Testimony of Marc Stier
City Council Committee of the Whole Hearing
on the Public Financing of Political Campaigns
April 26, 2006
President Verna, Members of Council,
I want to first thank Councilmembers Verna and Tasco for introducing the resolution that created this hearing on a subject very important to the future of Philadelphia. And I also thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
I am speaking today in part as a political activist and one-time political candidate but more so as a political scientist who has studied and written about the theory and practice of democracy for thirty years. (You will thus excuse me if I write at a little longer length—as it is an occupational hazard of being an academic.) I will testify today about why I think it would be desirable for Philadelphia to adopt some system of public financing of election campaigns. At a future hearing, I would be happy to return to make some recommendations about what system would be best for Philadelphia. There are many alternatives and some of them are much better suited for the circumstance we face in Philadelphia than others.
I want to start with two observations about politics and then explain why I think public financing of our campaigns is necessary to preserve and protect democratic government in Philadelphia.
The Importance of Money In Politics
The first observation needs little defense: Political campaigns in Philadelphia are expensive and becoming more expensive. Even a largely volunteer campaign in a district council race needs substantial sums of money for campaign literature, posters, mailings and phone calls. A campaign that relies on the party organizations in the city needs money to support that organization. If a candidate does not have a close friend or two who knows how to run a campaign, there is the added expense of hiring staff. And, as radio and television become more important in local campaigns, these costs are rising and will continue to rise.
Costs are rising for another reason as well. It is increasingly difficult for politicians to address the issues their constituents care about through free media. Most television and radio stations ignore all local political races except that for Mayor. Our city wide and local newspapers do not do cover the substance of political campaigns as well as the once did. This the result of the reduction in the number of daily papers in the city of unfortunate cutbacks in the staffs at the Daily News and Inquirer. In addition, the news media has in general been focusing more on the horse race aspects of campaigns then on the substantive disputes between candidates. I think this unfortunate trend is less apparent in coverage of local political races than in state and national races. We are blessed in this city with a number of highly knowledgeable, dedicated and experience political reporters. But it is difficult for even the best local reporters to resist nation-wide trends in news coverage.
If the free media does not enable candidates to inform voters of their views, then candidates must rely on expensive paid media, that is, radio and television advertisements. These however are extremely costly.
My second observation is that it is not necessarily a bad thing that political campaigns are expensive. One could plausibly argue that spending is excessive at the upper reaches of politics, in races for President, Governor and Senator. But spending is much lower in city and state legislative races. American businesses spend tends tens of billions of dollars advertising soap and toothpaste. Is it unreasonable for political candidates to spend a tiny fraction of that amount presenting themselves and their ideas to the voters? Political advertising and the paraphernalia of political campaigns—such things as buttons, posters, and bumper stickers—raise people’s awareness of and interest in politics. At a time when voting rates in most of our elections—and especially in city elections—are very low, spending a lot of money on political campaigns might be a good thing.
The problem, as I see it, then is not so much that we spend a lot of money on political campaigns but where the money comes from. Private financing of political campaigns, in my view, becomes increasingly dangerous as these campaigns become more expensive.
Democracy
The fundamental point of public financing of our campaigns is to insure that our government remains democratic in reality as well as in appearance. Our form of government is a representative democracy. Unlike the ancient Athenian democracy or the modern town meeting, in which political decisions are made by the all the citizens assembled in a large hall or public square, we have a representative democracy, in which political decisions are made by the representatives elected by the people.
In graduate school at Harvard I had a teacher named Harvey Mansfield who said that representative democracy is, to some extent, a form of government in which power is hidden. We can always ask ourselves, who in fact do the representatives speak for? On whose behest do they act? The answer is not always obvious.
I had another teacher, named Michael Walzer, who pointed out that a government that has the form of a representative democracy could in fact be what the ancient Greeks called an oligarchy, that is a government in which the rich rule. Whenever large sums of money are necessary in the process of electing representatives and that money is raised privately from those who are wealthy, the potential for oligarchy or rule by the rich, is present.
This, I should add, is not a partisan view. These two teachers, who directed my doctoral dissertation, had very dissimilar political views. Professor Walzer is a socialist. Professor Mansfield is a conservative Republican. Yet they agreed about that our representative democracy could and in fact does hide the power of the rich under the guise of democracy.
Private Campaign Finance and Government Benefits to Individuals and Corporations
There are three ways in which the influence of money can diminish our democracy. One of those ways has been the subject of a great deal of attention in Philadelphia in the last few years. Recent trials show us that money has been used to influence the political process in a manner that not only diminishes the rule of the people but is also corrupt and illegal. Our pay to play political culture encourages, perhaps even requires, those who seek government contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, below market value property or other goods from the city to secure those benefits by making campaign contributions or personal gifts to political officials. Democracy is undermined—and the costs of government are often dramatically increased—when public decisions are influenced by individuals who give large sums of money to our politicians.
I should point out that Council has in the last few years taken important steps towards reducing this first way in which money is influential in our politics. You are all to be congratulated for putting limitations on campaign contributions in place. And even more restrictive limits have been adopted that prohibit individuals and businesses from receiving contracts or other benefits from the city if they make very large campaign contributions.
Those limits are now the subject of litigation. In my view these limitations do not violate the Home Rule Charter and the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Even if they are found to do so, however, I am fairly confident the General Assembly will move quickly to give Philadelphia the legal right to regulate campaign finance. As you know, State Rep. Dwight Evans has recently introduced legislation to do just that.
I believe that these limitations on campaign contributions are a very good first step towards reforming our politics. But they are not sufficient. There are ways in which the limitations can be legally avoided. For example, an individual or corporation can divide up a very large contribution by giving to a series of political action committees that then pass on that contribution to a political candidate. There are also illegal ways that the limitations on campaign contributions can be skirted, ways that are difficult to detect.
Private Campaign Finance and The Ideological Tilt In Our Politics
There is a respect in which campaign contributions can undermine our democracy. Even if our government does not act to benefit specific individuals or corporations, it might act to benefit the wealthy when adopting public policies that affect large numbers of people. When campaigns are financed by the wealthy, government is more likely to serve the wealthy rather than the poor, working people, or those with incomes in the middle range.
Only a very small proportion of Philadelphians can contribute $100 to a political candidate let alone the maximum of $2500 for an individual or $10,000 for a PAC or business. When campaigns are financed by private contributions, the well-off have an enormous advantage in politics. Thus they are much more likely than the poor to have the ear of our political leaders.
The evidence that campaign contributions have this effect is fairly obvious at the national level. We all know that, over the last thirty years, inequality in income has risen dramatically in the United States. Between 1979 and 2000, the family income of those in the bottom fifth of incomes has grown 8.5%, in the middle fifth of incomes family income has grown about 15% and in the family income of those in the top 1% of incomes has grown 201%. Economists have proposed many explanations for increasing inequality from the advent of new technologies to globalization. Yet one striking fact suggests that the explanation is not fundamentally economic but political. Inequality has not increased nearly as dramatically in the advanced democratic countries in Europe even though they are subject to the same global economic forces. Governments in Europe have acted to keep inequality from increasing. One reason government in America has not done the same is that campaign contributions from the wealthy play a much larger role in financing our campaigns than it does in most European countries.
Do campaign contributions in Philadelphia play a similar role? I am not sure anyone really knows for certain. We live in a Democratic—with a big D—city in which our representatives are more inclined than in other places to care as much about working people as about the rich. Tip O’Neill’s famous saying that all politics is local is certainly true in Philadelphia where the gap between our council people and their constituents is fairly small. And yet, if one looks at some of the problems that afflict the working poor in this city today, one might reasonably wonder whether our political system as a whole is as responsive their concerns as it is to the concerns of those who are well off. Have we been as focused on the negative impact of gentrification on the poor and working people as we should be? Do we give an equal education to everyone in Philadelphia or do wealthier neighborhoods have significantly better schools? Are the playgrounds and recreation centers we provide poor neighborhoods as good as those in rich ones? Does L&I enforce rules and regulations as quickly or as stringently in poor neighborhoods as they do in rich ones? Have we been as concerned about the impact of taxation on the poor as on the rich? Have we done enough to insure that working people have same access to the capital to start new businesses as rich people?
Our answers to these questions might differ. I would argue, however, that public policy in Philadelphia too often benefits the haves more than the have-nots. And one possible explanation is that even well meaning politicians hear so much more from the rich than the poor because it is the rich and well-off who finance political campaigns.
Private Campaign Finance and Equality of Opportunity
Finally, there is a third way in which private financing of political campaigns diminishes our democracy, by limiting the equality of opportunity to become an effective political candidate.
As I said at the beginning of my testimony, political campaigns cost substantial sums of money. The more money they cost, however, the more difficult it is for candidates who are not wealthy themselves or who do not know wealthy people, to get elected to office.
One of the wonderful things about local politics is that it is far more diverse than state and national politics. Council is a wonderful institution in that it is representative of the diversity of this city. That is true in terms of ethnic and racial diversity and to some extent even in diversity of class. Most of the people involved in politics in Philadelphia are, at most, one or two generations removed the working class.
The question for me, however, is whether we can maintain this diversity when political campaigns become ever more expensive. Will people continue to be able to rise from a working class background into Council or the Mayor’s office? I am afraid that, without public financing of political campaigns, this is going to be much less likely in the future than it has been in the past.
An Argument Against Public Financing Rebutted
There is one good argument against the public financing of political campaigns. It is that, in a cit short of cash for other vital purposes, we should not spend to finance political campaigns.
There are three good answers to this complaint. First public financing is not all that expensive. In New York City, during the last two election cycles, public financing cost $25 and $45 million. That is not an insubstantial sum of money. But even the larger figure amounts to less than .1% of the over $50 billion city budget.
Second, while I would not like to see us choose between school books and public financing of campaigns, it seems to me that the protection of democratic rule is in some ways the critical need. If we have a level playing field between rich and poor, I am confident that this city will provide the funds our school children need. If we don’t have a level playing field, it will be more difficult politically to attain that end.
Third, I believe that we have public financing of our political campaigns right now. They are finance through the graft tax, the additional amount that city contractors add to their bills to compensate them for the cost of doing business in Philadelphia, that is, the legal and illegal payoffs they may to city officials. Given that Montgomery County reduced its spending on bond lawyers by more than half after introducing competitive bidding, I would guess that a similar proposal in Philadelphia together, with a system of public financing of our campaigns, would provide all the money we need to pay for that system.
Conclusion
I conclude, then, that if we want to keep local democracy intact, we need to move sooner rather than to replace our private system of financing political campaigns with a system of public campaign finance. We need to do this to create a level playing field for those who seek contracts and other benefits from government, to guarantee that the voice of the poor is heard as loudly as the voice of the rich in City Hall, and to insure that qualified people from all ethnic and racial groups, and from every social class, have the opportunity to win election to office.
Thank you for your attention.