guessed it, the consultants who have provided the names and numbers. You feel stupid calling strangers for more money than you have ever given to anyone. Think I’m kidding? Ask your senator, House member or governor.
In the pre-super PAC days, as a Democrat, you went on a tour of Washington to collect $5,000 checks from unions, environmentalists, and peace groups. If the group is moderate or liberal and they have a PAC, you will soon be in the lobby with your tin cup. How do you know the person to call? Your consultant, of course, who works with a certain pollster, a TV spot creator, a direct mail expert, and has lunch with PAC directors. And so it goes. There is barely enough room at the trough.
Now we are informed that a guy who owns a casino or a house of ill repute can dump $10 million or $30 million into a super PAC someone created for your opponent and negate all of the fundraising you have done.
If money is speech, most of us have laryngitis.
Ask the question posed by Wisconsin Justice Edward G. Ryan in 1873: Who will fill public stations, educated and free men and women or the feudal serfs of corporate capital? (Or a casino operator with a diamond pinky ring?)
Now look at the system from the small donor’s perspective.
She is told that Walker will have $30 million available from the Kochs and their ilk. “Then you don’t need my 50 bucks — not even a drop in the bucket but that is what I can afford.”
I say keep the 50 dollars and invest it in the Tin Cup Brigade of Badgers who believe that we can beat money with people voting. Join the crusade to respond to Koch money with people power. Then we can tell the Kochs to butt out! We will find our own candidates, not those beholden to the Koch brothers. And instead of turning off the little donor, we welcome her with open arms. Might even convince her to run. There is your answer, Justice Ryan.
(A version of this article originally appeared in the opinion section of the Capital Times.)
February 21, 2012
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Ed Garvey is editor and publisher of FightingBob.com.
