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Richard Moe

Richard Moe is the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving historic places. Prior, he was the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farm-Labor Party, administrative assistant to Senator Walter Mondale, and Mondale’s vice presidential chief of staff.

Sarah Laskow interviewed Moe on June 2, 2008.

What’s your experience, just in general, with presidential politics and presidential campaigns?

I was in Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party [Minnesota’s Democratic Party] politics for most of my early career during the 1960s, basically. I was the state chairman of the Minnesota DFL party until I came down here to work in the Senate with Walter Mondale. Then four years in the Senate and four years in the White House. Then I went out and practiced law. Then I came here at the National Trust about 15 and a half years ago.

What do you do here?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is the nation’s largest private organization committed to saving the nation’s heritage in the form of the built environment. We are an advocacy organization. We have 29 house museums around the country, historic sites. We have regional offices. We have programs of all kinds that support that mission.

Your assistant just told me that this was the original National Gallery of Art.

Andrew Mellon lived here. He formed the National Gallery of Art because of a purchase he made when he lived here.

What I told you I wanted to talk to you about was election reform and your work in the Carter administration. I just want to know what you remember.

Most of the election reform, in terms of the financing of elections, occurred before the Carter administration. I don’t think much happened during the Carter administration in terms of public financing. Public financing was instituted and I was very proud of the fact that I worked with Senator Mondale on this after Watergate in ’75, ’76 to get public financing enacted. We worked with Senator Kennedy and many others on a bipartisan basis because there was so much outrage over the Watergate offenses and slush money all over the place.

It’s ironic because this year public financing of the campaigns has run out. There are all kinds of candidates opting out of the system, or opting out of the system and then opting in. I hope at some point, without the scandal that usually is required to precipitate reform, we can get back to a positive discussion about public financing in some form. I still think it’s, by far, the best means for democracy of elected public officials.

What did happen in the Carter administration that I was directly involved in was to try to enact at the federal level a practice we had in Minnesota, which was called election-day registration. That meant that anybody could walk into a polling place, without registering prior to Election Day, and simply by means of presenting identification in the form of a driver’s license or some other verifiable form of identification, that person could register and vote on the same day. It worked in Minnesota. It’s worked in many other states since.

It was a very, very tough challenge in Congress, not just with Republicans who raised the specter of voter fraud, but many Democrats in the big cities like Philadelphia and Chicago; they wanted to know exactly who was voting. They wanted certainty. So that did not get enacted. That was really the extent, I think, of our involvement in election reform in the Carter years.

So the main challenge, it seems like, was just the people wanting to know who was voting.

That’s right. In the old city-style boss systems, it’s very important to know exactly who is voting. They didn’t want a lot of unpredictable people turning up on Election Day. In some places, there was, I think, perhaps the greater prospect of voter fraud. Overall, we didn’t think it was going to be a serious concern.

When people are talking about voter fraud, what do they mean? Was it the same as what people say when they mean voter fraud now or something different?

Well, what they meant was that some people would get fake IDs and show up half a dozen different places. We never had any experience with that in Minnesota or I don’t think any other places.

That’s sort of different than what they’re talking about now about voter fraud. What I understand is normally you talk about people voting twice maybe or voting by dead people, but not necessarily getting fake IDs.

I think that’s right, but I don’t know. I’ve not kept up on this issue so I don’t know what’s going on.

People are talking about voter fraud and voter IDs, but it’s almost a little bit flipped from what you’re saying. The issue about voter IDs isn’t that people will get them, but that they won’t get them. The people who want to vote won’t be able to get identification to vote. It’s unexpected that the resistance was that they wanted to know who would be voting, and voter registration would be the determiner of that. So often, the conversation that I’ve been keeping up on has to do with voter registration being inaccurate, the voter registration rolls being a mess.

That’s certainly true in many cases, so I’m told. Again, I’m not an authority on that, but I think that’s a big issue. Sometimes roles get purged periodically. A lot of people get purged from lists inadvertently that shouldn’t be purged. They’re out in the cold. They show up at the polls and they’re not allowed to vote. That’s awful.

In the Carter years, you were trying to do same-day voter registration and it didn’t really pan out?

It didn’t work.

I’m curious more about the public financing and your involvement with that, too. What were the original issues and ideas with that? Is there anything that you got done that you were proud of, or that didn’t get done that you wish had gotten done?

We were very proud of the fact that we got public financing, particularly at the presidential level. We never did get it at the congressional level. It worked pretty well. It was enacted in a way that the amount of public financing you were eligible for in the primary season was reflective of the smaller contributions that you got. So you had to prove that you were a serious, viable candidate. The more serious you proved you were, the more public funds you got in terms of matching. I think every contribution under $250 got matched.

Then the two major party nominees got a flat sum after they were nominated. That eliminated the need to do any fundraising. As a matter of fact, you were prevented from doing any fundraising in the general election. That focused the attention of both candidates on the election itself, on the issues, without having to be diverted. There’s a lot of argument in this country that many political contributions are tainted. They may or may not be. I think most contributions are given for the right reason: that they believe in the candidate, they believe in the party, they believe in the cause. In any case, there is that suggestion. Whatever its merit, I think it’s most effectively met through public financing because there can’t be any obligation at all for public money.

What do you think about what’s going on now with all the small donations to the Obama campaign? Does that replace public financing?

It may very well have. I haven’t reflected enough on this. It may very well have replaced public financing in the same sense. It’s very impressive what’s happened in both Senator Obama’s campaign and more recently Senator Clinton’s campaign: very large numbers of small donations coming in. They’ve mastered the web and it’s an easy way for people to communicate both ways. I think this is clearly revolutionizing politics in America, and probably in a way that’s very healthy.

Again, the response reflects the appeal that a candidate has. To an extent, it reflects the effectiveness of that candidate at dealing with the Internet. I think it’s very healthy for a nominee and for the process for that nominee to have the support of a million and a half donors.

Do you have any other stories or anything about public financing or election reform?

No, I really don’t. As I say, I have not kept up with this issue for decades, literally. I’m not very well-versed in it now. I do hope we can get back to public financing in some way. Other countries seem to handle it pretty well, better than we do. We don’t even provide for public airing of television ads.

Besides the public financing of Congress, was there anything you were aiming for in the original public financing legislation that didn’t get in?

No, I think that was pretty much it. We were hoping to get congressional public financing, but the support for that just wasn’t there that time and still isn’t.