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Joseph E. Sandler

Joseph E. Sandler, a Democrat, is a member of Sandler, Reiff & Young, a Washington-based law firm, concentrating in campaign-finance and election-law matters. Since 1993 he has been general counsel to the Democratic National Committee.

Sara Fritz interviewed Sandler on February 27, 2007.

You have had just a whole heck of a lot of experience in this field.

I have.

We start out these by always asking about your experience with presidential campaigns. My understanding is that you have been at the DNC.

Yes. This is my sixth presidential cycle that we’re in. And I have done every one of them with the national party; I have never worked for a campaign. I worked for the party and the party organization.

And the party itself has a lot of issues whenever this happens, too.

Right.

Let’s start talking about the size of the money. We are talking $1 billion. Although it looks to me like it was $1 billion last time around.

It depends on what you are counting, right?

Yeah, right. But does the amount of money make a substantial difference? Or are the problems and the benefits all the same? I mean, does the scale create a problem? There is just so much money.

No, I don’t think so. I mean, the reason that the amounts of money have become greater is because the costs have become greater. It’s a big country. And every time I hear people say, “Well, that’s too much, all this money,” or whatever, I say: “You know what? Why don’t you start at some neighborhood in San Diego and walk across the country. Try to knock on every door from there to Maine. And that would be a nice grass-roots experience.” It’s a big country. A presidential campaign, that’s a lot of people to touch. And you’ve got to touch them in a lot of ways. TV costs more. Now it is true that some of these new media may help to lower the cost of campaigns. There is nothing better for this system than the emergence of the Internet, the emergence of YouTube, the social networking sites, Facebook, MySpace. The emergence of the Internet as a fundraising tool is the best campaign-finance reform there is, because it’s cheap. It’s widely available. And you don’t need a lot of money to get the message across. And hopefully, that supplants some of what people regard as decreasingly effective traditional broadcast advertising. That actually will help, I think, reduce some of the demand for money. But besides that, it’s the cost of it. The costs have gone up.

Does it make a real difference whether this money comes from the public purse, as it has in the past, or whether it’s entirely money raised independently?

What do you mean? Oh, you mean public financing versus?

Right. 

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that the implications of candidates turning down the public grant for the general election remain to be seen. I think that is going to have an impact, and not a good one from our perspective. You are talking about using the candidate’s time, money, and attention for a whole new dimension of fundraising. And obviously, I believe it’s better that the party have that role. It broadens sort of the base of support for all candidates, because the party has a broader agenda in terms of promoting candidates, up and down the ticket.

So as long as the candidates were depending on the public funds, and the party was doing the fundraising, it gave the candidate an opportunity to campaign?

Exactly. I think that’s right. I think it’s certainly not a good development that the candidates are kind of planning to turn down the public grant.

The complaint that [Tom] Vilsack had, I mean, which kind of went, “Phhht, it’s always that way,” You are saying there is actually something to that?

Well, there are two parts to this, right? What the candidates are confronting now is the table stakes for their nomination, which are also very substantial. And again, it’s the conventional wisdom that no serious candidate is going to accept matching funds for the nominating process in exchange for limiting their spending, just because it’s thought they can’t be seriously competitive. That also might prove to be untrue. Some of them have to take matching funds, and one of them might emerge. You never know. But I think that’s what Vilsack was talking about; he’s talking about the impossibility of staying in this, raising this kind of money he thought it would take to get through nomination.

Because matching funds in the nominating process were pretty restrictive.

Exactly. In other words, the matching funds, to be competitive you had to get close to the maximum you could raise. But in 2000, the last time at least our guys were taking matching funds, the most you could spend was about $45 million. So you were raising maybe $25 million to $30 [million]. Now, you are competing with somebody who blows off matching funds, you have to raise $100 [million]. That’s the difference. Arguably up to a hundred, if you’re looking at the numbers that [John] Kerry and [Howard] Dean did last time.

You say the implications of this have yet to be seen.

The implications of blowing off the public grant in the general election?

Right.

I just think it’s very unpredictable. It’s very unpredictable how it’s going to play out. Whether candidates are talking about raising more than the amount of that grant and spending it in that period of time, and how that affects the role of outside groups. And what pieces the candidates have, in effect, left to outside groups in the past that they now may be able to control directly because they are paying for it directly. There are a lot of moving pieces to this.

I see. So, this enters in the 527 argument as well.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s just not clear how that’s going to come out. As we sit here today, we don’t really know for sure if any candidate is going to turn down the public grant. And you may not know when this book is published, because they don’t have to make that decision, especially if this FEC [Federal Election Commission] ruling goes through as anticipated. I think it’s later this week or next week. Candidates won’t have to make that decision with respect to the general election until the conventions, which are both in August this year. Or actually, the Republicans are the beginning of September.

So you have watched the behavior of contributors over the years — I mean, you have been in a marvelous situation to see that. What motivates them? And can you judge between those who are motivated by patriotism and those who are motivated by self-interest? Can you just kind of talk about the feel?

Yeah. Obviously, I have a different perspective on this than some in the reform community. In my personal experience, the overwhelming majority of big donors to the Democratic Party are ideologically motivated. They want to see progressive candidates get elected. There are a number of them. There were big donors, and certainly in the days of soft money, and there still are now in the current system, who like the prestige and feeling close to the candidate, having their picture taken, being able to talk to their friends about how they were chatting with the president or presidential candidate or whatever. The number of donors that actually give to a presidential candidate — let’s leave Congress aside, because we represent congressional candidates, but who do a lot more of that — either to an incumbent president or presidential candidate because of business that they have before the government, because they are going to influence, that’s pretty scarce.

You have the famous examples in the ’96 scandal, Roger Tamraz. I mean, some of these people were loony, Johnny Chung. Whatever they were thinking, they didn’t get it. And it was awful that they were even given a chance to talk to staff. But the idea that that’s sort of a commonplace reason why people give or even gave the large-money contributions — I talk about the biggest soft-money contribution of all time to the Democratic National Committee was for the building around the corner, the renovation of that building, which was done in 2003. And there were a lot of large gifts. A lot of these were given before the effective date of McCain-Feingold to the building fund, in order to enable this renovation and rebuilding the technological and physical infrastructure of the party headquarters. The largest single gift was given by a guy named Haim Saban. Basically he was the one who created or distributed some of the big kids: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the [Mighty Morphin’] Power Rangers in particular. He had a joint venture with Fox [Broadcasting Company] and Saban Entertainment. And they sold it to [Walt] Disney [Company] for a very substantial sum of money right before he gave this gift. And the time he gave this gift, he not only did not have any business before the government, he didn’t have a job. I mean, he had just sold his company to Disney with [Rupert] Murdoch for billions of dollars, and he gave because he cared about the party. There was nothing the government could do for him, really. And particularly being out of power, this is in 2003, we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have the Congress or the White House. I mean, what was he going to get for it? So anyway, that’s a lot closer to my experience.

I remember somewhere in the ‘90s saying to my editors, “If I were going to do a story right now, I would start looking at Enron [Corporation], because they are really way too aggressive in this field.” And I have actually advised people [to] look at what they do in this subject if you are thinking of investing. Because sometimes they show a side of themselves that you don’t see in the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] reports. What about the idea that we are doing something that isn’t particularly kosher, and so we want to mask it over? I mean Enron, what about Enron?

Yeah, I mean, obviously Enron. In terms of how they did their campaign contributions?

Yeah, they were really cozying up to the president, and it was part of creating an aura.

Right. There is no question that they wanted to have friends in high places, generally. I mean, I am just trying to think, on our side, even during the Clinton years, whether apart from these famous cases where I thought these people were under the illusion that they were going to have some kind of great access for these gifts. But yeah, I can’t think of corporate influence over the Clinton administration through this kind of giving. I mean, look at the big donors and what they got for it, the big soft-money donors. I am talking about ’93 through 2000, and through the Gore-Lieberman election, 2002 when McCain-Feingold went into effect.

There is this famous case. Who was it who came to [Harold] Ickes and wanted to give him a whole bunch of money? Do you remember?

Are you talking about at the end of the ’96 campaign? Yeah, I can’t remember. That was money that was not accepted.

But it was entertained.

He talked to him about it.

But what I am thinking is, what goes on when a person approaches and has such a full-frontal approach? What happens in your office?

In the case where these were contributions to the party, obviously there were a lot of issues about how stuff was vetted. And we put in a much more intensive vetting system in the beginning of 1997 after the fundraising controversy. It was clear that there were these inappropriate contributions, and in some cases illegal, that had gotten through unbeknownst to us. But in that case, I can’t remember the name of the donor. We did check this guy out. And it didn’t look right. He didn’t check out. And the money wasn’t taken. I mean everybody.

And do you see Johnny Chungs showing up, just guys who are a little bit off?

Yeah. Chung had some kind of duplication firm or something, and he was trying to go big time. And he loved to hang out and have his picture taken and whatever. But I’m not clear what he thought people could do for him other than put a picture on the wall.

You try to steer clear of people like that?

Yeah. Well, they didn’t steer clear enough of him, and some of the others. There was another guy named Charlie Trie.

I remember him; he was the restaurateur.

But there were some guys also that had gone back to Clinton in Arkansas banking. James Riady, some of the Americans were straight shooters, but there was a lot of stuff that wasn’t known about these guys.

Right. But you are more suspicious of those people nowadays?

Well, there is a much more comprehensive vetting process in place. There has been ever since the beginning of ’97. And there was from ’93 to ’96 as a result of that experience. And I don’t think we’ve had to return a single contribution that’s been deposited based on either illegality or inappropriateness since the system went into place, and we’re pretty proud of the record and the way this thing works.

What about the Republicans? Do they have a comparable situation?

I’m sure they do. Yeah, I’m sure they do, having gone through this. They went through their own situation.

Usually you know what the opposition . . .

Yeah, I get it. Yeah, they definitely vet substantial contributions.

We were talking about the 527s. Candidates will say, “Well, we are losing control of our campaign.” And yet the amount of money that’s being devoted to those candidates, you can’t sniff at that. That’s pretty good stuff. I mean, talk about the downside and the upside of 527s for a presidential candidate.

From the standpoint of a candidate?

Or for the party.

For the party? Well, we represented some 527s as well. From the party, long-term, it’s not in the institutional interest of the party to have 527s be big players in the presidential campaign. It diverts some resources and control from the party. That being said, there were 527s that certainly did good work, and ACT [Americans Coming Together], in terms of registering voters and voter mobilization on our side in the 2004 circle. And then we represented MoveOn; basically the only reason we did a 527 was to leverage a lot of small-dollar donations with some very substantial gifts. The same guys that did ACT [did a] very effective job also on the ground and in the media.

Were there occasions when MoveOn embarrassed the candidate or went a different direction?

They did their own thing. They were certainly independent of the candidate. I am sure they did things that the campaign didn’t approve of. But mostly they were whacking Bush; that was their thing.

The one story I do recall doing about this in 2004 had to do with Alex Castellanos, who was working as the media guy for Bush and for some big 527s, or at least one.

Yeah, I remember this.

And I am wondering, is that a lovely way to get around the situation, or . . .?

Yeah. It’s hard for a 527 that needs to operate, or any group, a PAC [political action committee] for that matter, which is making independent expenditures; [they] should not use the same media firm as a candidate. Now it’s possible to establish firewalls and so forth in a big enough firm with multiple major principals who actually operate independently. It’s possible to establish a firewall where there really is not a transmission of inside information. But it’s harder to do with a media firm than with some other, like polling and some of these other situations.

It’s harder, too, because the message is the message.

Right. I mean, to make its independent expenditures in 2004, the DNC used two media firms that had never worked for Kerry.

But you don’t have any interest in making an issue of that when the Republicans do it, do you?

Well, when the Republicans do it, there are complaints filed; obviously, there were complaints filed against the Swift Boat Veterans, against Progress for America, against their 527s. The party didn’t do those. 

What is your understanding of where and when Swift Boats originated?

The organization itself had existed for some time and had been a thorn in Senator Kerry’s side for years before the presidential election, and had gone after him in Massachusetts and so forth. The new infusion, the funds and interest they got, obviously, was not coincidental, Bob Perry and these guys. I don’t know exactly how it happened. But clearly there was . . .

So they were taking advantage of an existing group?

Yes, I think that’s right.

Is that not going to be the model now?

Not necessarily. You mean in terms of 527s?

Attacking candidates, or the way to really lay it on.

That’s hard to say, because there are some new restrictions on the way that funds can be raised for 527s that the FEC has put in place that make it a little tricky. And they have also taken an aggressive enforcement posture, and the legal environment is uncertain as to whether there is going to be any legislative action. So are we going to see like 527s emerge in the presidential primaries? On behalf of one candidate basically whacking another, Democrat versus Democrat, Republican versus Republican?

It seems like a very good tool for that.

It’s a good tool in the sense that it distances from the campaign. I don’t know if you are going to see that, or to what extent. I think that’s somewhat unpredictable. I think some people will. I think there will be some of that. But also, because of the Swift Boat experience in particular, there can be a price to be paid, particularly when the press finds out the fingerprints of one candidate or another is on it. Obviously, from the perspective of the party, we are not happy about Democrats going after each other in very negative ways during the primary. It’s not constructive. Not a lot we can do necessarily. Depends on the circumstance, but it’s not a good thing.

So you think there was a price to be paid for the Swift Boat?

There wasn’t in ’04. I mean, they were effective. They did their thing. But having been through that experience, I think, for somebody to pull that off again is not going to be necessarily so easy.

Is there any new development in dirty tricks that I don’t know about, or that kind of thing?

Independent negative media is not a new dirty trick. NCPAC [National Conservative Political Action Committee] and the Willie Horton ads from 1988, which is where I came into this. Saying there was a PAC, there was hard money; maybe reformers were thrilled with that. But it was same deal, couldn’t get a dirtier theoretical independent. We found all kinds of links. And there the Democratic National Committee did file a complaint with the FEC. The FEC refused to act. We sued in the U.S. District Court here in D.C. and lost. And I litigated that case. And it was still going in ’91, ’92 actually.

And the folks that did that are still around.

Got away with it, absolutely. So independent negative media is not a new phenomenon. It takes different forms, legally.

Do you keep your eyes on guys like David Bossey?

Bossey switched sides, right? Yeah. Bossey is now with — what is the name of it?

Citizens United.

Yeah. But he’s the one who switched sides and wrote the book exposing the whole thing.

No, no, no. David Bossey has not switched sides.

Who am I thinking of?

You are thinking about the guy with [The] American Prospect, aren’t you? Who was very anti-Clinton.

Yeah, exactly. That wasn’t David Bossey?

No. David Bossey is still out there, and he was involved with Floyd Brown.

Right, I remember that. I am thinking of David Brock, that’s who.

Right, David Brock. Do you keep your eye on these guys?

The party’s research people keep their eye on these guys, definitely. But a lot of what they do is pretty well-hidden in terms of how this stuff is done, as we discovered in litigating a New Hampshire phone-jamming case. I don’t know if you are familiar with that. Speaking of dirty tricks, in the 2002 Senate election in New Hampshire, John Sununu beat the former governor, Jeanne Shaheen, for the U.S. Senate general election. The Republican Party of New Hampshire basically paid a firm to jam the phone lines of the Democratic Party so voters couldn’t get through, workers couldn’t get through, and so forth for a couple of hours. And three people have gone to jail for this on the Republican side. The main guy who went to jail was major political operative James Tobin, who worked for the RNC and reported to the then-RNC political director, a guy named Terry Nelson, who is John McCain’s political director. And now, as we sit here now, and in litigating this case, we found there are all of these networks that sort of operate in this realm and work with certain consulting firms on their side. And people circulate in and out. And so we do try to keep an eye on them, but it’s difficult. And in some ways only by following up on things like this phone-jamming deal do you really discover some of this stuff.

What was the name of that case?

It was Buckley v. New Hampshire Republican State Committee. And it was just settled, and there was a public announcement. But there was a lot of stuff discovered.

That’s worth looking at.

See those boxes by my front door? We’re about to put that in storage, off-site storage. But that’s in his depositions and documents. If you talk to Ben Ginsberg and ask . . .

He’s very timid about going on the record.

Right. Really, he was my counterpart at various times. In ’04, technically, it was Mark Elias; he was counsel for the campaign and Mark Elias from Perkins Coie was counsel for Kerry-Edwards. My counterpart was really Tom Josefiak, actually, at the Republican National Committee, chief counsel. It’s complicated because people have different titles.

Right. It’s a fantastically interesting field of law.

It is. Well, I enjoy it.

I bet you do. You know, when we were talking about consultants — and this will be the last question on this kind of thing — when consultants start to work together on a presidential campaign, they often go off and set up a separate company. And then oftentimes you can’t find who is who, because they have a proliferation of companies. I have always been pretty suspicious about those kinds of setups.

I am trying to think what they did the last time, in 2000. See, sometimes it’s done because there are multiple companies involved and they want to pay one entity and divide it up a certain way. Sometimes these cycles get confused. I know in ’96 there was a company that included the pollster and they sort of paid one outfit and they cut up the fees and the costs. I don’t recall if that was done in 2004. Shrum, Devine & Donilon was Kerry’s principal media firm. There were others involved. I don’t know if they set up a separate entity to run money through.

I mean, it’s very hard to trace the money.

Oh, it’s because they did also use Squier Knapp Dunn [Communications] for some, and then the guys that specialize in the production side. So it’s not uncommon to set up an entity representing a couple of companies.

When you talk to media consultants, they say, “Well, the old standard . . .” Was it 10 percent?

Fifteen percent?

Fifteen percent doesn’t exist anymore.

That’s true. Particularly at high-volume buys, clients, meaning campaigns, party committees, PACs, other political organizations and nonprofits, unions insist on lower commissions or even flat fees. There is a trend in that direction. That will help bring the costs down, too. And again, I think just the increasing significance of alternative media is going to change the role of these consultants.

Yeah. Your point about media is really fascinating. At the same time that we have seen sort of media being democratized, I mean, it’s changed in all kinds of ways. Political coverage has become . . .

Yeah, atomized totally.

Incredible. From your point of view, what affect does that have on the system?

The proliferation of the media?

The change in the way the media covers.

Well, it’s a very positive effect in terms of, from my perspective, campaign finance.

You mean the democratization.

Absolutely. The fact that candidates and organizations, if something catches on, can raise large amounts of money in small donations over the Internet.

But it’s really giving into the 24-hour cycle; you don’t have newspaper reporters who travel all year long with the candidate anymore.

Right. Is that true? I guess . . .

Yeah, you don’t anymore. I mean, it’s become much more fragmented. And the bloggers can have incredible voices. Do you see a negative impact there in any way?

That’s hard to say, obviously. I mean, I am 53 years old. I’m used to somewhat the old way of coverage. But a lot of that’s been changed forever, even in ’88 when they . . .

And it’s been changing a while. People used to complain that the big newspapers dominated. Now I think they are longing for that day.

Exactly. But as a general thing, the democratization of the media is a good thing.

And the access.

And the idea, the price and quality. Remember that the political agenda, if you really look at what happened, what gets picked up in all of these other media still is set by The Washington Post and The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. They still have powerful influences, and there is that inherent quality control.

Right, there is still some of that. Yeah, the consultants have been criticized for doing all kinds of bad things in American politics. I mean, just standardizing things, making it far more ideological, making it talking-point oriented, that sort of thing. Do you subscribe to any of those criticisms about this?

I think you can’t blame consultants for that. I think people get the candidates they deserve. And when they reward candidates who really are a little bit more straight-shooting, and plain-talking, and tell uncomfortable truths, that will change the dynamic. Somebody says particularly you are going to see this more at the state level, because in Congress the whole thing is such an artificial game of magic money. But in the states, where they have to balance the budget, somebody says, “We don’t have to raise taxes.” That’s the truth. And they still get elected. That’s the best antidote, right?

Right. And it’s consistent with your observation that the states are starting — you are seeing guys like [Arnold] Schwarzenegger and others saying, “I made a mistake promising to show up and . . .”

Right.

I mean, he’s really setting a new pattern.

Well, I think a lot of the governors are shedding a new pattern in politics, both in terms of policy innovation, and certainly, talking about our side, we have a lot of star Democratic governors and most of them have a new style of politics.

And you expect that to bubble up this system?

It should, yeah.

Although Congress seems impervious to insult. Now we see that a consortium of Western states are going to come up with new auto emissions standards. I mean, it’s gotten to the point where Congress does so little.

Exactly. I mean, one of the things that is a challenge to our congressional leadership, absolutely, is to make Congress relevant again by actually taking on some of these problems. They have only so much time to show some progress on health care and education.

Yeah, they have just sort of given up. What was that? I heard another one today that was really amazing: driver’s licenses. Congress has said that driver’s licenses cannot or should not go to immigrants or something like that. But the states have to pay for it.

Well, we’re going through now with the election-reform stuff, we want Congress to impose this paper-trail requirement on electronic voting machines. But the states have to be given money for it; otherwise it’s not going to happen.

Right. And they won’t.

Well, that’s a big sticking point.

Which leads me to my next question. Voter fraud has become a big issue, and yet, having been a Florida reporter, there was so little there, in my view. There was so much made of so little, in terms of evidence that people had been denied a vote. And I am wondering how you see this.

Voter fraud means . . .?

Well, I am actually sort of mushing all of this together. In Florida it was that people were turned away for different reasons.

Well, in our experience this is a big topic, but [there have been] very significant problems over the years in people who are eligible to vote being denied the right to vote for one reason or another: being improperly not on the list, improperly challenged. This new round of photo ID requirements, we in the Democratic Party regard as a completely improper obstacle to voting that has the sole intent and effect of disenfranchising minorities, low-income people, seniors, and so forth.

You are saying new round. This is on the state level?

Photo IDs, yeah. Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, some of them we knocked out in court; Georgia knocked out in court, Missouri knocked out in court, some of them have gone through.

I think you won the paper-trail argument, have you not?

Certainly in public sentiment we have. Implementing it is going to be a harder thing. And remember, the paper-trail problem was created as a solution to the hanging-chad problem in Florida.

Right. That was the difference.

A lot of Democrats and Republicans supported.

I see why I confused you. See, I am thinking about all of the complaints that they had about roadblocks. So the paper trail is likely to occur if it’s funded?

Yes.

But that becomes a large component of campaign organization, does it not? I mean, as the party, don’t you set aside funds?

For voter-protection operations? Yes. That has been one of my principal responsibilities the last couple of cycles. And we had a very extensive program, really an even more extensive program, in terms of the number of states, in ’06. We had paid staff on the ground whose sole job, for some period of time, was to deal with the election administration of voting-rights problems in that state, and recruit and deploy lawyers for the polls on Election Day to help voters solve problems in real time at the polls. That’s a big part of our operation.

Did that become expensive? I would assume that’s an expensive operation.

It is. Not compared to everything else, but it is very important for the party to put resources into it. And we did. We did it extensively in ’04. And we did it again in ’06. And we didn’t have paid staff in more states in ’06, but we had operations in more states, probably because there were more states in play. So that’s very significant. There is a Voting Rights Institute at the Democratic National Committee. It’s a part of the political organization.

I would assume that this is only going to continue to grow.

Well, it depends. In some states the problems are getting solved. And in other states they are not. It depends on who is in charge and what the legislature is willing to do or not willing to do to solve some of this stuff.

Right. My daughter has been voting in Ohio the last few years.

But now we have a new governor, a new secretary of state, I think, who are committed to fixing some of these problems. That should help a lot.

If you could change anything about this system, what would be the way to go?

Not limited to the financial rules themselves, you mean?

Right.

Well, one thing we are going through right now is the whole battle over this calendar. And I think a lot of leadership and staff feel the same way. If you could wave a magic wand, you would start the process in the middle of March; nobody goes before then. I mean maybe Iowa and New Hampshire, we are going to except them. And Nevada and South Carolina would start that March 1. Not in the middle of January, but the middle of March, and then spread it out from there so that it’s not so insane and people don’t have to start so early. So the voters have a chance to really look at the candidates hard, and from a lot of different states before the process is over, so that people don’t have to make so much money to make it last.

Part of what’s driving this cost thing is the length of the process, to make it last from the events that start in mid-January. The Iowa caucuses are scheduled for January 14. Through the convention in August, there is no way you can make the amount of money you would be limited to if you accepted matching funds and limited spending. I don’t know what it would be this year. Say $53 million for that period of time, everybody’s pounding you and national media, you know once you get through this, say you’re the presumptive nominee.

You couldn’t stretch it that far, could you? You couldn’t stretch the money.

In March, April, May, June, July, you are running a national campaign as if you were a general-election candidate. But under the legal rules, you would still be limited to the primary spending limit. One solution of that, clearly — I mean, I am all for the legislation the reformers have proposed. We have endorsed it. The party has endorsed it, to fix the public-financing system by raising the dollars. But the other piece of that has to be reforming the calendar and making this process start later.

Do you think that’s possible?

We’re working on it. It’s going to take cooperation between the Republican and the Democratic parties. Governor Dean definitely is committed to trying to do this for ’12.

And what’s the limit you are agreeing to? What are you talking about in terms of upping the limit?

There is legislation being proposed by [Chris] Shays and [Marty] Meehan on the House side and [David] Price. And there is a companion incentive bill to try to induce people to come back into the matching-fund system by increasing the spending limits significantly so it’s worth it for people to accept the matching funds, accept the spending limit. There is legislation to do that.

I see. Oh, the spending limits, not the contributions.

The spending limits. As I said, $45 million is impossible or $50 million. This would make substantial increases; I don’t remember the numbers offhand.

Does that have a chance?

I think so.

Or does it depend on how it plays out this time?

Exactly. I mean, if it doesn’t go anywhere this cycle, I think it may well go somewhere in ’09 – ’10 for 2012, which is when it will be effective anyway as a result of this experience. But we’re hopeful that if they do move any campaign finance legislation this cycle, ’07 – ’08, this should be the heart of it. I think everybody agrees on that.

That’s good. 

And really that it needs fixing.

But it would be for the future?

It would be for the future because it’s already too late. We are already started. And you have to raise the money into the system through these tax checkoffs, too. It takes a year to do that. No one is checking.

That would constrain the spread-out, too. I mean, this is kind of a . . .

Chicken-and-egg thing.

Yeah. I mean, as long as you are not going to use those funds, you can spread it out. So you have pressure, then, to move in the other direction.

Exactly.

So those would be the changes that you would make?

Yep.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. I’d like to see that system work again. And I’d like to see the process be shorter.

Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that I should have?

There are always new issues that develop each time. And the way people think about these things is never quite predictable, either. At the beginning of the last cycle, everybody said the Democrats are, of course, disadvantaged by McCain-Feingold. So therefore, they are the ones who are going to take advantage of the 527s. And the biggest 527s are indeed on the Democratic side. But the one that drew all of that attention and was considered the most effective was on the Republican side. So if you go up there now and ask the House Democratic Caucus or the House Republican Conference, “Should we outlaw 527s because they are better for the other guys than us?,” the caucuses are split. Half of the Democrats think it’s better for the Republicans; half of the Republicans think it’s better [for the Democrats]. Nobody is really sure which, which may be why they don’t take the legislative action. It’s very hard.

That kind of gaming the system is interesting because people game different . . .

And it turns out they don’t really understand what the consequences are.

I think they waste their time doing it, frankly.

A lot of it is they knew people running against them, and they don’t like it. Whoever does it should be outlawed. That’s their sort of basic instinct. But it doesn’t always work that way.

There are some people we have talked to who think that the increase in money makes negative campaigning necessary.

I don’t know about that. If you read a history book, the things that were said when there wasn’t a lot of money around [were] pretty vicious.