Dear Progressive Reformers,

I have one question for you.  Do you want to be political reformers or do you want to be partisans?  Because you can't be both, or at least you can't be both at the same time.

I’m hoping you’re more committed to reform than you are to partisanship.

By the way, it's probably not the best strategy to invite a left wing mob and a Tea Party mob to meet up somewhere on Wall Street and expect them to hold hands and sing.  It's probably a good thing that the Tea Party isn’t showing up in Lower Manhattan.  Given all the intense partisan hatred, we need to approach working together on common goals with great deliberation.  I am not at all sure that the images coming out of New York are helpful.  We need to search for common ground in quiet, open and thoughtful discussions between us.

First, let's give credit where credit is due.  Progressive reformers have been on the cutting edge regarding issues of political fundraising and corruption. 

But that said,  as reformers you can be your own worst enemy.  At least half of everything I read written by progressive election reformers has a partisan edge to it or a poison pill for conservatives.   It may come as a surprise to many progressives, but many conservatives, and members of the Tea Party in particular, are ready for a clean elections system.  Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.  Tea Party activists and other conservatives are signing up in equal numbers to progressives on our web site here at RebuildDemocracy.org.  But many of you, dear progressives, are making my bridge-building job more difficult.

Some of your efforts to "get money out of politics" are hurting the cause of clean elections.   Indeed, sometimes I think the Citizen United case is used, ironically, mainly as a fundraising tool for the Left.  The decision in this case, which permits unlimited corporate political speech, nicely allows progressives to rally their base by bashing corporations.  The solution put forward is to eliminate corporate personhood, to the extent that corporations have personhood (this point is arguably not yet established in law). This in turn would presumably pave the way for government regulation of corporate expenditures on political speech.   But in the end such a campaign is in equal parts bad politics for bringing us together, and bad policy.   

Please consider.  Let's imagine that progressives somehow manage to pass a constitutional  amendment forbidding corporations from political advertising in favor of, or opposed to, certain candidates or political positions related to the corporation's financial interests.  Then what?  What about the directors of the corporation, its officers, it's subcontractors, its employees, the spouses of these people, their children, their parents, the cousins, the aunts, the uncles and all of their friends somehow related to the corporation?  Would none of these people be able to pool their money to engage in political speech?  If we start limiting the free speech of people associated with corporations, where will it end?  And if we don't put limits on the people associated with corporations, then we have not really limited the corporation's ability to unduly influence politics, something most of us want.  As a policy matter, banning corporate speech must either be limited to the corporation itself and therefore be mostly ineffectual, or it must be a draconian abridgement on a whole class of people's right to free speech.

It's this latter possibility that conservatives fear.  It's why limitations on corporate speech are a non-starter for conservatives.  Conservatives are also well aware that limitations on corporate political advertising leave progressive funders, like public unions and trial lawyers, free to advertise on behalf of their progressive and Democrat allies.  This is why "campaign finance reform" is viewed by so many conservatives as nothing but an attempt by progressives to gain political advantage.

And as Justice Kennedy pointed out his majority opinion in the Citizens United case, most media are, in fact, corporations.  Is there any chance that a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United  might open the door for the government to control the speech of media corporations?  It is a question that should be of as much concern to progressive civil  libertarians as it is to Ayn Rand libertarians. 

So let's step back a moment to discover the common ground and potential solutions.   Grassroots progressives and grassroots conservatives actually agree on many important things.  For example, most conservatives are as incensed as you are about the big bailouts on Wall Street.  Most conservatives understand, as you do, that we currently have a government of, by and for the special interests, not the people.  Conservatives appreciate that allowing legislators to collect campaign money from the same interests they regulate is an inherent conflict of interests. Conservatives are outraged, perhaps even more than progressives, that elections in the United States are unfair because fundraising advantages and gerrymandered districts make most incumbents - over 87% of all House members - virtually unbeatable.

Please note here that I am referring to the views of grassroots conservatives rather than the conservative political establishment.  Progressives and conservatives each have their own insiders and outsiders.  If we really want to fix the system, we need to recognize the populist cross-ideological common threads that can unite us.  We should begin by actually listening to each other.

Conservatives have long thought term limits to be the best - if not perfect - reform to address the broken system.  Conservatives find political careerism, more than money, at the root of the corruption.  But congressional term limits, thanks to the Supreme Court decision US Term Limits v. Thornton, require a constitutional amendment.  Rank-and-file Democrats overwhelmingly favor term limits, but the activist Left is not so enthusiastic (Ralph Nader is the notable exception).  A constitutional amendment for congressional term limits is a long and daunting march for grassroots conservative activists to lead all by themselves.  Along the way, Republican as well as Democrat insiders will block the path.

As I go around discussing our elections and campaign financing system, "we have to do something" is a common refrain I hear from grassroots conservatives. They fully appreciate that their beloved republic has become corrupted.  Many conservatives recognize that the current system, in which elected officials take money from the same interests they regulate, permits lawful and institutionalized bribery and extortion -- practices that should be illegal.  But if we outlaw these practices, how will we fund political campaigns?  This is a question that conservatives are increasingly asking.

While conservatives reject anything that smacks of government-imposed limits on speech, they are becoming open to solutions that could fund elections cleanly, without all of the usual influence buying and selling.  The best-known model is the Fair Elections Now Act, which is similar to public campaign financing laws in Arizona, Connecticut and Maine.  While I personally find this approach far superior to our current system, conservatives who think about these things often worry that a system in which the government matches and multiplies small campaign contributions is too clunky and too government-centric; it has the potential for insiders to corrupt the process to their own advantage.

Conservatives respond more favorably to ideas laid out inVoting with Dollars, a book by Yale Professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayers.  Their proposal has two components.  The first would set up a blind trust, so that politicians could not know the source of their campaign contributions.  This would theoretically eliminate all of de facto bribery and extortion from our elections and legislative process.  The blind trust is a complicated system, and we'd have to know that we could trust the trust.  But even if the blind trust was not a completely airtight filter, it would still be far better than the current system, which actually encourages the buying and selling of favors.

The second part of Ackerman and Ayers’ plan would give every citizen a $50 (or more as adjusted for inflation) campaign donation voucher, which citizens could divide and donate to US House, Senate and Presidential candidates.  This idea works for many conservatives because it's not government-centric.  Everyone pays at least $50 in taxes, so it's like getting your own money back to donate to candidates of your own choice.  Such an approach empowers citizens rather than the government or the special interests.

Yes, corporations and other interests would still be able to advertise, but rigorous disclosure laws and criminal penalties for colluding with political campaigns -with such collusion understood as an attempted bribe or extortion - could blunt the power of special interests political spending without compromising the first amendment.

The key to all these promising reforms is that there must be enough funding for would-be clean candidates to be heard.  Election history clearly shows that winning elections is about having enough money, though not necessarily the most money.  Add clean money through a new system and we all win.  Attempt to silence speech or restrict campaign cash flows and we all ultimately lose.

Please beware,progressives, of the danger of believing your own rhetoric about conservatives.  Yes,Tea Party activists passionately oppose most of the policies you favor, and vice versa.  But grassroots conservatives are open to clean government solutions, especially as part of a comprehensive reform package that includes term limits and an end to gerrymandering.  When it comes to election reform, there is a common high ground on which grassroots conservatives and grassroots progressives can meet and stand together against those who are destroying our democracy.

Stephen Erickson