Jeff Golden
Golden, D-Ashland, is a state senator representing Senate District 3 in the Oregon Legislature and the author of “Unafraid: A Novel of the Possible.”
As chair of the Senate Campaign Finance Committee, I get media requests to comment on money in politics. The last one asked about a recent Oregon Public Broadcasting story detailing large contributions to state attorney general and treasurer candidates from class-action attorney firms that sometimes get lucrative contracts from those two state offices. A reporter wanted to know what I thought about that.
What I think is pretty simple. This isn’t about our current attorney general and treasurer, both of whom are serving Oregon honestly and ably; my guess is they accepted the standard expert advice that it’s stupid to “unilaterally disarm” by rejecting special-interest checks while your opponent is cashing them. What this is about is a fundamentally messed-up campaign finance system – one that flows naturally from our status as one of very few states that doesn’t regulate the size or timing of political donations; doesn’t mandate that funders of political ads be named; and doesn’t come close to the common-sense restrictions that other states have adopted. It is a campaign finance system that runs squarely against what most Oregonians want.
This is where it gets simple. A clear majority of Oregonians I know don’t want individuals or groups writing huge checks to candidates. Even more feel that way when considering donors who have a special financial stake in what those candidates decide after they’re elected. Some call our current system legalized bribery. I’m not sure about that. I am sure that other democracies consistently ban this kind of funding. You can see jaws drop when international visitors hear our system described.
There’s an important point that sometimes gets blurred in this conversation—most of my legislative colleagues are high-integrity people. I’ve offended some of them by highlighting what I hold to be a plain fact: we won’t make serious progress on the big issues until we reduce the power of concentrated political money. What some officials seem to hear in that is a charge that they’re corrupt.
That’s not what I think. After decades in and around electoral politics, what I think is that deliberating on complex public policy decisions, very often close calls, is an intensely demanding task. It calls for our best thinking and undivided attention. At a time when winning political office requires far too much money, when citizens are so overwhelmed with solicitations that raising money is a grim tedious chore, the appeal of those $20,000-$100,000 campaign checks becomes fierce. So fierce that, on the brink of a high-stakes vote, it’s nearly impossible—I’m tempted to strike “nearly”—to keep your mind from wandering to what your biggest donors are likely to think.
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So we’re really not talking about corruption. We’re talking about distraction at moments when we least want our decision-makers distracted. If we want our leaders making crucial policy decisions on the merits of proposals and the merits alone, the jumbo campaign checks have to go.
We can make that happen. The first step is a proposal you’ll see on the November ballot to add language to the Oregon Constitution that empowers the Legislature, local governments, or the people through the initiative process to regulate campaign financing. Here in the Legislature we’ve begun the conversation on just what (assuming that voters approve the ballot measure) those regulations should be: how high should we set dollar limits, and what kinds of entities should be eligible to donate? The bill my committee introduced to answer those question will likely be considered either by the Senate Rules Committee in the pending short session or a special task force in the months that follow.
There are complex nuances in the process of setting fair and balanced limits, and in the subjective task of judging public officials’ claims that they’re not influenced by big donations. There’s plenty of room for disagreement. What I’m hoping is that, by way of a “yes” vote in November, we can agree on this much: Oregon government will better serve Oregonians as a whole when people or groups with big financial stakes in public policy outcomes no longer bankroll political campaigns. Not too complicated, right?
"Opinion" - Google News
January 29, 2020 at 09:45PM
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Opinion: It’s not complicated to understand that Oregonians want big money out of politics - oregonlive.com
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