Stephen B. Young, The Daily Record Newswire
Two stories last week linked money to our politics in revealing ways. One reported that, for the first time, more than half of the politicians elected to Congress are millionaires in net worth.
The second story, in the New York Times, linked centralized mobilization of campaign donations to the formation of lock-step, ideological parties, setting up the system of polarized, gridlocked politics that undermines the common good and our future as a noble people.
The connection between money and bad politics has a long history in human affairs, one that has ruined many a government. The Old Testament in First Samuel reported that the tribes of Israel asked for a king to succeed Samuel as their leader, in part, because Samuel’s sons had not followed his ways but had “turned aside after lucre.”
Republicans have been no exception to this sad rule of people falling short where the ethics of responsibility and the temptations to use money to gain power and to use power to gain money are concerned.
When I first got involved in Republican Party politics in Minnesota in the early 1990s, I took pains to cultivate activists with as many different points of view as I could. That brought me into friendship with Allen Quist, then the leading spokesperson for the social conservatives and libertarians. Allen was very bothered, to say the least, by what he perceived to be manipulation of the party process for selfish financial gain.
At first I could not fathom what was bothering Allen. But bit by bit I learned a bad truth about the inner workings of the party. It was dominated by a small clique, an apparat if you will, that needed to control the selection of candidates and of internal staff — starting with the State Chair, members of the National Committee, and, if possible, the State Central Committee.
The party, in my experience, worked in Leninist fashion with a hidden group of power brokers (the cadres) manipulating a front organization (the grassroots). Dealing with the party was similar to my dealings with Vietnamese Communists — you could take nothing on the surface as true and always had to go up a hierarchy of hidden power to get to the real decision-makers, who were mostly concerned with money: who had it, who could give it and who could spend it.
In the Republican Party, what you see on the surface is not what is really going on. It is a game of thrones played only among a small group of self-appointed pretenders.
Sadly, in its quest for personal power and privilege, the party’s hidden apparat has failed to build a Republican Party with the reliable support of a majority of state residents, and so has lost one important statewide election after another. I have not been involved in party goings-on for many years now. But, from what I am told by activists and insiders, the dysfunctions brought about by the apparat continue.
What gives?
First, consider that election campaigns are very expensive. The consultants who place the TV ads and order up the polls and focus groups or who arrange for other campaign materials can charge up to 20 percent commissions for themselves. So a U.S. Senate campaign spending, say, $20 million would generate as much as $4 million for the consultants — incentive enough to seek to control the candidates who control selection of consultants.
So in the real heart of the Republican Party beats many schemes to capture control of candidates.
First, the number of fundraisers is kept tiny and under contract to the apparat. Fundraising these days demands lists and access to big donors. Only the apparat has the right lists and access to big money. Thus, outsiders who want to run for office but can’t be controlled by the apparat are denied access to funding, and thus find themselves unable to persuade party regulars that they can win an election.
On the other hand, candidates chosen by the apparat for docility as well as proper conservative personal profile are given access to money. This gives apparat candidates the upper hand in winning support from delegates in nominating conventions. Such favored candidates can thus upstage grassroots aspirants for office with the argument that only they can raise the funds necessary to beat back the DFL.
To protect their privileged access, the apparat likes to keep the donors isolated from potential candidates and has convinced the donors that only the apparat can accurately judge the electability of a potential candidate.
The apparat looks upon the base, the grassroots, with a secret disdain, even perhaps with contempt.
For example, in 1996 after my challenge to Rudy Boschwitz’s effort to secure the Republican Party nomination to run against Paul Wellstone for the U.S. Senate failed, one member in good standing of the apparat took me to lunch. After the introductory pleasantries, he suddenly accused me: “Steve, I don’t understand you. You are one of the smartest people in Minnesota, but you just don’t get it.”
Taken aback and not knowing what he was referring to, I replied “Don’t get what?”
He said flatly but firmly: “The life issue. You just have to tell them you’re pro-life. You never have to do anything about it.”
Now I was completely taken aback. My mouth may even have dropped open. At the center of the party’s power structure was deceit and hypocrisy. It was demagoguery pure and simple, the crass manipulation of the good will and naivete of the base. Leading sheep to the slaughter has been the apparat’s modus operandi. The prejudices and beliefs of the base are encouraged and indulged to keep them herd-like to go where led.
The apparat’s greatest fear is that a candidate will emerge outside their control to become an independent leader of the party. Allen Quist was one. I was another.
When such an outsider emerges, steps are quickly taken to undermine his or her reputation and appeal. Rumors are spread that he or she is not sufficiently pro-life or has unsavory personal shortcomings that good Christians can’t associate with. The nerves of the base are stimulated to turn away from the now-suspect candidate.
Then, too, in Leninist fashion, agents provocateur are sent into the threatening candidate’s camp, mostly as overtly eager volunteers, to gain exploitable inside information or to spread malicious gossip.
Let me give you a personal experience: Having helped Norm Coleman win election as mayor of St. Paul, I was prepared to assist Norm in winning the party’s nomination to run for governor. I recommended to him that it would be wise for the social conservatives to come to him and permit him to be more centrist and from there build a broad coalition that could win the election. I then successfully negotiated a common position on education between Norm and Allen Quist in which Allen would come to support Norm on some nine points of common agreement. This would have given Allen a more respected and influential role in the party and would have added to my reputation as a builder of coalitions.
So just as Allen and Norm were to meet, Norm told me that he was having second thoughts. He said, “They tell me that you really aren’t that respected among the delegates. So I don’t want to go through with the deal.”
Norm then went into a rough state party convention, came out stereotyped as having sold out to the conservatives to get the nomination, and lost to Jesse Ventura.
When I ran for chair of the party in 1999 on a plan to build a majority coalition, I took on the apparat, which was running Ron Eibensteiner (because, I was told, he had more money than I did). Rod Grams, running that year for re-election to the U.S. Senate, was supportive of my candidacy. I asked him only to be neutral. My team — which embraced Roy Terwilliger and Allen Quist and Ernie Lund, a disgruntled former Range Democrat — thought that our supporters in coalition with Joanne Benson’s supporters, would have 60 percent of the delegates. In conventions the apparat rarely has more than 35 percent of the participants under its control, so we expected to win.
But just before the vote, Sen. Grams called me to say that “they” had just told him something shocking about me. He had been told that I was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and that I had concealed that from him. I told him it was not true: The Republican Party had asked me to accept a request from the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union to write an amicus brief in a case on the rules for election of judges. I had agreed — and donated my services — only because the party had asked me. Now I was being slandered by the very party faction that had asked me to serve.
Rod sighed and said, “Steve, it’s been a terrible week for me. They got to my money people, and I have to support Eibensteiner.”
He did not tell me that he had passed on the deceit to Joanne Benson, who was duly alarmed by the smear and backed off in her support of my candidacy.
One more anecdote: When he wanted to run for governor, Tim Pawlenty was not in fealty to the apparat. He called me up to ask for help. He wanted me to arrange for him to meet members of our network, nicely saying that he thought I was one of the smartest people in Minnesota and that he respected me very much.
I asked my friends how they wanted to respond to Tim, saying that it was likely we were just being played. They agreed to meet with Tim and so we did, at my house in St. Paul.
To be sure, the apparat then took much more notice of Tim and came to support him. He won election as governor with less than a majority of votes.
Tim never called me again.
Another tried-and-true technique the apparat uses to keep potential candidates in line is the promise of future reward. When they want you to step aside, you are approached very respectfully and offered a future opportunity or some way to make money.
Many in the apparat, starting with former Congressman Vin Weber, who was present at its creation in 1978, have personally done very well through Republican politics. Tim Pawlenty is now doing very well as a highly paid lobbyist for the financial industry in Washington D.C. Neither is Norm Coleman suffering financially. His PAC is now at the center of the apparat.
Members of the apparat appear fixated on wealth — who has it now and how to get it personally in the future. Their dream is not to join Sam’s Club. They don’t really care much, as far as I can tell, about the country or public service. Politics for them is about personal advancement.
All this reality about the inside of the Republican Party came back to me a few weeks ago when having lunch with State Sen. Julianne Ortman. She is seeking the party’s nomination to run for U.S. Senate against Al Franken and asked to see me. As far as I could tell, she could give the senator a real run for all the money that he will raise for his re-election.
When she drove up to our lunch appointment in her off-white Ford F150, it occurred to me that she could take the Iron Range and thereby cause the Franken campaign real anxiety.
But Sen. Ortman is another outsider to the apparat. She is not under their control. They have backed away from supporting her. The insider big money is rather with wealthy but bland white male candidates who will be fodder for Sen. Franken’s wit and rhetorical skills.
