Battle of the white hats: two campaign finance reform groups fight the good fight - with each other

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1996 by Steve Scott

ON A SACRAMENTO STREET DOTTED with pawn shops and storefront eateries a vintage 14-story office building stands out amidst the flat, faceless, structures around it. The building's inexpensive rents and proximity to the state capitol have made it a haven for the clatch of public interest and grassroots organizations that lobby the California Legislature. The noisy elevators, funky climate control, and badly outdated lobby directory give a sense of community to this collection of underdogs.

If there's one truth about which most occupants of these musty suites would agree, it is that money is power in Sacramento--nearly all have a story to tell about cooling their heels in a legislator's office while the door swings open for the high rollers. Yet in 1996, it is the very issue of money in politics that has rattled this community and its larger constituent organizations. For the third time in less than a decade, California was fighting an initiative war over campaign finance reform, but this time, the reformers' main foes were not the intractible, well-heeled architects of the status quo. This time, the reformers faced opponents as energetic, committed, and creative as themselves.

This time, they faced each other.

In a spectacle that angered some voters and confused others, two different campaign reform initiatives were placed on this November's statewide ballot. The two initiatives--Propositions 208 and 212--were similar in basic form but distinct in their particulars, representing markedly different philosophies about the concept of reform. The measures were drafted, circulated, and promoted in direct competition with each other by two institutions that have, in other states, worked in concert on the issue--Common Cause and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG). In the end, only one--the Common Cause-backed Prop. 208--survived. But the price of that success was a costly and divisive civil war in which erstwhile allies suddenly found themselves going for each other's throats with the gusto of practiced partisans. "The competition and anger that came out of this will have a detrimental effect on the public interest community in Sacramento for a long time to come," says Kim Alexander, director of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation.

The long strange trip began in the summer of 1994, when PIRG's California branch, CalPIRG, convened a meeting of campaign reform's usual suspects--the League of Women Voters, the American Association of Retired Persons, United We Stand, and, of course, California Common Cause. Many of these groups had worked together in other, smaller states to enact strict $100 campaign contribution limits, as well as a variety of disclosure, gift, and PAC regulations. Though many of these proposals were still being vetted in the courts, CalPIRG was hot to try out PIRG's national template in its own state. California seemed the perfect place to pursue the Holy Grail of campaign reform--a direct challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court's Buckley v. Valeo decision, which effectively banned any form of mandatory limits on campaign spending. "We made it clear we were willing to put resources behind an initiative," says Doug Phelps, director of PIRG and a prime mover in PIRG's previous sojourns into campaign reform. "We had our preferred content, but we figured we'd all have to go to the lowest common denominator"

California's campaign reform veterans--Common Cause and the League of Women Voters--saw CalPIRG as an attractive coalition partner but saw its model as not well-suited to a state California's size. Any direct challenge to Buckley, they felt, threatened the constitutionality of the entire initiative. They also were not convinced that CalPIRG's proposed $100 donation limit for legislative elections would withstand constitutional muster, especially considering how much more populous California's legislative districts were than those of other states that had enacted $100 limits. "Being the policy wonks we are, we didn't want to write our initiative based on what is sexy," says Ruth Holton, director of California Common Cause. "We want to write it on the basis of what will pass and what will hold up in court"

Discussions among the various groups proceeded through the fall of 1994 and into the winter of 1995. Early on, the prospective partners agreed that public financing, though attractive in principle, was a political non-starter in California. According to Phelps, CalPIRG was also willing to defer its challenge to Buckley. All agreed on the importance of uniting behind a single initiative, remembering the bitter experience of 1988. That year, a comprehensive package of spending and contribution limits with public financing was approved by voters, but wound up a dead letter when a competing initiative--bankrolled by legislators--got more votes.

As the months passed in 1995, however, some significant sticking points remained. The League of Women Voters, whose prestige was considered a key selling point for any measure, was adamant about including some kind of voluntary spending limit. To accomplish this without public financing, they and Common Cause proposed a system of variable contribution limits. Candidates who kept their spending below a certain level could receive contributions twice as large as candidates who did not adhere to the spending cap. Phelps was particularly opposed to this concept. "Who does that help? The people with the money to double their contributions," says Phelps.