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Adam Shubert

Adam Shubert is the founder of Neodad, Inc., an event planning and political strategies consulting firm. From 1996 to 1997, he was an assistant to the deputy national finance director of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and in 1997 he also worked for the 53rd Presidential Inaugural Committee. Following that, he worked for Mercer & Associates, Inc., a Washington-based political fundraising and consulting firm.

Josh Israel interviewed Shubert on May 22, 2007.

Could you begin by giving us a little bit of a sense of what your involvement has been within the political process? Who you have worked for over the past decade and a half? How long has it been?

Well, let’s see. My first campaign was 1990, with Pete Peterson in the panhandle of Florida, and then moving forward to work eventually at the DNC, and then privately.

And what was your role at the DNC?

I was an assistant to the deputy national finance director. So I wasn’t actually, technically, a fundraiser; I was support staff. Every major office in the DNC finance [department], and I’m sure throughout the DNC, has assistants. And we kind of [are] the trains-on-time record keepers in that process.

What years were you with the DNC?

I started in 1996 and left in 1997.

So you worked on the ’96 reelection-of-the-president cycle?

Yes.

And also the convention?

Yes.

Did you have any involvement in the inauguration?

Yes. I was actually, technically resigned from the DNC after the November election, hired on at the inaugural committee. And then when that disbanded or was close to disbanding I resigned from there, and then started back up again at the DNC.

Well, starting [with] the DNC, in general, about how big would you say the finance team was when you were there?

I am trying to remember, because we had so many people on the road in 1996, because you have fundraisers to pull you around the country. You each have regions, just like in the other committees, and/or they have various locations they specialize in. A guy may be a Western region guy, but if he’s from Chicago, obviously he is going to do Chicago events as well. But I don’t know — maybe 50, give or take a few. But I would say 50 is not an unreasonable number.

And were most of those fundraisers or was it divided with support staff?

No. I would say at least 75 percent fundraisers.

And what exactly is the role of the national committees? What are they fundraising for?

Well, that’s changed considerably from 1996 until now. So if you want to talk about what they did in 1996 versus what the role of the committees is now, because the campaign finance laws, both in the wake of the 1996 election and then of McCain-Feingold, everything has changed.

What was it in ’96?

In 1996, the caveat is I was not in compliance. I was not in legal. Any information that I know about this was based on my own understanding of the process and not where I was sitting in the counsel’s office or the bookkeeping office learning about this. My understanding was that the Democratic National Committee at that time had two roles. We had your federal money and your nonfederal money. And each person could designate and could contribute federally and nonfederally. The federal money — everybody who was involved with the process knows this — could be spent directly on federal campaigns. And that was a limited amount of money, commonly known as hard money. And that money could be directly spent on federal elections, where you could say, “Vote for this candidate.” Or you could write the check to that candidate, although I think there is a limit. But basically, that’s how the committee could spend its money directly in support of federal candidates.

And that would include the presidential candidate?

Yeah. That was a limited amount of money. There were splits; I forget how it was split. You could only contribute a limited amount of federal money. I think it was $20,000 that an individual could be contributed federally, per cycle, to the campaign. But then again, the federal limit total was $25,000 for all campaigns. I don’t know if that was cycle or per year, in 1996. I am sure someone could answer that one. So the fight for federal money was a very tough one. Because if you’ve got somebody who is writing thousand-dollar checks to senators and other campaigns, you are also, in a sense, competing against the other committees for this hard money. Everybody wants the hard money because you can spend it any way you want. But it’s very hard to get. I mean, that’s why they call it hard money.

So it became a situation where we were all scrambling for those to see how much money we could get designated, because it is also important for the contributors to keep their own records. Let’s say you write a $50,000 check to the DNC at the time. And we come to you and say, “Can you please designate $15,000 of this as federal?” They say, “Yes.” Well, they’ve got $10,000 left for the whole cycle. So if they write to other candidates of the committees, if they go past their federal limit, then they are the ones responsible, not the committees. I mean, it’s not the committee’s job to tell the individual. They have authorized it. We have done it, but they have to keep their own accounting. So that was the federal part.

The nonfederal, or commonly known as soft money, that was spent on party-building activities, you had to get real creative with that, because the idea is that you cannot say, with soft money, “Go and support this person.” You cannot say, “I want you to vote.” Now it gets kind of fuzzy, I guess, in terms of what does it sound like and what doesn’t it sound like. But, for instance, you can put an advertisement on TV, and it says, “Bob Dole is a bad guy, and you should tell him so.” That’s okay. If I put on TV, “Bill Clinton is a good guy, and we like Bill Clinton,” and there is a nice picture of him, and that’s the end of the ad, those are okay, to my understanding. But if you put on there, “Don’t vote for Bob Dole for president,” then you have violated the law.

Based on it being called nonfederal? Am I right in assuming that it would have been okay to use the nonfederal, or soft money, for some state and local elections?

Certainly. In effect, party-building activity is exactly what it’s there for. The idea is that you use it to build the party. You can contribute to the Tennessee Democratic Party to help build up their operations for getting out the vote. It’s also GOTV money; it can still be spent on behalf of Democrats. It’s not like the way that the 527s work. But 527s have a tougher designation about their partisanship. But the Democratic National Committee takes that soft money; I can make a Tennessee Democratic Party the best Democratic infrastructure in the world. They get the best phones, the best Internet. I am writing big checks to get out the Democratic votes. Now, in turn, they cannot spend the money that I give them on behalf of federal candidates. But you can do general get-out-the-vote and voter-interest situations. But I think the FEC [Federal Elections Commission] would tell you 100 percent it’s impossible. It’s a really tough job to figure out where the line is. But I think it’s kind of like the famous line about the Supreme Court justice [defining pornography]. I mean, you know it when you see it.

Potter Stewart.

Right, Potter Stewart. I mean, you’ll know what happens. But otherwise it’s tough. Because how do I get out the vote, in general, for Democrats without being so specific that I am getting it out for a federal candidate? But then again, that was a line that the FEC drew. And in my opinion — and I’ll say this not as a partisan — I don’t think the party ever made an effort to really dance close to that line. I mean, everyone understood. No one wants to get in trouble. Everyone understood. You are going to work hard to spend the money as effectively as you can. But at the same time, out of compliance is not where you want to be, because it costs you a lot of money in attorney fees. It costs you a lot in reputation. And when the DNC was unwittingly out of compliance, eventually when it came to the foreign-donor situation, look what it did. It was a really, really tough place to be. Nobody wants to do that. So you take the line and you skate it closely, but not to the point where you want to become nebulous and get yourself in trouble.

Were you at the DNC at the time of that situation?

With the campaign-finance stuff?

Yes.

Sure.

And were you there afterward?

Yes.

What sort of changes in the process, to make the compliance process better — if any — did you encounter?

Well, the first thing that happened is that — and everyone can ask the question why this wasn’t the case before, but because it had not seemed to have been a problem before; I think that’s how a lot of things happen where you can’t really identify the problem until it shows itself and you realize you have an issue — was that every check $10,000 and over, I believe — and again, I am going to return back because it was not me, the counsel’s office, the compliance office, or anything else like that — all of the donors had their background investigated to determine their citizenship and their legal right to contribute to the party. And those checkpoints, as far as I knew, were not in place before because it had never been issue.

And was that sort of vetting of the contributors done by a team within the committee?

Yes. You have a compliance office. And that was staffed with several people, and their job was [making sure] you [were] a legitimate donor. You cannot be a businessman from Taiwan. As much as you want to participate in the American process, unless you are a green-card holder or an American citizen, your check is rejected, which is the law. And that’s how it should be. And there is no reason for that law to be changed. But it just had never been a problem, from what I knew, from what I could tell on either side of the aisle for that matter. So that process came into being pretty much immediately. But beforehand, why it wasn’t there — in retrospect it made a lot of sense. Why was it not there? Well, because we didn’t seem to have this issue. But it reared its head. But also, during that time in 1996, we were raising unprecedented sums of money, more money than had ever been seen in a political campaign. Now it seems kind of quaint. But at the time, I think in 1996, we raised $130 million, or at least over the ’95 - ’96 cycle, in both soft and hard contributions. That, at the time, was an incredible amount of money.

Nowadays, they are predicting the nominees alone may raise something in the vicinity of $500 million each.

Oh, yes. And you look at that, and for us, that was unlimited contributions. Someone could write a $100,000 check. And we count that now, when you look at the candidates themselves, who are limited to, I think, what is it, $4,000 or a little bit more.

Forty-six hundred.

Forty-six hundred. That’s a tough way to be.

I was going to say, these contributions, the soft money, nonfederal contributions, ceased to be with the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law.

Yes. You could still write soft money, I am pretty sure. I am not 100 percent sure, but as far as I knew, soft money continued to be allowed in the committees until McCain-Feingold put a final stop on that. And then they greatly increased the federal limit to, I think it was $37,500 to a committee, federally, over a cycle now, over from the old $20,000. That may not be right.

Something in the vicinity of that.

Something in that. And then you were given like another like $18,000 to write to other candidates. It’s like $55,000, I think, is now the new personal federal limit, of which only $37,500 can go to a committee. But I think that includes all committees. I think that’s the DNC, the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee], and the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee].

And theoretically someone who might want to give to both sides of the aisle would have that limit on their total contributions to the RNC and the DNC?

Yes, your federal limit. However you wish to spend your federal limit, that’s your business. But I think you can write a certain amount to candidates. And again, I think it’s where you do $37,500 to the committees. And then you have another extra to write to candidates. But if you don’t do it to the committees, you don’t get that extra to write to candidates. You know what I mean? I think there is a difference. I can only write a certain amount to candidates. I don’t get the whole $55,000. There is a committee exception to make up for the fact that, simply, national committees cannot operate under the same guidelines as local, the senatorial campaign. They have too much overhead. They have too much work to do. They have to operate in all 50 states. So they made an exception for the committees. But if you don’t use that exception, you just rest with another limit, of which the number I am not sure of.

Now, these contributions — I am guessing that probably some of them came in unsolicited and based on donors’ commitments and enthusiasm for the party — many of them had to be raised by the finance team?

I assume you are correct on both counts. I can’t speak to the number that came in unsolicited. I know the finance team worked very, very, very hard to bring in donors, to find donors, to bring in raisers, of course, who are your best friends. Because they are the ones who will go out on behalf of the committee and help raise the money from the community from people that you don’t know or could not ordinarily access.

And what are the big ways that a national committee goes about raising money? Is it similar to a local city council race where phone calls are made and fundraising events [are held]?

It can be. Sure, it certainly can be. I think that with the national committees, though, they have a two-pronged approach. There is the direct-mail, small-dollar, small-donor operation. Now they are both within the finance wing. But the direct-mail, small-dollar checks, and giving money off of the website now, that sort of thing, that was one entity. Of course, that was all federal, which was great, certainly at the time. That was one entity. And then you had your large-donor situation, which was another entity. They would go and some money would come in — again, I always speculate because I wasn’t physically there for the transaction.

You weren’t the one raising the money yourself?

Right. Money came in unsolicited. Sure, people called and said, “I really love Bill Clinton,” or “I really hate Bob Dole,” or whatever, or Newt Gingrich. “And it’s important for me to give. And how do I? I can write a check for X dollars. How do I do that?” And if you are a fundraiser, that’s the best phone call you have ever gotten in your life, because someone is willing to do the money for you. And you are not having to cajole them, teach them, that sort of thing. Now, there weren’t a lot of those. Most of the time you are really beating the bushes, especially when the pressure is on so much.

You wouldn’t need a very big fundraising team if you had people calling and doing that on a regular basis.

Right, off-the-street donors. I mean, they were on the phone all of the time. They were on the phone nonstop. Or they are traveling nonstop. They are working the phones all of the time to solicit donors, then to make sure donors are following through on their commitments, and to find prospects for new donations.

And what sort of method, if you saw this, did the fundraisers use to determine who to ask for money? Did they just go through the phone book?

My understanding was, and I want to revisit your previous question about how the process was, because I think it’s an interesting comparison. Because I think that while the decimal places may change, the actual process, I think, is the very same. Having a reception with your city councilman or your mayor may seem fairly innocent on a local level, and not seem as [significant] as having a reception or a sit-down with a congressman or the president. But in general, the process is the same. And the reaction and the situation is the same for the donation process. So it happens on every level from county commission up to the presidency. But back to the previous question, which now just flew out of my head. Go ahead.

How people were chosen to be asked for money.

That, as far as I know, came from people who have written [checks] in the past. Your previous donors are your best prospects. These guys are good researchers. They may read an article in the paper and find something. You got some incredible fundraisers on staff. And they were aggressive and inventive and they had shown tremendous initiative. And mostly, though, I think you would find your key people in cities. And you would ask them to help identify other donors. And that’s usually how you do it. But sometimes you have to pull them right out of thin air. You have to find an article. You have to meet someone at a party. You have to get a tip from a friend: “Hey look, this guy, I think he’s a Democrat. I think he would be interested in helping you guys out.” Because a lot of times people want to contribute, but they don’t even know where to begin. And I think you are seeing a lot of that now, especially because you have to find more donors than ever before. And you are finding more and more people who don’t even know where to begin. And that’s when the professional fundraisers are able to assist the process.

And did you have any involvement with fundraising events?

I had a logistical involvement. I would help with name tags, or door lists, or that sort of thing; helping with the catering, just very low-level logistic stuff.

Were these fairly frequent during the election period?

Sure. But they didn’t always involve candidates. Or they didn’t always involve principals. You know what I mean?

The president didn’t attend every Democratic National Committee fundraiser?

No, nor would congressmen or senators, either. Sometimes it would be the chairman of the party. Or sometimes it would be the finance chairman or something like that. People were coming and they were getting briefings things and talking about the layouts. You might occasionally get the political director of the White House, who is permitted, under law, to engage in politics. And they would come and talk to you, because that’s what they are there for. And that’s what they are allowed to do. But otherwise, you would have routine events, because that’s part of the deal. You would have receptions. Whenever you could, you would put them in the calendar. And you would start raising money toward it. We have a Democratic Business Council event on June 25 in New Orleans, just say. So you start raising toward that. The president may come. The vice president may come. A key senator may come. A cabinet official may come, which is all part of the game. As long as they are on their own time, that’s how it worked.

Would [there be] other celebrities, entertainers, or . . . ?

Sometimes, depending upon the size of the event, depending on their interest; certainly if you go out in California, you are going to get that kind of thing, or New York. Sometimes you get celebrities who would be interested in participating politically. Just like you have now, you would see them around. But usually it would have to be a fairly large or significant event for celebrity stuff. Because their time and their impact — you want to maximize their impact. If Bon Jovi is going to sing for you, you want to make sure that you have a lot of people and you are going to raise a lot of money for that event, because you want to maximize the star’s impact.

So, you probably wouldn’t have them sing at some small-town reception with 10 people?

Unless they really wanted to, in which case you would say, “Welcome aboard, glad to have you.” But yeah, usually your goal was to maximize. I mean, that’s just common sense.

And at these sorts of events, generally, if you had the president of the United States there, or the vice president of the United States, were those usually going to be the larger events?

Usually, by their nature, sure. Because that’s who people want to see. And that’s what people want to do. People want to shake hands with the president. I mean, who doesn’t want to shake hands with the president? People want to shake hands with the vice president. That’s what they want to do. And so those would be the larger events, and larger number of people, and usually your larger bottom line.

Then did these tend to be sort of photo opportunity, handshake visits?

Sure.

Or a long sit-down meeting for each person, with the president?

Never. Never the latter. Once again, I approach with this normal caveat of I am not . . .

You never saw that?

I never saw it. Could have happened, never saw it myself. What I saw of these things is a normal grip-and-grin. And that’s not to pull the process off, but the president’s going to take 100,000 pictures in a year of all kinds of people. But people want to meet him. People want to meet Bill Clinton. People want to meet Al Gore. People want to meet George W. Bush. God help those people, but that’s what they want to do. And they also want to be a part of the process. I mean, I in no way ever want to dismiss the patriotic nature of contributing. While there is a lot of talk about what donors are getting and that sort of thing, some people want to do everything in their power to elect a certain person. And some people can’t walk with walk-sheets in their hands. They can’t knock on doors. They can’t make phone calls. But they say: “Look, if I write $100,000, will that help? Will that get you elected?” Will that work at the time? Yes, it will help. “That’s what I can do.” That’s their shoe leather. Other people do it on the streets. But anyway, these events usually are larger events. You would have a group of people who may write more or raise more. They may get a photograph. A larger group contributing would be in attendance. But the levels will be depending on the fundraiser, the level of participation.

Did these tend to be big opportunities for lobbyists to attend to advocate their cause?

Not to my knowledge. I think that a lobbyist, you don’t get the time. And, quite frankly, I think if you are a smart lobbyist, you know that the principal, I am meaning the president, or the senator, they can’t and don’t deliver anything. I mean, that’s not just belittling their position. But that’s not their job. Their job is to make votes. They help affect policy, that sort of thing. If you are looking to advocate in a certain position, you want to meet the staff, because the staff ultimately is the one. The principal can’t spend their day reading 100-page policy papers or diving into the minutiae. Some do, and that’s great for them, but most of the time these guys are too busy, they have too much going on. The people you want to talk to are staff. Staff may be there, they may not be there. This was never an opportunity. Again, in my opinion, I think you are wasting your time. I think that’s a very lousy venue to try to lobby somebody, because you have 10 seconds and a photograph. You want to tell him your issue? I mean, what do you think the guy is going to do? He isn’t going to say, “Hey, well, let me take care of that immediately.” He may give you the right thing and say, “That’s a good idea,” et cetera, like that. “Talk to my staff.” But it’s a lousy time to do it, in my opinion.

You mentioned the talk of what people get in return for donations. If donations came into the DNC, did they get in the mail an invitation to become an ambassador, or a thank-you note? Anything like that?

I don’t recall the automatic ambassadorial-appointment process. I suppose that’s possible. But I don’t recall that occurring. I think that their return, for the large donors, quite frankly, I don’t think they got anything tangible. We occasionally had some sets of cufflinks that we could give out to people if people asked for them, made by the DNC with the presidential seal on it, and that sort of thing. But, again, I don’t recall that there was any sort of, “Here you go, you sent in a $10,000 check.” Mostly they would get invited to events. And that was the big thing; you get to come to an event. And you may not even get to come to an event with the president, but sometimes you want to go to an event where there are other lobbyists or other people whom you want to network with. Lobbyists need to talk to other lobbyists. Connections need to be made. You would go sometimes because of the crowd that was going to be there. That was often very important. It’s like a business networking. And there is certainly no shortage of places that offer business networking for a fee as well.

When you went on to work on the 1996 convention, which was in Chicago . . .

Yeah. I stayed on with the DNC. I did not move over to the convention committee or anything like that.

And then when you took your leave and went to go work for the inaugural [committee], did those sort of work in the same way as far as raising money? I imagine the limits, and the restrictions — there are no restrictions on an inaugural committee.

Well, the DNCC raised its own money. And I wasn’t a part of that.

That’s the convention committee?

Right, the Democratic National Convention Committee. They raised their own money. And I did not know how that process worked or what the federal rules are on that.

But is it the same general sort of process where they go to donors, and they raise money from much the same people?

I guess. I am not sure. Again, to my recollection, I was not involved in that process. Now for the DNC, we were able to provide donors with convention packages for their involvement. DNC finance has hotels that they have set aside for donors. Or donors are able to access a certain number of convention-hall passes based on their donation. And that’s standard operating procedure for all of the committees. Each committee would have its own bank that they could pull from for that as well. So we would help manage Democratic Party contributors. They would get, I guess you would almost call it concierge service, about attending the events, attending the convention, based on their contributions to the committee. That’s one way of getting in. Another way to get in is to bust your butt on the local level and become a delegate. And you can also get passes as well and all sorts of other goodies. There are many methods of entry into the process.

Or to be a TV reporter covering the convention, perhaps nowadays a blogger.

Yes. Well, you see, that’s the thing. There are a lot of ways to get in. And mostly people would just like to go for the entertainment aspect of it. They would like to go. It’s enjoyable. I mean, I have only been to the 1996 convention; I couldn’t go to the 2000 or the ’04. And it was a blast. It’s a lot of fun for everybody, no matter what your role is.

Same sort of thing with the inaugural?

I have to think about that one. Because by the time the inaugural rolled around, the landscape had changed because of the problems that had occurred with the fundraising at the DNC in ’96. I don’t remember what the contribution limits were. And I think technically there were none. 

Did you work for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the 501(c)(3)?

Yes, I apologize. I meant ’97; I misspoke my dates. In late ’96, the problem with the Democratic fundraising had already cropped up. By October, if you recall, by that fall it began breaking. And the DNC was having to play catch-up with that. And probably some people think it may have cost President Clinton his 50 percent [of the popular vote], because that’s what he hoped for in ’96. You want to get the 50 percent. Because that was breaking, I think, in October of ’96. By the time we showed up at the Inaugural Committee in late November of ’96, the landscape had already shifted. It had already changed. And I think that we put limits down. But I don’t remember what those limits were.

Now the Presidential Inaugural Committee is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, charitable organization that works in concert with the Congressional Inaugural Committee, which handles things from the government standpoint. You weren’t working for Congress?

No. We were working for the organization that raised the money to put on all of the events that surrounded . . .

Except for the inauguration ceremony itself?

Except for the stuff that was going on in the Capitol. But there are a million things that go on around it: the balls, the gala ceremonies, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, not the parade itself, but we had some of the parade tickets. Also, there were parties surrounding that as well. And the Democratic Party, the DNC, would also have parties surrounding events that they would also invite constituents to.

And what was your role with the Inaugural Committee?

My official title was, I think, information manager in the office of the finance chair for the Presidential Inaugural Committee. So I was just keeping track of the money that came in, the fundraising checks that came in.

Who was the finance chair?

That was the late Dan Dutko.

And that team is selected by the president-elect, or in this case the president-reelect?

I don’t know.

The president gets to pick a team. This isn’t some sort of public . . .

I assume so. I think that it’s done in a very similar manner to how staff is selected for the DNC, or how it was selected for the RNC [Republican National Committee] for the case in 2000 and 2004. I think it’s the same process. I’ll put it this way: The faces looked all very familiar to me.

And do you have any recollection of the fundraising process during that period?

It’s interesting. I don’t. It was such a short turnaround. I don’t recall any of the residual events leading up to the Inaugural Committee. But it was a solicitation. I think the budget was $28.5 million for all of the events surrounding the inauguration, for all the setup for the inaugural balls, and there was a big gala one of the nights before the inauguration. And there was other events going around it. And everything costs a lot of money. We had like 14 inaugural balls in ’96. I mean, it was just a tremendous amount. Those all cost a lot of money to put on, even though if you have ever been to one, you really wonder where and how that money was spent. I tell people now, I say for the women, “Don’t wear your high heels, don’t wear the four-inch spikes, because it’s not what you think it is.” And I remember being a little disappointed when I went to one. But now I know. But anyway, not to say it isn’t a worthy event, a lot of fun, a good thing to go to. It’s not a cotillion, how about that? Maybe that’s a better word.

Kind of more like a high-school dance.

More of a party than a ball, yeah. I think things have changed since the Taft administration, planning [what] an inaugural ball would be.

You didn’t attend the [1909] inaugural for President [William Howard] Taft?

I was not invited. You are kidding me. I wasn’t a Whig. I would have been, I guess, back then. So maybe I should have been invited. I’ll have to look into that. The Whigs were the good guys, or the Tories? I get really confused around that period of time.

So you say about the fundraising process, I was going to say what happened was is that we do not have an official fundraising process. We don’t have anything surrounding the events. But what we did is people could get inaugural ball tickets for certain donors or people who wrote a check. And some inaugural ball tickets, I believe, were available for the public. And some were available for donors — people who were willing to, essentially, underwrite the events. And then we also had a big gala in advance as well. We would also have access to the tickets to the actual swearing-in ceremony as well. And the committee would get an allotment then. We would just distribute those as we could or as we should. That was just all preparation for the inaugural events themselves.

Having been through these experiences and sort of moved on to other kinds of fundraising subsequent, you continue to be involved in a fundraising company until what year?

Well, I am actually still involved in it. I worked for the fundraising and strategic firm Mercer & Associates from ’97 to 2003. And then I left. I worked for an event firm for a little while. And now I am consulting on my own, doing a little bit of work here and there, some finance and some other work.

And in your experience, is it harder? Are these events less attended when your party is not in the White House or, until recently, in control of any of the branches of Congress?

Sure, I think you are going to find that, because I think people were still raising record sums of money. The Democratic Party was still raising a lot of money, even being out of power for so many years. But it’s a lot harder of a race. I mean, corporations write checks. Corporate PACs write checks to the people whom they believe they want to talk to. And that’s not a big secret. In my opinion, I think the Republican Party was very comfortable and happy, more often than not, selling access. I think they are far more blatant about the concept and believe strongly in it. And you hear the stories about the lobbyists going into Denny Hastert’s offices and writing bills, and the energy lobbyists in Dick Cheney’s energy task force, and all that other kind of stuff. So sure, they knew where the smart money is. They write checks to these guys. They get in the offices. So it’s a lot harder when they see that sort of return on their investments versus someone who says, “I am going to give you good government.” Now, we are not all choirboys in the Democratic Party, of course. But I never saw anything like what is going on under the current administration. And now that they are out of power, if you look at it, the money has shifted. But I think that the donors, depending on what they are looking for, they won’t be disappointed. They will just have to remember that it’s going to go back to the older rules, which are: “We are glad to see you. Glad to shake your hand. Glad to hear you point. But don’t think that you are going to walk into our offices and write legislation.” That’s my opinion, of course, let me just say that.

What would you say, based on your observations of the system, about the campaign-finance system, both before and now after the campaign-finance reform law?

Well, the first thing I would say, if you are going to change the rules with McCain-Feingold, the money is still going to get raised. It’s going to be harder to do. I am not talking about the 527s, and the 501(c)(4)s and (c)(3)s. If you look at the money that is going into the party committees, straight up, and into the federal offices, I think it was a billion dollars in ’06. It’s going to be $1.4 billion in ’08, or more than that. Are you kidding me?

And some are saying that if Michael Bloomberg runs, he might put in a billion of his own.

And you say to yourself: “Well, what exactly have we solved? What exactly?” And that goes to a larger point. And this is, unfortunately for me, one of the few times I see eye to eye with Mitch McConnell. I don’t believe that money in the system is inherently bad. I think money is important, because how else are you going to get your message out there? There are only so many doors you can knock. There are only so many flyers you can hand out at parades and high-school football games. Sometimes you have to get your information to a far larger audience. You have to be able to get consumption of your message to a larger group. How is that possible without money? How is that possible? Even if you say, “Well, stations should donate time.” Okay, well they are donating their time. They are not paying for it. That’s a 30-second spot that normally they would have gotten paid for. Now they are having to give it away for free. Somebody is donating. It costs somebody, somewhere. I have to hire a campaign manager. Well, campaign managers don’t work for free. They got mouths to feed. So what are they going to do with their time? You know what I mean? It’s all that sort of stuff.

Money is not inherently evil. I think large sums of money are not inherently evil. Because it’s a matter of the receiver; it isn’t even the giver’s intention. To heck with them: If they think they are writing a big check and they are going to get legislation out of it, that’s their business. They can think that all they want. The ultimate decision-maker is on the recipient’s side and what they are willing to do with that money. What will you do with that goodwill? And if they are willing to then sell their office, well to heck with them. And I hope that they get all of the things that occur from doing that. But I think that money itself is not a bad thing. I think it can be, as I pointed out earlier, a very patriotic thing to do. Look, if you are working full-time, or you have a big job, and if you have kids and everything else, sometimes you can’t do the greasy grime work for campaigns. Sometimes the only way you can show your support for a candidate is to write a very large check and say, “Please do this,” to then hire, or to buy pizza for the volunteers. You know what I mean? And you do it on a larger level. “Here is $2,000 — maybe this buys you some ad space on a radio station somewhere,” that sort of thing. That’s the part where I think money is not inherently evil.

I do think that people do wrong things with it. I think that it probably, because of the scope of it, can sometimes be a corrupting influence because money is money. Not everyone can be real strong about that. Guys you would least expect it; look at Duke Cunningham, the guy who wanted an antique toilet, for God’s sake. You never would have guessed it. You never would look at this guy and say, “This guy is for sale.” And if that’s what they choose to do, then I hope that they all get the same thing that he got. And I hope there is more. But if people write checks, and they don’t want to do anything with it, if the receiver says, “Thank you for your support of my candidacy and my campaign, and I promise to be elected to serve you,” then there is nothing wrong with money. He just got his message out better and had a chance to have an opportunity to speak to more people.

And is there anything you can think of that would make the system better?

I guess the assumption is that it’s broken. I never have made that assumption. I think that things cost too much. But I think [other] things cost too much. I would rather spend all of our effort and energy to figure out why we can’t insure people, why people can’t go to the hospital, why health care costs so much. I mean, we are spending a lot of time in the influence of money in politics. When I say to myself, really, if you want to talk about where money is bad, there are other places in the world, or in the United States, where the actual power of money causes harm to people and harm to our society. And that’s when you look at the amount of money that’s flowing through the insurance and the health-care system. And that’s a crime. But in terms of what needs to be made better for the campaign finance, I don’t want to punt and say, “Well, it’s fine, and it’s never been an issue.” I think disclosure is the most important part of this, being able to identify all donors and all sources of money. When you have gotten a check you should know exactly where it came from.

I think that the new rules, and the 501(c)(4)s, and the 527s, those need to be clarified a little bit. I think the activities of the 501(c)(3)s, that enforcement needs to be stronger and needs to have more resources behind it. Yes, I think the FEC is woefully always understaffed. I think you cannot keep track.

And then when they do get caught, what happens to them? A little fine, slap on the wrist, they set up a new one. I hate to sound like parroting the way the gun lobby does, where they say, “Not more laws, more enforcement.” But to a certain extent, that’s true. I think we have enough finance laws on the books. I think it needs to be enforced. I think people are always finding loopholes. And you need to be able to have are people with not just the ability to call out when there is a problem, but also to then have the teeth to enforce something in real-time. Boy, I am really going to get off on a tangent. But the fact is, in real-time, usually these things happen 10 months, a year, a year and a half after the violation has occurred. And then you get a slap in the wrist 18 months later and no one has paid a price. [So] I think enforcement. Continue to work on disclosure. But in terms of the amount of money, I don’t think you will ever be able to fix it. I don’t necessarily believe in public financing of elections. Because I don’t think anyone should be physically forced to afford somebody’s campaign through their tax dollars. Lord knows we have enough bad places our tax dollars go to anyway. So I am not in favor of that kind of public financing concept. But I do think if we enforced the rules and had true teeth to the enforcement process, I think that would potentially affect the people who are trying to hurt the system and take advantage of it.