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Howard Phillips

Howard Phillips is the founder of the Constitution Party, formerly the U.S. Taxpayer’s Party, and was its presidential nominee in 1992, 1996, and 2000. In 1996, he received more than 184,000 votes nationwide. A former Republican activist and director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity under President Richard Nixon, Phillips has chaired the Conservative Caucus, an advocacy group, since 1974.

Josh Israel interviewed Phillips on June 20, 2007.

You ran for president twice?

Thrice.

And you were one of the founders, or the founder, of the Constitution Party, formerly the U.S. Taxpayer’s Party?

Correct.

What’s your sense of the reality for a so-called third party candidate trying to compete in the modern-day political system?

Well, [there are] ideas which are not advocated or articulated in the public arena or ideas which are generally lost to history. And the main value of the efforts of the Constitution Party is to put into the political dialogue important ideas, ideas which were commonly held by the founders of the American republic and which are not being put forward by any other political party — Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens or what have you. So that is very valuable thing to do.

In terms of electing a president, one needs to have significant financial resources and significant media coverage. Lacking that, it is difficult to deliver the message beyond those who are active followers of politics in America. So our message does reach a great many people. It does have an impact on the thinking of many people who don’t vote for us.

Of course, we are always plagued by the idea that the vote is wasted if it is cast for a candidate not likely to win. I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine, a very strong and influential leader among Christian conservatives. And he indicated to me that he was in Ohio on Election Day 2004, even though he votes in California. He said had he voted in Ohio, he would have voted for Bush, because he perceived it to be a close race. And he did not want Kerry to win. But because his voting was in California, he cast his vote by absentee for the Constitution Party nominee.

So the whole idea of electability plays hard on the thinking of a great many people who are very sympathetic to the principles of the Constitution Party and who hope for the party’s success, but who are plagued by the conventional warning, “Beware of the bogeyman.” If you don’t vote for the Republican, the bogeyman will get you. And in 2008, they will probably be told, “Watch out or the bogeygirl will get you.” So that is a problem.

Just sort of approximately, if you know off the top of your head, what did your campaigns cost?

Well, please don’t hold me to the numbers, because my memory is not perfect. It cost about $300,000 to get on the ballot. And that was taking into account the fact that there were a number of states where the party already had ballot position. A conscious decision was made to not attempt, in my campaign in 2000, ballot access in all 50 states plus D.C. because of the prohibitive costs. We could get 43 states for $300,000, including the ones we already had. But we would have had to spend at least another $2 million to get the other seven states — Oklahoma, North Carolina, Texas, states where it’s extremely expensive to get on the ballot.

After we had spent that $300,000, much of which was provided by me personally, we had about $25,000 left for the rest of the campaign. And as you can imagine, that doesn’t buy you a lot of TV time, radio time, or anything else. We spent a lot of time on earned media. I did many, many, many radio talk shows. I did as much TV as was made available to me. We generated many letters to the editor, op-eds, and so forth and so on. But in terms of money, we just didn’t have the money to run a major media campaign.

And you were able to get on the ballot in 43 states?

That is correct. Now in Massachusetts, Billy Galvin, the secretary of state, knocked us off, because one of our electors had not re-registered out of the Republican Party before the deadline. So even though we had it, that miserable dog arbitrarily knocked us off, even though all of the signatures had been collected, et cetera. So that knocked us down to 42, if my memory is correct.

And were you on a similar number in your previous runs? 

Well, we struggled with 21 in 1992. And in 1996, I don’t think we were quite up to 43. But I think we had 41 or something like that. So we were making progress year after year. Now in [2004 Constitution Party nominee Michael] Peroutka’s campaign, there was a fallback. I think they wound up with 37 or whatever. There were mistakes made in a number of states. They didn’t file in time in Wisconsin; [they] should have been on the ballot. They failed to file a form. A lot of things like that screwed them up.

It’s got to be a lot moving parts to keep track of 51 different states with different laws.

Yeah. It’s a major effort, especially when one cannot afford to pay staff. We did pay people who were petitioning. In ’96, the cost of that went way up, because [Ross] Perot was paying as much as five bucks a name to get on the ballot. We were starting out at 75 cents a day. But it was difficult.

In Texas in ’96, I think we spent about $300,000 to get on the ballot, which we did. And the reason we did that was that my dear friend Pat Buchanan said he was giving serious consideration to accepting our nomination in ’96, something which I would have strongly embraced. But he would only do it if we could assure him a ballot line in Texas. So we did everything we could to get that ballot line. And then he wound up supporting Bob Dole.

And you mentioned that a lot of the funds were your own.

Well, I wouldn’t say a lot. But it was a lot for me.

I am sure any contribution feels like a lot.

Yeah. Well, there is still $30,000 that I loaned to the campaign. Don’t hold me to that number; it’s less than that now. But at this point it’s more than $15,000, somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000. I don’t remember the exact number. [What] I loaned to campaign is still outstanding. And I’ll probably never see it. And I had put in a lot more than that.

How do you go about raising the rest of the money?

Well, in 1992, the party was built on the basis of my radio interviews. I did hundreds of radio interviews. And that generated about 5,500 donors to the then brand-new Taxpayer’s Party. And that generated whatever money there was for the campaign. It was the result of radio.

Same thing in ’96, although at that point there was a mailing list. And again, in 2000, and that mailing list enables you to contact people who have indicated an affinity for what you are doing and raise some money. So that’s how you do it. Every now and then you get a big donor. And there were some big donors in ’92 and in ’96.

And by the way, I am a student of election law. The question is whether or not money that is not hard money can be spent on ballot access. In other words, I know you can’t do it if you are trying to get a candidate’s name on the ballot. But the FEC [Federal Election Commission] has never ruled whether or not spending soft money to get a party on the ballot is legitimate under the election laws. I believe it is.

That’s a good question.

I believe it is. The other way you do it is to have a vice president who will put money in the campaign. We had a lot of vice presidential running-mates in ’92, and I think in ’96 also. Because every one of them, as was the case with the presidential nominee, under the terms of the federal election laws can spend as much as they were willing to do.

So I had a fellow in Illinois, now deceased, who put in thousands of dollars and was my running-mate in at least one state. That’s all you need. It doesn’t even need to be the state in which they live. You don’t even have to have them [on the] ballot if he falls short of the signatures. I had a guy named Stephen Graves from Arkansas who was my running-mate in Wyoming. And he put in thousands of dollars.

So in other words, one way of raising the money is to legally circumvent the limit on individual contributions; have someone on a ticket with you as a vice presidential nominee. Now initially this was challenged in the Federal Election Commission. But ultimately they ruled in my favor. It was a matter of some controversy. I had a very good attorney, Alan Dye. Well, maybe they didn’t rule in my favor. They just stopped protesting what I was doing. And I believe, sincerely, that under the law, at least as it existed at that time, and I think as it still exists today, that is a legitimate way of doing [it].

And, of course, another way of doing it, once the party is recognized as a national party, an individual could put in 25,000 bucks, or whatever it might be, to the national party. Now we only achieved national party status, if my memory is correct, after 1996. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it was ’95. But we became one of five parties recognized by the Federal Election Commission as a real party which could receive significant contributions at the same level as the Republicans and Democrats.

And does it still have that status?

Oh, yes.

Just out of curiosity, what would you have done had you been elected with all of those running-mates? Would one of them have been . . .?

Well, only one of them would have had the requisite number of electoral votes. And the one with the requisite number of electoral votes would have been vice president. I am a history buff. And one of the elections most interesting to me was the 1800 election, where Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were tied for electoral votes. And it went 36 ballots before a fellow from Delaware, with the help and encouragement of Alexander Hamilton, pushed into Jefferson. And that led to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which made clear that electors were voting separately for president and vice president.

As I recall, you were not able to participate in the presidential debates.

I was denied participation. But there were some interviews in which I took part. Larry King was upset that he didn’t become the moderator of the big debates.  So he had his own little debate deal. Ross Perot was given featured status. And then others of us, including Harry Browne and the Libertarians and yours truly were given the chance to be questioned.

Seeking ballot status in Massachusetts in 1992, I was in a debate with four or five other people, all of whom were seeking the nomination of something that was then called the Independent Voters Party. I won the debate and I won the IVP nomination in Massachusetts. But in terms of the big-boy debates, I was always excluded, despite assiduous efforts to overcome that barrier.

What’s your thought on the threshold that the Commission on Presidential Debates has set?

I think it should be based on whether or not you have ballot status in enough states to theoretically win an Electoral College majority. I think that should be the basis. It shouldn’t be opinion polls. It shouldn’t be anything else. Of course, the irony is that the deciders — to use Mr. Bush’s term — or Paul Kirk, who used to be [Massachusetts Senator] Teddy Kennedy’s administrative assistant — he lived across from my wife in Massachusetts years ago.

It’s a small world.

And Frank Fahrenkopf, whom I knew well when he was state chairman of the Young Republicans in Nevada, and with whom I traveled to the Soviet Union in 1975, et cetera, et cetera. But nonetheless, those dogs have their own songs to sing. And they would not let us in. I have no doubt that I would have decisively won any debate in which I took part. That’s not immodesty. That’s fact, because frankly, I knew more about the issues than any of the guys in there. And I could present my position more effectively than any of them could. But perhaps others would reach a different conclusion. But that was my view and the view of the people in my team.

Now is the Constitution Party’s view that the matching-fund system is . . .

It’s unconstitutional. The whole federal election law is unconstitutional. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons Pat Buchanan sought the Reform [Party] nomination in Y2K [2000] was to get the federal money. This isn’t quite matching funds, but to get the federal money. And we told him, if you want to be the nominee of our party, you cannot accept federal money, because it’s unconstitutional. And we want to conduct ourselves in a manner which is consistent with the principles we propound and which are in our platform.

He ended up having a difficult time, actually, getting those, didn’t he?

No. He got them. He got them and his sister [campaign manager Angela “Bay” Buchanan] did very well. He got the money, but it didn’t do him much good. I think he would have been better off to be pure.

You said that you also think the . . .

I think the whole thing is wrong. In years gone by, I was director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, succeeding [Don] Rumsfeld, [Dick] Cheney, [Frank] Carlucci, Sargent Shriver, and those people. And right after that, I started the Conservative Caucus. Just before I started the caucus, I wrote articles for Human Events and other publications. And I wrote a number of articles very critical of the federal election law amendments of 1974, just as I am critical now of the McCain-Feingold legislation.

And I think one of the reasons why there is so little independence among members of the House, especially, but even the Senate, is [that], first of all, the Senate has become a millionaire’s club. But in the House, unless you have your own mailing list, you are dependent on the goodwill of the incumbent president of your party and of the leaders of the Congressional Campaign Committee, the Senatorial Campaign Committee, leaders of the House and the Senate. They are not going to give you the money you need to win unless you toe the line, for the most part.

Now there are exceptions. Ron Paul was able to get away with his maverick voting record because he has a huge mailing list. And there are others who get away with it, because they have their own money, such as John Campbell, the fellow who won that congressional seat in California after [Chris Cox resigned to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission].

But no, I think those laws are horrendous. And I was glad to see [Justice] Samuel Alito hint that when the Supreme Court considers challenges to McCain-Feingold, he will come down solidly on the free-speech side. Every year the Conservative Caucus gives out an Andrew Jackson Champion of Liberty Award. And this year our awardee is [former Federal Election Commission Chairman] Brad Smith, who is now a professor at a college in Ohio. And he will be speaking to our Constitution event on September 17.

With the development of the Internet as a method not only of fundraising but also of distribution of message and organizing, do you think a party such as yours has the ability to take off in a way that was not the case 10 years ago?

Well, it could. The Internet is a solid plus. The Conservative Caucus uses it to a great effect. And many of my friends in other organizations do. But what it boils down to is your ability to generate interest in your cause. To generate money for your cause on the Internet is, to some degree, a function of the kind of media coverage you are getting in the print media and the TV media.

To some degree, if you have solid support from talk radio, you can get there. I mean, as Rush Limbaugh himself said — I heard him say as I was driving, listening to his program — he can have a big influence in promoting a presidential candidate if he endorsed someone. And that would reflect itself on the Internet.

But otherwise, to generate Internet interest, you have to do six or seven, minimum, radio talk shows a day. You have to get op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, direct mail, et cetera. So it’s a help, but it’s a much bigger help if you get the kind of media coverage that Howard Dean did last time out of it, Barack Obama gets it this time, or Hillary [Clinton], et cetera.

What do you think of the job the media does covering presidential politics?

I think it stinks. So much of it is horserace coverage rather than substantive coverage. And after horserace, it’s gotcha coverage. And they ignore people. The first question they ask a candidate is, How much money do you have? And they ignore people who, in their opinion, don’t qualify for serious coverage if they lack the kind of money they think is appropriate. And they say, “Well, where do you stand in the polls?” But your standing in the polls depends on the media coverage. And it depends on the money. So I think by and large the media coverage is poor.

Let me ask you one more question. And I greatly appreciate your time.

I appreciate your asking.

On a financial level, what do you think it would take for a Constitution Party candidate or a similar party candidate to be a serious contender?

Well, I mean look at Fred Thompson. He is a serious contender without having entered the race because of the fact that he is well-known for television and Hollywood, et cetera. I don’t think you can fix a number. Certainly, if we had Michael Bloomberg’s money we could be a major factor.

Have you talked to him about the . . .

No, no. His views are so different than ours, although I have great respect for his skills as an administrator. I don’t know if you read the Fortune magazine cover story on Bloomberg. You should, if you haven’t. But it shows that this is a brilliant administrator and entrepreneur. I disagree with him across the board on issues. But I have great respect for his administrative skills. And I think [Mitt] Romney’s great strength is his administrative skills.

What would it take? Well, it would depend on the degree of notoriety achieved beforehand by the candidate. It would depend, to some degree, on comprehensive unhappiness with the major-party nominees. But just for putting together a team and flying around the country and having a minimal amount of paid media, I would suggest a ballpark number, and on reflection I might come up with a different one, but I would say about $10 million, which is a pittance compared to what the Democrats and Republicans will spend. But I think $10 million could make a Constitution Party nominee a factor, if it were the right nominee, if the nominee knew the issues, could communicate them well, and if there was unhappiness with the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties.