Countdown

Home > Interviews > Toby Chaudhuri

Toby Chaudhuri

Toby Chaudhuri is the communications director for the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive 501(c)(4) organization, and the Institute for America’s Future, its affiliated 501(c)(3). Prior, he worked for Al Gore’s presidential campaign, the Children’s Defense Fund, and Common Cause.

Josh Israel and Sarah Laskow interviewed Chaudhuri on March 26, 2008.

Just give me a 30-second background. You began working with the [Scott] Harshbarger for governor campaign [in Massachusetts], or does it go back before that?

I cut my teeth in Democratic politics probably right out of college. I worked first for Warren Tolman who was running for lieutenant governor, statewide, for Massachusetts. I went from there to work on the Democratic coordinated campaign and went on to manage state Senate campaigns and other campaigns in Massachusetts.

From there, I went on to be the deputy press secretary to Al Gore’s campaign in 2000 for president. I was in New Hampshire and California. I worked in the [Bill] Clinton White House for a bit doing environmental communications. When President [George W.] Bush came into office, I packed up and left in the sweep, joined movement politics, ran communications at Common Cause, fighting corruption. I was at the Children’s Defense Fund and then joined the Campaign for America’s Future. I’m the communications director.

Could you sort of give me a brief sense of what the campaign is, what its goal is?

The campaign is essentially a progressive strategy center. We’re helping to build an independent movement that’s outside of the party structure. There has been this rightward drift in American politics for the last quarter of a century. We’ve seen a stranglehold from the conservative movement on our ideas on the debate out there. Our entire job is to widen that debate and make sure there is a clear progressive alternative to the failed conservative policies that we’ve seen.

Are you a 501(c)(4)?

The Campaign for America’s Future is a 501(c)(4) on the tax code. We also have a research arm, the Institute for America’s Future, which is a (c)(3) in the code. We also have a 527 as well.

What does the Institute for America’s Future do?

The Institute for America’s Future does a plethora of research, essentially a lot of research and education around the issues that we can identify as key issues. For example, we do a lot of research and policy work around energy independence, creating plans that could help create a new generation of jobs here in the U.S. around clean energy, plans that would unleash our science and technology and our education to that end. Similarly, we do a lot of research on the economy and kitchen table issues — those issues that affect Americans, the things they talk about after a long day of hard work — retirement security after a life of hard work, affordable health care. These are all the kinds of issues we deal with and our research team does all sorts of research around those.

Are you communications director for both entities or just for the Campaign?

For both entities.

With the restrictions as they are on what a 501(c)(3) can do, what a 501(c)(4) can do, you said you have a 527 connected, how do you juggle the different hats? Do you have an army of lawyers that you have to consult before you can check your e-mail, or is it pretty easy to navigate?

We do have a very robust legal team. The way we operate is we essentially account for all the work that we do. Just like at a firm, someone might bill specific clients for hours of work and product and activity. We essentially account for what time we spend on wearing each of our different hats.

Does CAF do any endorsements?

We do not endorse candidates for public office, only ideas.

You do take some involvement in elections as far as expressing opinions on candidates?

We are not electoral in nature. We are building this outside movement and are working very hard to make sure that the national debate has a progressive alternative. So, much of the work that we do, although it doesn’t focus on any specific candidates, is very much about moving ideas into the national conversation.

I saw on YouTube — and I don’t know if this ad is also running in other forms — the “Merci McCain” ad. First of all, is it just a YouTube ad?

It is just a YouTube ad, correct.

What is the idea behind communications like that?

That was a humorous video that we posted online which was meant to actually make a very serious point about the state of affairs in the United States right now. For those that don’t know, the video kind of pokes fun at John McCain’s support for outsourcing our national security, essentially helping a European firm, Airbus, get a contract on an American tanker deal.

Really, the whole point of that video is to shine the light on the fact that in the United States right now, because of the public policies, decisions we have made over years, we have a country where we don’t have enough infrastructure. Even in the military, after the military industrial complex, we don’t have the resources within our own country to develop this American tanker. It raises the question, “Should an American tanker be developed by an American company and American workers?”

Instead, we’ve moved this contract to a French subsidiary of Airbus. The contrast here is you have a country like France who is rolling out a new fighter jet. They’re not outsourcing production or design of that project to the United States. Similarly, they’ve moved a public high rail system. They are not outsourcing that to Germany. So here in the United States, we are missing some major public investments. We’re trying to draw a clear message around the need for that kind of public investment right here in the United States. We chose to do that in a humorous way with that video.

Is the idea, to some extent, to sort of utilize the interests in the presidential election to bring attention to the issue, rather than a lot of ads which are using an issue to bring attention to the presidential election?

During an election year, there is no question that most of the air is sucked up by the conversation that happens between the presidential candidates. When we’re working on issues of utmost importance to the national debate, it’s always very helpful for presidential candidates to be talking about those issues. Certainly we look at it as a duty of ours to make sure that any elected official and any candidate running for office has a good amount of resources about the key issues that we spend our time driving and researching.

You have an ad like this and put it on YouTube. Suddenly thousands and thousands of people across the country can see it. Whatever it costs to make the ad and whatever it costs to hire someone to spend 10 seconds to upload it to YouTube, how is this changing the ability of an organization like yours to get your message and effect change relative to 20, 30 years ago when you probably would have had to spend a fair amount more to play a role?

It’s a blessing, and it’s a curse. You mentioned that 20, 30 years ago, it was very easy to communicate if you had the resources to do so. You could put an ad up on what we called roadblocking. You could put an ad up on NBC, ABC, and CBS during the evening news and you knew that you hit a pretty significant portion of the American public with that communication.

Today, because of the Internet, because we’re living in the information age, there are more and more avenues to communicate. It’s easier to communicate more freely with inexpensive methods of communication, but it means it’s also that much harder to break through the clutter and actually reach the audiences that might find your information valuable.

You had a fairly significant conference last week, Take Back America. As I understand it, you brought together various different groups, individuals, activists from I think it’s fair to say from the left side of the spectrum. Throughout the media coverage of it, there was a particularly bold number, $150 million to help take back the White House, keep Congress, and so forth. Then The Politico quoted your co-director saying that the figure might be as high as $400 million. What does this all mean? How would it work? I’m guessing that the money isn’t coming out of your wallet personally, probably even your organization’s wallet.

No, it’s true. The point that we were making there, first, and then I’ll get into the depth of it, is there are more groups working outside the conventional campaign structures this election cycle than ever before. They are moving money into voter education. They are moving money into voter mobilization. They are working very hard to drive issues into the national debate. But more importantly, this time around, into making sure that it’s not just about the election, but it’s about moving agenda far beyond Election Day to make sure that whoever is elected to office is held accountable to a set of principles, to a set of ideas and issues that people are moving right now. There’s no question that when the people organize and the people make their voices heard, politicians have to follow. That is the basic premise of the mobilization that’s happening out there.

We are not moving all of this money. This is what other groups are moving into specific constituencies out there. No one really knows the upper bound. The $150 million figure is probably a lower bound from a set of specific groups that we looked at. We took out their PAC money and we took out their money that some of these groups might have encountered for electioneering. We looked specifically at the money that’s being used for voter education and mobilization. We saw that it’s quite a significant amount of money. All of this is about building this independent infrastructure out there to educate voters on real, important issues that they don’t hear from corporate America, and to make sure that it has some influence in how they choose their elected officials. More importantly, how they hold them accountable far into their terms of office.

What are some of the organizations that go into this equation?

Probably the group we featured in making the largest contribution is labor. The AFL-CIO is represented in Take Back America and in our announcement about the largest mobilization. The National Council of La Raza; Rock the Vote, which is reaching young people in droves; MoveOn.org, which has a huge following online; ACORN, which is moving a significant effort into low-income households, especially in Latino and African-American households. You can see there is a spectrum of groups that reach diverse constituencies, age groups, racial groups, ethnic groups, genders. Women Voices Women Vote is another group that is moving a huge mobilization this cycle around single women.

Some of these organizations don’t endorse, as you said yours doesn’t. This isn’t necessarily mobilization for any particular candidate. It’s a mobilization of a movement. Can you explain how that ties in?

All of these groups are running separate operations. Together, however, they build what we see is the insurgence of a progressive movement. These are folks who are fighting very hard to make sure that the government can work for the people again. It is kind of engraved in our Take Back America moniker. These are all independent groups. The reason why we are playing together, at least with an increased amount of coordination and whatever is legal under the law, an increased amount of political sophistication, is because we are working very hard to move a very basic agenda. To make sure that people have affordable health care, to make sure that the economy works for everyone, to make sure that we can figure out a real national security agenda in this country, that we can work hard to make sure that we have energy independence, wean ourselves off the dependence of foreign oil. It’s to move very specific, bold ideas and issues not only into the debate, but hopefully, eventually, into laws and policies in this country.

There were, at least the infancy, similar sorts of efforts in 2004 with America Votes and some of the 527 groups. Did this organization exist in 2004? What lessons have been learned as far as changing things for 2008?

You would probably get a different answer from everybody on that question. Here’s my sense, my perspective. In 2004, there were a lot of groups created around the election cycle. For example, you had ACT [America Coming Together] and you had America Votes, groups that came and went with the election cycle. America Votes is back online again this cycle.

The groups, again, that we are focusing on were organizations that existed then and before then, and that we hope will exist for many years to come. It’s about, again, building this sort of independent infrastructure among organizations that will live long beyond just an election cycle, again, to drive an issue into the national debate and then to hold politicians accountable long after that.

Is campaign finance reform or government accountability at all in the picture that this organization is looking at?

I will tell you, again, from Campaign for America’s Future’s perspective, our organization, making democracy work means cleaning it up. It means not only cleaning out the stables in Washington, but it means also making sure there is an effective policy in place to keep ethics and accountability at a premium. So there is no question that campaign finance reform and full disclosure and public accountability are very important pieces of our agenda.

I know you are not the finance director of this organization, and I’m certainly not asking for any trade secrets, but how does an organization like yours raise money? Not the $150 million for the election, but the money you need to function with your various entities?

There are a couple different sources we have for our funding. One large one is that we have hundreds of thousands of supporters on the Internet. They’ve broken the money primary of sorts. We were talking about information flows earlier, but there’s no question that thousands of people can bring together small dollars now on the Internet and help create a sense of momentum around all sorts of different issues and initiatives. That’s one base. We also get a lot of funding from foundations, from folks who are philanthropists, from labor unions, from organizations with allied interests.

This question may not necessarily focus so much on the organization, but you worked at Common Cause. You were there in 2002 as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act became law. Both from the perspective of this organization and from your perspective as sort of an observer and somebody who has been a part of this, five years later, how’s it working?

I think the McCain-Feingold legislation, which we worked on very hard over there, its intentions were pure and wonderful. They were terrific. There is a sad inevitability in American politics, which is that no matter what boulders are put into the system, money does seem to flow like a stream around those boulders, especially now when we’re living in an age where the economy of scale around a presidential election will move upwards of more than $1 billion. It’s hard to take money completely out of politics, unfortunately.

That’s why I think it’s very important that there are independent structures put into place, that there’s an independent infrastructure heating the perspective that the public needs in order to understand what arguments are coming toward them. I think the McCain-Feingold legislation has made great strides, but I think that our work has only just begun on campaign finance reform and maintaining integrity in our system.

There has been at least a perception, and I think probably fairly accurately, that historically, Republicans running for the White House have been able to raise more money than Democrats running for the White House. This year, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Certainly with the presidential contenders, we now see Senator [Hillary] Clinton and Senator [Barack] Obama are far ahead of Senator McCain as far as the money they’re raking in for their campaigns.

With this, there was historically a sense that the Democrats would catch up by soft money and then with 527 groups. Does this take away some of the need for progressive independent groups? Does it take away some of your funding? Does having the Democrats be better funded than the Republicans take away some of the role of independent groups on the left? Does it take away some of the funding stream?

I don’t think so at all, and here’s why. Our mission and goal is all about making sure that politicians are held accountable and on specific key issues. That’s not necessarily a Democrat or a Republican thing. We need to make sure that our elected officials are held accountable across the board. As an organization, for example, we have had no problems making sure that Democrats all look to our progressive principles just as we don’t flinch when attacking a particular Republican because they have misstepped on issues that are vital to the electorate.

Is there any kind of competition now? Not necessarily in that sense, but is the pool of money available from donors so great right now that it doesn’t change things that much?

I don’t have the specifics. Again, as you mentioned, I’m not a finance person, but my sense is that there is a lot of money moving to the presidential elections right now. They are probably sucking the air out of most of the funding that’s available. I think it becomes a little bit more difficult for outside groups, and I would imagine the parties themselves as well, to raise money during that time. There is support obviously out there for the kind of independent infrastructure that we are providing. There are lots of folks who care very deeply about core issues, core issues that groups like ours are fighting for.

There has got to be some point where there is too much money saturating this process. I don’t think that we’ve hit that wall yet, from the looks of it, and I don’t know when we will. There are lots of folks out there who have very vested interests. They’re willing to move money into the causes that they think are important to them. Corporate America has done it for years. I would like to think right now, a sleepy electorate is starting to wake up and realize that they need a change of direction in this country. I would like to think that more and more folks are looking to support groups like ours.

This ties a little bit into what you were saying about the communications on the Internet. If money buys speech, at least buys you a megaphone and allows you to make your message heard, does having this much money in a presidential campaign make it harder for an organization like yours to not get drowned out?

I don’t know that it’s a function of money as much as that’s a function of strategy and tactics. We saw, for example, in 2004 there was an outside group which probably had a very partisan intent, the Swift Boat Veterans. They took a small amount of money, in relative terms, and exploded that into a huge amount of money to communicate a very specific message around an election cycle. That was a 527 group. I don’t agree with their politics and I don’t agree with their message, but it would be hard to ignore the ability that a group like that has to break through the clutter and to actually drive a national debate.

So, ultimately, the message you choose to articulate is still more important than the amount of money that’s backing it.

Well, I think you mentioned this before. Today what one can communicate on YouTube, on the Internet, through e-mail, through effectively inexpensive and affordable means of communication, are vast. There are so many opportunities out there. Twenty years ago, one would have to spend lots of money in order to saturate the conversation through paid media on television. Today, one can cleverly and inexpensively move and drive a viral message in the information age.

What other roles do you see in various organizations with your 501(c)(4), 527, playing as far as the 2008 election goes, if any, that we haven’t talked about?

I think you pretty much covered it all. At the end of the day, there is going to be a lot of communication out there. There are dozens of groups on both sides moving very robust budgets and they all have very comprehensive plans to drive a lot of this conversation. We’re going to hear more than ever before. It will be most interesting to see what breaks through the clutter.

We were talking before about the progressive movement and all of these groups working together. I think it’s pretty well known that 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and 527s can’t coordinate with candidates. Are there any restrictions in how you coordinate with each other, either supporting each other financially or in terms of ideas?

Absolutely. Every group is governed by, obviously, the laws associated with their tax status. Again, we’re living in the information age and there is a lot of information that is made public on websites, through the media, on blogs, information that’s available to everybody. There is a lot more information that can be shared because of that. I think the laws have made everyone very careful, and probably more this cycle than ever before, about how they communicate with one another within allied groups, which is great. At the same time, there is more communication than ever before.

Could you just give an illustrative example of how you might go about communicating with a group like you talked about, like ACORN?

It’s tough to say because the groups that we communicate with directly are groups that are generally in our own tax status. There’s actually a lot more freedom in the way that we are able to talk to one another. In this day and age, every single group has a website. On that website, they have all the data they are willing to make public. They have copies of their news releases and their blog posts. It doesn’t take a whole lot to figure out what folks are doing that they can share legally out there.

What about money? I know there has been some concern with groups like the American Leadership Project, of money going in one place and coming out and going to other people, and no one quite being sure where it’s coming from or where it’s going. Is that a problem for a group like yours?

For a group likes ours, no. We hold our own budget in a big sort of way. We haven’t had to worry about that. When we start moving billions of dollars, that might be a different thing. I haven’t seen a whole lot of that problem on our side. I think after coming out of this conservative era that we’ve all kind of been living in, there have been a lot of progressive groups that have been targeted. Many of these groups, like ours, have become that much more careful about how we do our daily business as a result of that. We’re dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s more than usual. I think maybe the system is helped by that. I’m not aware of any illegal money movement.

I think that’s the trick. It’s not illegal; it’s just that people get confused about what is even going on in the legal realm.

I do think, again, we’re talking about the information age and the Internet. I mentioned this earlier, but I think one of the exciting things about this time in politics is there are more people paying attention than ever before and paying attention not only with their voices. We’re seeing that across the country. We’re seeing that in ballot boxes across the country. I think in Texas alone, the number of folks who came out for their caucuses was more than the number of folks that voted in their general election last cycle.

So you are seeing folks make their voices heard. I think the exciting thing about this election cycle, and maybe the one before, is that we have really broken the money primary with the Internet. More small donors giving whatever they can because they want to move a particular solution to the problems they’re facing every day. You have elected officials who are less beholden to huge money interests. I think it’s really serving democracy well.

If you look at the issues that all the candidates are talking about this election cycle, from health care to trade and the economy to energy independence, these are all issues that everyday people are grappling with every day. Folks who can’t make their ends meet, these are the concerns they’re worried about. We’re seeing the presidential election actually driven on these issues. I think that is a real success for democracy. Hopefully, that only gets better as this process goes forward.

You’ve been observing this for a while and you’ve been active in this for a few elections now, particularly in the area of communications and money. What do you think is next in 2012, 2016?

That’s a great question. I think the information age is going to grow. I think more and more people are going to have avenues of being able to participate in the process that they haven’t had before. I think that the best is still yet to come. The Internet is probably not only going to come with its share of liabilities, but the opportunities that come with this are going to be immense. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next White House administration, whether Democratic or Republican, opens itself up to “2.0” interactivity with the citizenry. I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more people have their voices heard and that our politics move in the direction that we’re seeing it move in, which is much more progressive.

We have just seen probably what is the end of the conservative era that was started with Ronald Reagan. It was a time where we saw a corporate feeding frenzy in Congress, even in the White House, that has affected a lot of the policies, the conservative policies that moved in this country. I think that voters are starting to see the failures of that. They saw it with Katrina when they saw a government that couldn’t respond. They saw it with the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, public infrastructures deteriorating. They’re seeing it with the mess that we’ve created in Iraq and corporate interests benefiting from that. They see it in almost every aspect of our country.

The failure of the conservative movement and their policies is pretty much complete. As we ring in or hopefully work toward what could be a progressive era in American politics, I certainly hope the system becomes that much more open and that much more transparent. That is key to driving solutions to the problems that everyday people are facing in this country.