[EL] Small donors and polarization

[Doug Spencer]

I found the recent exchange between Rick Pildes and Ian Vandewalker on the
merits of HR1's small donor matching provision really interesting. Rick
cautions that a 6-to-1 matching program could have the unintended
consequence of amplifying polarizing voices. Ian counters that small
donations are not correlated with more extreme DW NOMINATE scores. On this
specific point Ian is correct, though more broadly Rick's summary of the
political science literature is correct. The reason is that NOMINATE is not
the best metric for this, particularly for newer members of Congress whose
NOMINATE scores are not an accurate measure of their ideology (as Jeff
Lewis of the NOMINATE team explains here
<https://www.voteview.com/articles/Ocasio-Cortez_Omar_Pressley_Tlaib>). To
illustrate, I plotted the NOMINATE score of every member of the 116th
Congress against the share of their overall fundraising from small donors
($200 or less). The size of the dot corresponds to the total amount of
money raised from small and large contributions:

[image: image.png]

A dozen members of the House raised at least 50% of their funds from small
donors. Among this group, the Republicans are more conservative than
average, but the Democrats are not. However, upon closer inspection,
NOMINATE plots some of the most liberal members of Congress (e.g., AOC,
Katie Porter (chair of progressive caucus), Ilhan Omar) as some of the most
moderate members of the entire House. The reason? Very few roll call votes
since their election that distinguish the left-wing of the Democratic
party. But look at the names above the line: in addition to AOC, Porter,
Omar, are Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Duncan Hunter, and
Devin Nunes. In other words, to quote Rick Pildes
<https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Pildes_SmallDonorBasedCampaignFinanceReformandPoliticalPolarization_1nbukg72.pdf>,
members who have largely made a name for themselves via "viral moments,
outrage, and/or the culture of celebrity."

While Rick gets the empirics right, I wonder how much "reformers" are to
blame. Hasn't the Supreme Court pushed reformers into their position? By
largely invalidating upper limits, isn't the only way for a more
egalitarian political system a bottom-up approach?

Perhaps bottom-up approaches are like most electoral reform: their design
matters. For example, at-large voting is devastating for minority voting
rights, but in some circumstances (paired with ranked choice voting, say)
at-large voting can empower voting rights beyond even majority-minority
districts. So what design features for publicly-financed elections are
likely to be democracy enhancing? Vouchers
<https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/r2skgxfnc230ukkb3dfqgm4576phzabd> have
only a modest record. Rick P. floats the idea
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3611180> of limiting
out-of-district contributions. However, Aneja, Grumbach, and Wood report
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767092> in a new
paper Rick Hasen linked to yesterday that candidates of color are far more
likely to receive contributions from out-of-district donors. So there are
tradeoffs. Perhaps full public financing like we have in Connecticut? Or
resurrecting party soft money as Ray La Raja has suggested
<https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1092&context=djclpp>
?

Whatever the case, I agree with Rick P. that Title V of HR1 (small donor
matching) is missing the mark and whatever the fate of the law, we need to
be thinking about what's next. Our campaign finance rules don't just
implicate the speech rights of donors, or the anti-corruption interests of
the public; they impact the way that our government ultimately functions
and there is no reason to exacerbate existing pathologies.

Best,
Doug

-- 

*Douglas M. Spencer*

*Professor of Law & Public Policy*

*University of Connecticut*



*Distinguished Faculty Fellow (2020-2021)*

*Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law*



University of Colorado

401 UCB | Wolf Law Building

2450 Kitteredge Loop Road | Boulder, CO  80309

773-633-5196 | dougspencer.org <http://www.dougspencer.org/>



<http://www.dougspencer.org/>
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