Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., left, talks with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Much has been made in recent days of the disclosure that Democratic Senate candidates are benefiting enormously from multi-million dollar contributions to super-PACs that appear to be keeping control of the Senate tighter than had earlier been predicted. But while the most common story line is the always beloved one of political hypocrisy – how can Democrats continue to wave the “Koch brothers” as a bloody shirt – this predictable development is much more intriguing for another reason.
In an earlier piece, I argued that the extreme partisan polarization of our political parties is a product of long-term historical forces, is likely therefore to be enduring, and is not prone to much change even if we could adopt many of the institutional “fixes” that reformers often advocate (such as independent commissions to design election districts, which are a good idea, but for other reasons). For those concerned about the ability of our institutions to deliver effective governance, we cannot institutionally design our way out of polarization, nor wish it away; the more realistic task is to enable effective governance even in the face of hyperpolarized parties.
The counterintuitive, but most likely, sources of political deal-making and compromise in these circumstances, I suggested, are the party leaders in government – but only if they have the leverage to bring their members along to support tough deals that maximize the party’s ability to appeal to a national electorate. And I argued that our current system of regulating campaign financing is designed to do exactly the opposite. That system fuels the forces of political fragmentation and centripetalism, by enabling (and requiring) candidates to raise money on their own, which makes them more able to act as freelancers and less dependent on their political parties.
I proposed to change campaign finance law to encourage more of the money to flow through the political parties, under the control of the elected party leadership. Seen in this light, the financing of the 2014 elections at this point presents a potentially significant development.
As recounted in this recent Washington Post piece, the biggest spending organization in the crucial battle for partisan control of the Senate is, thus far, the Senate Majority PAC. It is designed to help keep Democrats in control of the Senate. The $32 million it has taken in so far comes overwhelming from massive personal donations ($5 million from Tom Steyer; $4 million from Fred Eychaner; $2.5 million and $2 million from former mayor Michael Bloomberg and James Simons), along with labor union contributions that amount to 21 percent of the total. At this level of funding, the group is in the same ballpark with the major conservative super-PACs, including those funded by the Koch brothers.
The Senate Majority PAC is run by several former political strategists who worked for years for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Most significantly, the Senate Majority PAC functions almost exactly in the way political parties would function, if they could raise these same amounts of money – which they can’t, because the campaign finance laws put caps on contributions to the parties (more on that in a moment).
How is the Senate Majority PAC functioning much like a political party? It is a pragmatic organization that imposes no litmus test of ideological purity on the candidates it is prepared to support with huge ad buys; instead, it seeks to elect Democrats to the Senate, period, to maintain Democratic partisan control.
So it spends to support the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, such as Alaska’s Mark Begich, Arkansas’s Mark Pryor, North Carolina’s Kay Hagan and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu. This spending may have made those races closer for these Democrats than they were anticipated to be. These are among the more conservative – centrist would be another word – Democrats. Because they are not ideological purists, they would have more trouble raising money nationally from individual donors than the more highly visible, polarizing figures in the party.
Moreover, the Senate Majority PAC has overwhelmed comparable individualized efforts to raise money for these candidates. The individual super-PACs that support these candidates have diminished in significance as the Senate Majority PAC has become more important. In essence, the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate has, in effect, caused the flow of money to move its way and away from some individual campaigns. President Obama has also supported the Senate Majority PAC by speaking at fundraisers for it.
Thus, Senators who feel this organization has helped them get elected will inevitably feel beholden to Senate Majority Leader Reid, regardless of the fact that he cannot direct or control this group’s spending. This will likely have beneficial effects of centralizing more effective power in the party leadership, which in turn will enable political compromises across party lines.
This may sound surprising. But the Senate Majority PAC functions, in effect, as the Democratic Party in the Senate, in open association with, and with the support of, the party leadership. And it is well-established that political party campaign money is more “moderate” than that from individual donors. The party organizations are less ideological in orientation because they seek to elect members of their party of all stripes. And, as political scientists Ray LaRaja and Brian Schaffner have shown, states that give political parties more of a role in the financing system end up with less polarized legislatures, probably through the mechanisms I describe here (for a dissenting view on that, see here).
So “the parties” might be on the cusp of becoming much more heavily financed through these “surrogate” party organizations associated with the party leadership. But at this point we should also ask, why not have that money go directly to the parties, rather than through these surrogates? Contribution caps to the national party organizations are currently $32,400 a year, which is why these surrogate party entities are blossoming. A lawsuit pending in federal court would eliminate the need for groups like the Senate Majority PAC. That suit argues that the parties have a First Amendment right, like other organizations, to accept unlimited contributions to a separate party entity that would spend this money only on independent electioneering. If successful, that suit would recentralize a good deal of the money now going to “non-party” entities.
I realize these enormous sums deeply trouble many. But as long as Buckley v. Valeocontrols this entire area and spending limits are unconstitutional, forty years of experience teaches that policy cannot staunch the flow of money, but only channel it in one direction rather than another. Would we any worse off with this money going to the political parties? The parties remain the broadest aggregators of diverse interests. And party leaders, who have strong incentives to make the party brand as broadly appealing as possible, remain the most likely sources of political compromise in a polarized era.
Richard H. Pildes is Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University and author of “Democratic Romanticism, Political Fragmentation, and the Decline of American Government.”
