EP. 15 — THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR REFORM

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Weston Wamp: In the years after the Citizens United decision, it looked like Republicans would be the ones that would benefit from the novel ways that billionaires and corporations could now inject unlimited money into our elections. And that seemed to shape the attitude that many in my party have had towards political reform. Or at least the leadership in DC in my party. The lack of energy among Republicans in Congress to close loopholes and support other reform priorities was more about political convenience than anything, and this has been despite calls from across the country to “drain the Swamp.”

A decade ago Republican strategists took the lead in, let’s say, creatively taking advantage of the Super PAC era -- using 501(c)(4) charitable organizations to hide the identity of donors and creating a cottage industry around running super PACs.

But fast forward to 2020. Now the three largest super PACs all support Vice PResident Biden. In fact, according to a new Issue One analysis, 71% of Super PAC and dark money spending in the 2020 cycle favors Biden — compared to 29% for President Trump. And, in 2018, dark money favored Democrats over Republicans for the first time. 

The Democrats have clearly caught up in the money race.

So this could create an opening for both parties to embrace political reform. It’s becoming clear the current system doesn’t work better for one party or another. And the system certainly doesn’t work for the American people.

Now, to the Democrats' credit, they continue to lead in Congress on supporting real legislation that would address the misuse of super PACS and the explosion of elicit dark money in our elections. And this is even as they’ve taken better advantage of this broken system. They’ve at least remained consistent that it needs to be fixed. 

So the question for Republicans is whether we’re ready to take on political reform and look at these issues through the principled lens of conservatism instead of a partisan, political lens. We’ve done it before. And the good news is that there’s a new generation of Republican reformers in Congress — including one that you’ll hear from today. Because fixing our broken political system is the smart thing to do — and it’s the right thing to do. 

This is Episode 15: The Conservative Case for Reform

Rep. Mike Gallagher: From a conservative perspective, I think we don't understand the extent to which dysfunction in Congress enables the growth of the bureaucratic state and the growth of the executive branch, and the growth of the power of the presidency. And finding a way to clean up Congress, reform Congress in order to make it more functional and convince members of Congress to do its job, I think is a necessary condition for any hope to reduce the overall size of the federal government. Or if nothing else makes the federal government more transparent and accountable to the states and the American people, which I view as a fundamentally conservative thing.

Weston Wamp: Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher is the arguably the most outspoken conservative in Congress today on reforming our political system.

His perspective is unorthodox among Republicans in Washington. If you go back to the 80s you will hear conservatives like Mitch McConnell speaking out against dark money, entertaining constitutional amendments to fix the problem. He even questioned the role of PACs altogether. President George H. W. Bush once called for an end to political action committee’s as well.

But by the 90s, Republicans like Tom Delay had found political advantages in broken campaign finance laws.

And that’s the point. In my opinion, the opposition of Republicans to reform is not ideological — it’s political. Across the country, Republicans and Democrats alike believe that power is more and more concentrated by the few in Washington. And there’s plenty of public opinion polling to back that up. 

As proof that conservatives across the country want the system cleaned up, think of reaction to President Trump’s campaign mantra: “drain the swamp,” It resonated. But nearly four years it in hasn’t led to legislation that would change the way business is conducted in Washington.

Rep. Mike Gallagher: I've been critical of my own party on this. I think part of Trump's appeal in 2016 was on this promise to drain the swamp. I remember when he came to Green Bay and talked about, “we're going to do, restrictions on lobbying for former members of Congress. We're going to do term limits. We're going to do x, y, z.” And I remember meeting with the president with a bipartisan group in the white house to get a support for term limits. He tweeted support for it, but I think the "drain the swamp" agenda has really stalled. And I think just as a political matter, it would be wise for the president to revive it. And I just think these issues appeal to a very wide range of voters and I certainly have seen in my own district that whenever I do something like write an op-ed with my progressive colleague Ro Khana on "drain the swamp" issues, people really respond to that.

I think there's just a shared sense on the left and the right that politics as usual isn't working well for anybody. And it's only a matter of time before the American people demand real reform. And it's incumbent upon leaders in office to make sure that energy is channeled in a productive direction.

Weston Wamp: The way Gallagher frames the issue is supported not just by polling but by my experience living in Tennessee. At a state level there’s already significant bipartisan reform afoot. John Pudner is a longtime conservative activist who runs Take Back Our Republic, which is a right leaning political reform organization based in Auburn, Alabama, that focuses much of its effort on solutions at the state level across the country. 

John Pudner: I think the fact that we live in a Republic and I'll say Democratic Republic, to kind of split it on that, but it relies on elected officials representing the interest of their people in the district. And once you build up such a big entity around DC and they start to become beholden to any kind of special interest around DC, or whether it be left or right, you lose your form of representative government, you really do go to an oligarchy. And at that point, the republic doesn't function.

Weston Wamp: What’s unique about Pudner’s work is that it keeps him connected to grassroots conservative activists in far flung parts of the country. These people are supporting reforms of different types — because conservatism and political reform fit hand in glove — even if Republicans in Washington have grown resistant.

John Pudner: We're 5-0 in referendums, which is nice. I shouldn't say that, we've been part of referendums, five winning referendums with no losses so far. And that's been reaching out to conservatives on a elective issues such as not letting someone do away with an elected school board, which would have been for control of pensions, really, gerrymandering reform, money in politics reform, particularly in the Dakotas where you could basically buy a legislator a car while you're bidding on a road project, which we pointed out. I mean just undisclosed and not against the law.

Weston Wamp: Let's remember what conservatism is all about. We believe in conserving the founder’s vision for America. And as the world changes, that requires creativity and good policy in order to protect the dream of the declaration, the checks and balances of the Constitution and the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

The most profound part of that vision is the right of individuals. Rights that come not from a government, but from a creator. All men are created equal. Those words echo through suffrage and the civil rights movement. And they represent a radical shift in the relationship between government and the governed.

And as I’ve shared before, what draws me to political reform is that I believe it is the work of forming a “more perfect union,” and fighting for the rights of those who don’t always have a voice. That to me, is deeply conservative, even if it’s not very “Republican” in the current environment.

Call me old school, but the limited role of the federal government wasn’t just an arcane argument made by our founders. They cared about power remaining close to the people. So to Congressman Gallagher’s point, when government is dysfunctional it grows, where there’s a lack of transparency, there’s a lack of accountability, leading also to a growth of government in so many cases. 

Nilmini Rubin runs Fix the System, which is a project at Issue One, and she’s a veteran of the Bush White House, working in international finance. She makes a similar case based on what she’s seen around the world:

Nilmini Rubin: I come from an international perspective. My entire career was really focusing on U.S. foreign policy and international development. And what we saw around the world was the importance of the rule of law, access to capital and market-based solutions in order to have societies grow and develop. And when you think about it, what's the most fundamental thing there? What's the underlying framework for growth? It's a strong and healthy democracy. So to me, it's completely linked that we have to work on our democracy. We have to strengthen it in order to have economic growth and a sustainable system.

Weston Wamp: A functional and trustworthy political system is a prerequisite to tackling bigger problems.

For many on the political right and left political reform represents an opportunity to make fair rules of the game that ultimately benefit everyone from all perspectives. How can climate change advocates make headway if Congress is bought off by fossil fuel lobbyists? How can healthcare costs be lowered if pharmaceutical companies have a stranglehold on policymaking? And how can fiscal conservatives make headway on the national debt if there isn’t transparency in government spending and campaign spending, so that we know who is giving what and expecting what.

Gerrymandering is another example. Both parties do it, and it’s voters who ultimately lose out.

Nilmini Rubin: I started caring about gerrymandering when my husband ran for Congress in Maryland, he's a Democrat and we had to tote our three kids all around the state. And my kids were like, “why are we practically in Pennsylvania when we live near DC?” And I was like, “Oh, well, I'll get you a coloring book and you can see the shapes of our state.” And there wasn't one. So my middle daughter and I, she was nine at the time, made a coloring book called the “United Shapes of America.” So every page is a state. You can color in the congressional districts and even a child in elementary school can tell you what states are gerrymandered. It's really disturbing because you realize that it's politicians choosing their voters rather than the other way around.

And it's just not fair. Any child can tell you the way the lines are drawn is just not fair. And it's distorting what comes out of Congress, and it's distorting what's happening within our parties. It's leading to extremism on both sides. So I think gerrymandering's a really important issue because it's structural. And when we fix gerrymandering, you actually fix a huge range of other issues that we're all contending with, where people in Congress aren't getting along. They're not focusing constructively on issues and they're pandering to the far reaches of their parties rather than the core voters in their districts.

Weston Wamp: I call myself a child of the political reform movement because as a young boy my father ran against a longtime incumbent congresswoman who was raising the vast majority of her campaign money from PACs, not individuals. So when he got to Congress, he kept the promises he had made to voters and fought for reforms to our political system.

His most notable moment as a reformer came as an ally of Sen. John McCain’s on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which is now best known as McCain-Feingold. Sen. McCain in many ways embodies the conservative case for reform. He passionately fought for a level playing field. And like few politicians in modern America, he was known for putting country over party. He did that when he led the passage of the only major campaign finance reform in a generation back in 2002. 

Senator John McCain: And I’d like to also point out that what we’ve really done, is for a couple hundred million Americans, is to give them the opportunity to be heard again here in our nation’s capital as we pass laws, and policies, and rules, and regulations that affect their daily lives. They’ve been rendered silent by the influence of the big money that we all know about which has been authenticated time after time, and a record that in recent times has been marred by scandals which make many of us ashamed and embarrassed.

Weston Wamp: In my conversation with Congressman Gallagher, himself a former Marine Intelligence officer who twice deployed to the Al Anbar province in Iraq, he drew a line between the patriotism of Sen. McCain and his interest in reform work.

Rep. Mike Gallagher: I think John McCain really, even when you disagree with him, there was no question that he was animated primarily by his patriotism and his love of this country. And I think that's kind of the foundation of everything we should talk about in the political reform movement. We may be progressives and Republicans, we may be ideologically divided. We may disagree, but we are committed in our love for this country and our constant striving to make it a more perfect union. And I think McCain was a real inspiration in that regard.

Weston Wamp: In many ways it’s fitting that military veterans like Sen. McCain and Congressman Mike Gallagher would be among the conservative leaders who looked beyond the politics of the moment to promote reforms that will strengthen our elections and our institutions.

I spoke with Luke Knittig who is the Senior Director of Communications at the McCain Institute And he agreed: the legacy of Sen. John McCain is about far more than partisan politics.

Luke Knittig: We really pride ourselves on carrying forward the sort of things Sen. McCain stood for, and that was opportunity, human dignity, and really things that you kind of think of as looking out for the little guy and or looking out for someone who is oppressed. And yeah, I think you’re right, moneyed interests or a less-than-fair playing field certainly connects to that. 

Weston Wamp: As we reflect on conservatism and political reform, and we harken back to the days when Sen. McCain worked with George W. Bush to get major reforms signed into law, it’s worth noting that six years later, McCain went on to be the Republican nominee for president.

Can conservatives lead on political reform? Absolutely. In fact, going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, and then John McCain 100 years later, our party has elevated political reformers all the way to the presidential ticket. But it requires a deeper commitment to what is good for the country — it requires men and women on my side to look past the politics and who might benefit to do the right thing for the long-term good of the country.

In fact, back in 2002 when McCain Feingold, which was known as Shays-Meehan in the House, was being hotly debated on the House floor, my dad spoke to his Republican colleagues about the politics of reform in a way that resonates 18 years later. 

Rep Zach Wamp: But I’ve never been able to measure whether reform would help one party or hurt one party. And at different times I’ve felt that maybe one had an advantage, or not an advantage, and I don’t know how this will end up in terms of who gains the advantage, but I truly believe that this measure will strengthen the two-party system.

Weston Wamp: Now the two party system he’s talking about has seen better days, admittedly. But the point is, all ships rise if the rules are fair. Reform is a matter of principle, not a matter of politics. The country has been well served by passionate debates of a predominate two-party system.

Luke Knittig: One aspect of it is being able to work with folks, right? So we often talk about how McCain — and he’s not alone — he’s one gleaming example of someone who fiercely fought for his principles and what he stood for, and wasn’t one to give easily on those. But, he still was able to reach across and work with folks. You know, I think of that speech he gave near the end of his life, that we need to get back to “regular order.” Well we know what we’re living now is not “regular,” and probably won't return to anything like “regular” any time soon. But I think that still holds, “regular order,” where you can really air it out, figure out what the other side is or where you can get somewhere, and get there and realize you can do that in a way that doesn’t sacrifice your principles, you know, whether you’re on the right or the left.

Weston Wamp: So what does the future hold? How do we get back to regular order, so to speak? How do we get back to 2002 when prominent liberals and prominent conservatives found agreement that the system needed fixing — for all of our good?

Congressman Gallagher is optimistic that there may be an opportunity ahead.

Rep. Mike Gallagher: I will admit campaign finance is a ridiculously tricky topic and so I think wisdom probably lies in small steps that can help us go in the right direction. Reforms that range from changing the congressional calendar, to prohibiting members from fundraising while they're in Washington. Or just on the super PAC side, requiring full transparency so that people know who paid for the ads, or if nothing else, something along the lines of the Honest Ads Act, which applies the same disclosure requirements to online ads as those that exist for television ads. But I do think — given now that conservatives are realizing that Democratic super PACs are spending more money, I think in this election than conservative super PACs, and Democratic super PACs are in some cases messing in conservative primaries — they're realizing how ridiculous this problem has gotten and so, I actually think we're closer to a potential “grand bargain” on this issue.

Weston Wamp: I think we all can find hope in Congressman Gallagher’s words. And to my Republican friends, let’s focus on the conservative case for reform, let’s work with the other party, and let’s get this done.

On the next episode of  “Swamp Stories,” we’re literally going to tell some swamp stories as we speak with former members of Congress about their worst days in Washington, and why they’re fighting for reform today.

Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better? Rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host, Weston Wamp. A special thank you to executive producer, Ethan Rome, producers Evan Ottenfeld and Sydney Richards, and editor Parker Tant from ParkerPodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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