The lead National Section story in Monday’s New York Times found the paper once again trying to make campaign finance reform a winning issue for the Democrats, in “Tired of Money in Politics, Some Democrats Think Small -- More candidates are spurning PAC’s, relying instead on individual donors, and voters are responding.”
The top of Farah Stockman’s story, from Excelsior, Minnesota, featured a cute photo of Democratic candidate Dean Phillips emerging from a campaign vehicle, with young helpers using arrow signs to point to him.
Like many political candidates, Dean Phillips spends hours each day fund-raising and thanking his donors. But because he refuses to accept PAC money from corporations, unions or other politicians, he has adopted a unique approach.
“Norbert?” he asked on the doorstep of a man who’d donated $25 to his campaign. “I’m here with goodies!”
Mr. Phillips, who is running for Congress in the suburbs of Minneapolis, handed over a gift bag containing a T-shirt and bumper sticker. The exchange was recorded in a video that was shared later with his supporters to encourage them to contribute as well. Norbert Gernes, an 80-year-old retiree, was impressed.
The partisan edge to this purportedly “good-government” issue of money in politics (which is a free-speech issue, though Stockman doesn’t mention it) is clear:
Campaign finance was once famously dismissed by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, as being of no greater concern to American voters than “static cling.” But since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates for unrestricted political spending, polls have shown that voters are growing increasingly bitter about the role of money in politics.
The issue is now emerging in midterm races around the country, with dozens of Democrats rejecting donations from political action committees, or PACs, that are sponsored by corporations or industry groups. A handful of candidates, including Mr. Phillips, are going a step further and refusing to take any PAC money at all, even if it comes from labor unions or fellow Democrats.
Rather than dooming the campaigns, these pledges to reject PAC money have become central selling points for voters. And for some of the candidates, the small-donor donations are adding up.
Stockman found a poll to support her thesis.
A recent Pew report found that 75 percent of the public said “there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns.
(News flash: There already are limits.)
After giving Donald Trump some backhanded praise for his promise to “drain the swamp,” Stockman chided:
But Republican leaders have so far not taken up the issue. And Mr. Trump routinely endorses candidates who accept large amounts of money from corporate PACs....
Stockman spared a shout-out for some prominent Democratic presidential contenders.
Democrats in Congress also routinely give leadership posts to top fund-raisers. But an increasing number of rising stars in the party have sworn off corporate PAC money including Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
....
[Candidate Phillips’] message is particularly potent because his opponent, Mr. Paulsen, has taken in the sixth-largest haul from PACs out of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Mr. Paulsen was under fire even before Mr. Phillips entered the race, because of his record of voting in lock step with President Trump....
....
Laurie Wolfe, a college professor from Maple Grove, Minn., said Mr. Phillips’s no-PAC pledge has bipartisan appeal.
The Times has been riding its “no money in politics” hobby-horse for decades, and always with an unacknowledged pro-Democratic edge which sometimes peeks out, as in this 2012 story: “To Democrats and some campaign finance watchdogs eager to force more transparency in spending by independent groups, Hope, Growth and Opportunity stands out as the kind of “pop-up” organization that operates in virtual secrecy, with legal impunity.”
