Financing Election Campaigns
Dear Financiers:
Dorothy, below, writes about the campaign finance bills that are
currently pending in the city council. What are your ideas about them?
Do you see the possibility for any of them to clean up the way election
campaigns are financed and run in DC? Are you enthusiastic about any of
them? Weigh in now, or get weighed down by them soon.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Clean Elections in the District
Dorothy Brizill,
dorothy@dcwatch.com
Two articles in The Washington Post in the last two days
highlight the need for real campaign finance reform in he District. In
his Saturday column, Colbert King writes about the federal investigation
of corruption in the District and notes that the "chief focus is the
scads of off-the-books money that deep-pocketed special interests have
shells out over the years to greedy, financially challenged politicians,
shadow political campaigns, and straw donors — to acquire all of the
goodwill, and contracts, that money can buy at city hall,"
http://tinyurl.com/bw5c98w. Nikita Stewart
and Mike DeBonis provide new details on the alternate, $653,000,
"shadow" campaign that was overseen in 2010 by Vernon Hawkins to get
Vincent Gray elected mayor in "Gray Campaign Aide Says He Voiced
Concerns to Candidate About How Efforts Were Funded,"
http://tinyurl.com/bs8my34. Their article
raises renewed concerns regarding what and when Gray knew about the
illegal, off-the-books campaign that operated out of Union Temple
Baptist Church in southeast.
There are five bills regarding campaign finance that are currently
pending before the city council: Bill 19-713, Campaign Finance Reform
Amendment Act of 2012; Bill 19-730, Money Order Restriction Amendment
Act of 2012; Bill 19-933, Public Financing of Elections Act of 2012; and
Bill 19-960, Comprehensive Campaign Finance Reform Amendment Act of
2012. Muriel Bowser’s Committee on Government Operations held hearings
in the spring and as recently as November 2 on the various bills. In
addition, Bowser has also scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday,
November 20, at 2:00 p.m., for councilmembers to meet with Attorney
General Irv Nathan to discuss Bill 19-960, which is the Gray
administration’s proposal for campaign finance reform.
It is clear that, like the ineffective, poorly drafted ethics bill
that Bowser and then Council Chairman Kwame Brown rushed through the
council last December, a similar effort is underway with regard to
campaign finance reform. All of the bills, as currently drafted, are
seriously flawed. For example, none of the bills effectively addresses
one of the most important campaign issues that has arisen in recent
years — the funneling of unreported cash money to candidates and
campaigns. Moreover, the discussion to date has failed to recognize the
need not just to adopt new laws and regulations but to simultaneously
improve the monitoring, policing, and prosecution of the campaign
finance laws that already exist. Without enforcement, any number of laws
is meaningless.
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Second and Third Parties
Richard Layman,
rlaymandc@yahoo.com
With regard to David Schwartzman’s comments in the previous issue of
themail [November 14], the real issue is whether or not there can be
viable alternatives to the local Democratic Party, the lack of solid
platforms for either the dominant party or competitors, and the need for
other reforms (which I discussed in themail previously) to create
greater diversity of representation. To be taken seriously, second
parties need to elect candidates successfully. Third parties just need
to influence the discourse. In response to the results of the 2012
presidential election and the reality that the Democratic Party is
really the party of cities and metropolitan regions, I wrote another
blog entry opining about how to leverage this fact towards a pro-urban
national and local agenda. I wrote about how in Vancouver and Montreal,
local parties not affiliated with the national parties are competitive,
with deep and thorough platforms. In London, the Green Party is a viable
third party, albeit with only two elected candidates — it makes sense
that in the national capital of the UK, the Green Party has a hard time
competing with Labour and Conservatives.
Looking at their respective platforms, I was struck by the lack of
thorough platforms for local party politics here in DC, and that
includes the dominant party.
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2012/11/repositioning-cities-at-least-on-coasts.html.
I’d recommend that the Statehood-Green Party reach out to these parties
in other cities and get insight into how to develop a viable path
forward. I do think it is difficult, but possible, for non-Democrats to
be elected at the ward level, and potentially at large, but it requires
an almost permanent campaign, with a very strong community organizing
tinge, like the 2008 Obama campaign, the creation of viable
alternatives, etc. For example, Gary’s discussion in the preamble to the
last edition of themail discusses the city’s new "economic development
plan" and how it was developed with no citizen input. Seemingly, that’s
a good issue to begin to rally around, in terms of creating credible
alternatives. What does a neighborhood-centric development program mean?
In Montreal, Gary would probably not be happy in how Project Montreal
advocates for a transit heavy agenda, bike lanes, and what not. But in
Plateau-Mont Royal borough, clearly it’s an agenda that resonates, since
that party successfully wins elections there. See the Utne Reader
article
http://www.utne.com/politics/luc-ferrandez-zm0z12jazros.aspx.
In the current election cycle, I was surprised to see a bit more
"professionalism" or at least design values in ANC campaigns — high
quality yard signs and even in the case of Ivan Frishberg in ANC6B, door
knockers. None was of the cheap flyers variety that has typified
campaigns in previous cycles. Certainly DC’s second and third parties
are capable of something similar.
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The Republican Alternative
Mary Brooks Beatty,
mbbeatty@aol.com
Gary, you are entirely correct [themail, November ] that this
election was "ineffective" in creating change. Your analysis on the
result is very astute, and I agree completely. By replacing Michael
Brown with David Grosso, the city is just replacing one liberal Democrat
with another. But I have a different view as to why this occurred. You
state that the DC Republican party is partly to blame and seem to think
that is because the candidates tried to distinguish themselves from the
national party. As part of your defense you state that I "refused" to
say whether I would vote for the Republican candidate for President. On
September 20, I stated that I intended to vote for Mitt Romney on Bruce
DePuyt’s show (Newstalk, NewsChannel 8). I consider this a fairly public
statement of my support for Romney in advance of the election.
So here’s the problem that I see with your argument. You seem to be
saying that the only alternative that a Republican candidate in DC can
offer is that of the Republican national party platform. In the Ward 5
debate, during which I stated that it was my right to cast my vote in
the privacy of the voting booth, the question about who I was voting for
President was the fourth in a row of confrontational questions trying to
connect me with the national platform. But as I had stated in many
forums, Republicans can disagree on policies while agreeing on
principles. The principles that make me a proud Republican, and that
offered a clear alternative to all other candidates in the race, include
limited government, fiscal accountability, free markets, and
self-responsibility. Who I vote for President doesn’t tell you much
about how I might govern in DC.
The more important part of my answer at the Ward 5 debate was why
Democrats in DC should vote for a Republican. That is, that this city
needs a two-party system. One-party rule stifles democracy and leads to
corruption. The entire city is cheated by Democrats who switch to being
independents and thereby cheat our Home Rule law’s intent of allowing a
voice for the minority. Don’t blame those Republicans who give up a year
of their lives to offer that alternative.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Mendelson at the Federation of Citizens
Associations, November 27
Anne Renshaw,
milrddc@aol.com
DC City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson will tackle the council’s
2013 legislative challenges at an Assembly of the DC Federation of
Citizens Associations on Tuesday evening, November 27 at 6:45 p.m. The
meeting, which is open to the public, will be held at All Souls Memorial
Episcopal Church Hall, 2300 Cathedral Avenue, NW, near the Woodley Park
Metro on the Red Line.
Residents are expected to question Chairman Mendelson about the
pending fiscal cliff, possible worsening unemployment, likely tax
increases, DC post-"Sandy" public safety readiness, proposed
modifications to EMS/Zoning/ABC regulations, Health Insurance Exchange
oversight, and ongoing neighborhood crime. Note: Assembly Delegates will
also vote on three Policy Positions of the Citizens Federation: campaign
contributions, the height act, and the zoning rewrite.
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