What Can Be Done? What Should be Done?

May 3, 2018
Women’s City Club

Photos are here

“Money in Politics” continues to be a high priority for the League. Money influences the information flow, who runs for office, and who lobbies the legislators. Consequently, the League has fought many battles for reforms, such as publicly funded election campaigns and improved disclosure of the money flow.

Bob Stern was a principal co-author of the Political Reform Act of 1974 (the PRA) when he worked as Elections Counsel for the then Secretary of State, Jerry Brown. The objective was to regulate campaign disclosures, conflicts of interest, and lobbying.

This PRA initiative was drafted to allow for legislative amendments to keep it current. It has been referred to as one of the most important election results in California history. Nevertheless, can the PRA keep pace with the technological weapons of the those who would deceive voters?

Stern was also the principal drafter of the City of Los Angeles' Ethics and Public Campaign Financing Law and the LWV of Los Angeles honored him with a Voter Participation Leadership Award for campaign finance reform.

Stern's many activities include giving university classes, co-authoring numerous books, and working in the fields of campaign finance reform, ethics, and lobbying. In particular, he is a past president of the Center for Governmental Studies and a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws.

Stern's talk on campaign finance reform could hardly have been more timely. He noted it was the morning after Rudy Giuliani revealed to Fox News host Sean Hannity that President Trump had reimbursed personal lawyer Michael Cohen $130,000 in alleged hush money paid shortly before the 2016 election. Possible campaign finance violations?

Stern is an expert on campaign finance, ethics, and lobbying. When he was thirty, Stern worked as then Secretary of State Jerry Brown's elections counsel tasked with drafting bills to reform campaign finance, ethics, and lobbying laws in California. The bills were rejected by the legislature, as expected, but when they transformed into an initiative, it was overwhelmingly approved by the voters as the Political Reform Act of 1974, which has been the baseline for innumerable incremental reforms since then.

Stern is a longtime League member, an elections attorney, and a professor of current political affairs. His life-long goal has been to reduce the influence of money in politics. He waved his cell phone and declared what is needed now is a current thirty-year-old to revise the campaign finance disclosure laws to cover the latest technological avenues for information distribution. As a professor, he said he urges his conservative students to watch the evening news with Rachel Maddow and urges his liberal students to watch Sean Hannity to see the different perspectives.

His prediction for the future—the current scandals in Washington will breed reforms. A major challenge to effectuating reforms, Stern noted, was that reforms usually adversely affect the incumbents. That fact is why he feels that the initiative process in California is so important.

Stern reviewed several parameters of the current campaign finance system that are laws largely shaped by the First Amendment:

• Spending limits for campaigns are not OK.
• Contribution limits to candidate campaigns are OK (for now) but cannot limit a candidate's contributions to his own campaign.
• Contribution limits to ballot measure campaigns are not OK.
• Requiring disclosure of contributions and spending on campaigns is OK.
• Independent expenditures (funds not coordinated with a candidate) cannot be limited.
• Corporations can make independent expenditures.
• Public financing for election campaigns cannot be mandated on candidates.
• Foreign governments and foreign nationals cannot contribute to election campaigns here.

The question-and-answer session was lively, thanks to Stern's humble and good-natured attitude. Stern strongly recommended that League members volunteer for the next Reapportionment Commission, which he feels is a really good reform.

—Jean Buennagel