What Pro Football can teach us about Campaign Finance Reform
Thomas LyonsCampaign finance reform is a tricky subject. Protecting legitimate democracy appears in conflict with free property rights. Organizational donation is regulated. Channeling funds through special-interests, PACs, or political parties is discouraged and also highly regulated.
Meanwhile, election spending continues to reach new heights. Newt Gingrich was recently quoted as saying a middle class president would be impossible, not because of poor political principle or inadequate charisma to draw a following, but because of the gap in fundraising. Some politicians have even called for universalized funding of elections, perhaps eliminating the question of donations and spending.
How ought an election be regulated such that:
a.) Property rights, specifically one’s right to donate money as one sees best, are protected;
b.) An election is not bought, except to the extent that campaign managers prudently and strategically spend what dollars they do have;
and
c.) Organizational donations are neither discouraged nor unreasonably influential on a campaign’s success or failure,
d.) One’s socioeconomic status does not place an undue burden against either entering a campaign or other political involvement.
Perhaps election regulators could learn from the National Football League? The NFL maintains a system whereby all localized revenue a team may individually earn (merchandise sales, local radio, concessions, etc) are exclusively kept by that respective team. All revenue that a the league collectively earns (the multi-billion dollar national TV contract, for instance) or revenue that a team earns in tandem with another team (ticket revenue) is shared as a league.
In addition, teams are limited to what portion of their revenue can be spent on player salaries. The intent is not to keep player salaries down so much as it is to ensure a level playing field for teams from
New York, NY and Green Bay, WI. The salary cap is large enough to accommodate players’ share of the NFL pie, yet small enough for the league to be assured all teams can afford it.
Is there any reason a similar system could not be placed on election spending? Instead of capping revenues, individual gifts, regulating sources of funds, and debating universal election dollars, why not mirror the NFL’s simple, sustainable plan for finance? Share what public funds are available, and cap the spending campaigns can thereafter make. That is, regulate campaign outflow, not campaign income.
There would be minimal, if any, need to raise more funds than the election spending cap. Provided a candidate’s staff could raise that hopefully low threshold, an NFL-style system wouldn’t discourage a legitimate middle-class candidate. The cap ought to be set at a level large enough to oversee a legitimate political campaign, yet small enough to not discourage a candidate’s entry into the campaign nor bombard the public with “unnecessary” campaign efforts.
This is a suggestion that leaves several details up to be decided. Still, though, a system like this one might provide the following:
a.) anyone could give any dollar amount to any candidate at any time,
b.) provided reasonable accounting is required, a spending cap would ensure that elections could not be purchased,
c.) one’s socioeconomic status does not preclude democratic participation,
and
d.) organizational donations warrant no special consideration nor regulation.
It appears that a system such as this proposal might address concerns over free property rights, the prevention of an election’s buyout, economic equality of entry into the democratic process, and the regulatory state of organizational giving. At least conceptually, this might be the best idea going.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:28 am
This looks like a great idea. It raises some serious first amendment concerns, though. A limit on campaign spending has no teeth if the limit does not also apply to spending on behalf of the campaign by other parties. Limiting the political speech of non-candidates is about as contrary to the First Amendment as you can get Tom, do you have in mind a way to effect this idea that addresses these First Amendment concerns?
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I assume you’re proposing a hard cap or are you suggesting something like a luxury tax?
October 5th, 2007 at 7:01 am
If NOW wants to run a nationally-televised ad for John Kerry, funding for said ad needs to come from their own coffers. Any funding for it by the John Kerry campaign would count toward their cap.
I’m proposing a hard cap, yes. I don’t know what the penalty would or should be, though, for going over.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I think Jeremy hit on a key difficulty with this idea. In the NFL, the players getting paid are the only components of real concern in the situation. An organization can hire all the extra towel boys and trainers that they want, but the difference in actual performance on the field will be minimal compared to a team with a competent but smaller staff. Regulating the money paid to the players is relatively simple. In an election, buying extra staffers and analysts can make all the difference. If you have more bumper stickers, commercials, and people saying your name, you’ll have a better chance of winning. There’s no good way to limit the spending because there is no elite election staff that is going to decide the outcome of the election. You can have as many “players on the field” as you can afford and there’s no way to know who they all are in order to regulate the money spent on them.
This makes me curious. I wonder if there’s a way that I could make an organization of Bears fans who would independently pay Carson Palmer to come to Chicago outside of the Bear’s salary cap?
October 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Not explicitly, probably. But what you can do is offer Carson Palmer an outsize endorsement contract. Or point out that your organization will pay him 1 million annually in return for him appearing at your conference. Or suggest that he write a little book and the buy a few hundred thousand copies.
Really this needs to be a corporation rather than a fan organization, though
February 28th, 2008 at 9:56 am
From MSNBC.com…
“David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, said the campaign would not make a decision [on accepting public financing and the spending strings thereto attached] until the Democratic primary is settled. But in a recent column in USA Today, Mr. Obama appeared to set some new conditions. He argued that any bipartisan agreement to accept the limits of public financing would be “meaningless” if there were no provisions to close the “loopholes” that allow unlimited spending during the long primary season or by independent outside groups.
The article cited a possible model for an agreement: one reached by Senator John Kerry , a Democrat, and former Gov. William Weld, a Republican, in the 1996 Senate race in Massachusetts. That deal limited each campaign to spending about $7 million over the last four months of the race and counted any expenditure by an outside group seeking to help a candidate against that candidate’s limit.”
Basically, it would seem the Mass. Senate campaign used the Lyons idea, only WITH external spending counting toward the cap. I still don’t think it ought to, but spending caps are not, apparently, without precedent.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Now that’s interesting.