Rage Against The Machine.

Every decade or so for the last 200 years, someone who isn't getting his way decides that it's time to "reform" politics.  

After all, a system that elected these bozos to pass these laws has to be inherently defective.  So from the election of 1800 debacle--in which Jefferson and Burr tied and then Burr killed Hamilton and tried to secede and invade Mexico--to the all white primaries that the Southern Democrats established in order to exclude black candidates, the mantra has been reform.  This year's reform package comes right on cue.  See also here, here and here.

Let's face it--the beloved Founding Fathers feared the populace.  They established a system in which property owning white men could vote...sort of.  They couldn't vote for their US Senator; he was chosen by the State Legislatures and they couldn't vote for President; he was chosen by electors who were in turn also chosen by State Legislatures. 

These procedures were no accident.  The Founders believed that if elections were decided by voters, then a certain, shall we say...unsophisticated political class would arise and be able to ignore elite opinion.  Their nightmare came true in 1828 when Andrew Jackson was elected based on the fact that he killed a ton of Indians and then mowed British Soldiers down until they had to be stacked like cord wood.

"Reformers" have gradually made politics more democratic and the Founder's views have been realized...now the reformers are shocked and want to turn back the clock.   

For the record, let me say that I'm pretty happy with the current system.  However--even among my friends--I appear to be the only one. 

Unfortunately everyone wants to change the system, but no one seems to understand why it is the way it is. 

Before I discuss individual reforms, let me explain the fundamental problem.

The Fundamental Problem 

Here it is:  "We have winner take all elections in which very few people vote so the more power you give to voters, the worse the situation gets."*

All the reforms of the last 200 years have tried to give more power to the voters and the results have been exactly what the founders envisioned.  Now, the elite opinion makers like Sue Clark Johnson and Lattie Coor are shocked at the results.  That's because they've never been to Wal Mart. 

The Golden Era

So let me take you back to the Golden Era of Arizona Politics, say, 1984 or so.  Burton Barr was the House Majority Leader, Art Hamilton was the House Minority Leader and Alfredo Gutierrez ran the State Senate.  Most long-term politicos will consider that period the very best of Arizona Government.

So what has changed? 

Well, in 1984 men like Burton Barr controlled the money.  Lobbyists gave their contributions to the leadership PACs and the leadership doled it out to individual candidates.  That meant that the caucuses worked as a team and fell in line with leadership.  If you weren't "statesmen like" you didn't come back--actually, if you weren't hand picked, you never got to the legislature in the first place. It worked like a well oiled machine...true, a political machine, but a well oiled one. The reformers raged against the machine and eventually the machine had to change.

The modern era changed with Prop 200 in 1986. 

Prop. 200 was a reform effort that limited individual contributions to $200 and prohibited leadership PACs from donating to individual members.  That change sparked a revolution that emasculated leadership and ended the need for a cohesive caucus.

That's how I got elected. 

Of course, I wasn't the first one to see the opportunities...Stan Barnes was.

Barnes realized that he could raise money from a wide group of friends and didn't have to kiss Leadership's ring.  So with incumbents unable to raise money from large donors or leadership, Barnes-- at 27--set up his own organization, raised money from outside sources and took his campaign directly to voters... defeating an incumbent along the way.

The next cycle saw the rise of the under 30 caucus--I ran against a team that included the House Majority Leader and was elected together with: David Schweikert, Lisa Graham, Keith Bee, Jim Buster, Chris Cummiskey and Chuck Blanchard.  Soon followed by Jeff Groscost, Rusty Bowers and John Kaites.

The Leadership Era was over.

But you look at that list and say, those guys weren't so bad.  That's because we still had some hurdles.  We still had to raise money and we still had to fight for newspaper endorsements.  In short, we couldn't be too crazy. 

Clean Elections changed all that.  I was the first one to point out that eliminating the chamber crowd and the lobbyists from the equation wasn't going to have the desired effect.  I predicted that there would be "No New Moderates" and indeed, there were 16 self described moderates of the 33 Republicans when I served in the House.  Now there are 35 Republicans in the House and maybe 3 could be called moderate.

Then there were the newspapers.  We actually had newspapers in the mid 1980s.  Endorsements mattered, and if you spent your campaign railing against the Federal Reserve Board, Trilateral Commission or Council on Foreign Relations, you weren't going to get far.

Those days are gone too.  The Gazette, Citizen and Tribune are gone.  The Republic's circulation has been gradually declining for the last 20 years, but the population of Maricopa County has skyrocketed in that time, so the paper's penetration and influence has plummeted...and it's not coming back.  Unlike 20 years ago--when the paper could topple a sitting governor--the papers don't matter much now.

So now, if you think that Obama was born in Kenya or you think that AIDS was created by the CIA and you have 200 people who will give you $5 then you are golden.  You don't even need to meet with Chamber and you don't give a damn what the Republic thinks.  You have plenty of money and your own private grassroots army.  Try to beat that combination Mr. Moderate Insurance Salesman from Arcadia.

Of course, the easiest way to create a legislature that shares the vision of Lattie Coor, Sue Clark Johnson and the Chamber is to enable Lattie Coor, Sue Clark Johnson and the Chamber pick the legislators...like the old days.  But the Golden Era is over, so what should  Lattie Coor, Sue Clark Johnson and the Chamber do now?

Well, first eliminate Clean Elections.  That would force candidates to go through the filtering process of special interests.  If they can't get the backing of business, utilities or the unions, they probably shouldn't be there anyway, should they Lattie? 

Then repeal the 1986 campaign limits.  Let everyone give as much money as they want, because, believe it or not, most of the crazy people don't have lots of rich friends.  Then let leadership control the money.  That way the recalcitrants who don't step into line will be stenciling plywood signs in their garage next cycle.  Now that's what I call cohesion and Statesmanship.

What?  You complain that allowing the elites to chose who gets elected is "undemocratic"?  But that's entirely the point.  The current system is what you get when you let actual voters decide elections.  I happen to like the current system and the current legislature--of course, I also like to shop at Wal Mart. 

Post Script:  There are a handful of "reforms" that people think would make the process better--many of which involve repealing "reforms" that they think have made the process worse. 

This is wrong on both accounts--most of the past reforms don't matter.  Here are some examples of the conventional wisdom and why its wrong.


Term Limits:

The theory is that term limits deprive the legislature of much needed perspective...yada yada yada.  That argument might be true if we, you know, actually had term limits.  I served with the current Senate President Bob Burns...18 years ago.  In California, you can serve 8 years in each chamber and then you are banned for life.  Now that's a term limit.

Burns, of course, took two years off and then ran again.  I also served with Debbie McCune-Davis and Jack Brown who simply bounce back and forth between the House and Senate.  There's no shortage of institutional memory, and no real limits

The legislature has consistently had about 1/3 of the body turn over each cycle with a handful of legislators staying for many years, but most staying less than 8...just like now.

"Independent" Redistricting.

This reform is the most ironic.  Former Republic Editorial Page Editor, the hapless Keven Ann Willey made "independent" redistricting her personal cause and put all the muscle of the editorial board behind it with editorials that ran almost daily.  The Democrats were solidly behind her effort because the legislature was supposed to re-write the districts and the legislature was in Republican hands.

Of course, no one could have predicted that in 2000, Democrats would tie the Senate at 15/15 and would have been able to draw districts of their choosing.  Oops. Democrats also failed to understand that growth patterns move from rural and urban to suburban districts.  That means Gilbert gets bigger and central Phoenix gets proportionately smaller.  So an Independent Commission that just looks at math and doesn't take politics into account will give Democrats worse maps than a legislative compromise in which legacy Democratic legislators wield more power.

Ultimately, the maps looked pretty much like they did before--that's because people tend to live in groups with like minded people--so the Democrats sued and lost.  When the maps were drawn in 2000, the Democrats had 15 seats in the Senate, now they have 12.  But the good news is that Keven Willey moved to Texas, so it's not like she can screw it up next time.

Competitive Districts.

"Independent" Redistricting is really just a means to an end.  The real goal is "Competitive" districts.  But that's a fallacy too.  For some reason, people seem to think that if the district is half Republican and half Democratic, the candidates will be moderate.  I have no idea why that is.  Dude, it's a winner take all primary, followed by a winner take all General.  That means the both parties will elect someone from the fringe and then they will fight it out in the General.

Al Melvin is in a competitive District, is he a moderate?  His opponent was Cheryl Cage?  Is she a moderate?   How about the Tempe's District 17, are Ableser, Schapira and Cahil moderates?  In the 1990's central Phoenix was considered a swing district and it was represented by very Conservative Margaret Updike and very liberal, Sue Labey.

Increase the Salary

This is my favorite fallacy.  "Golly, if we just raise the pay, good people will run." No, if you raise the pay, Russell Pierce and Carl Seel will make more money.  But I like Russell Pierce and Carl Seel, so that's fine with me. 

Dude, the seats are competitive and they are won by people who know how to campaign and who don't have a lot of opportunity cost; they can spend months campaigning for free.  If you raise the salary to $100,000, the same people will still win.  You will bring in candidates who otherwise wouldn't run because they could be making more money elsewhere. But that doesn't mean they will win.  We've had examples of candidates who make decent money running against incumbents.  My favorite example is Art Nelson (Linda Brock Nelson's husband) who ran for two open seats and was crushed by David Schweikert and Lisa Graham.

Good campaigners beat bad campaigners no matter how high a salary the office pays.  

Footnote* 

Let's explore the fundamental problem a bit more.

When I was in the legislature, I represented a district of 126,000 people and I won my first election with a total of fewer than 6,000 votes.   If anything, the numbers have gone down since then.  In central Phoenix today, you can win the Democratic Primary--and thus the election--with 1,500 votes.  The people who get elected are representative of those few thousand people.    Who are those people?  They are the ones who go out on August 24th and vote every two years.  Frankly, they are not normal or in any way representative.  That's because unlike the mass of the population, those voters care.  They have strong opinions they know the candidates and they vote.  Voters who are well informed and have strong opinions are rarely moderate.

Comments

[todd]

One counter to the claim that Clean Elections has meant more extreme viewpoints is that the GOP nationally has largely become much more conservative. Some of this is through increasing power of organizations who aid GOP candidates who attack GOP incumbents from the right.

[Winnie]

I was tempted to write "You had me until you said you liked Carl Seel." Then I gave in to that temptation.

Greg, other than that, you are right on.

I don't recall the famous Greek philosopher's exact quote so I'll just make one up and say perhaps in the end in a democracy we have to choose between corruption and ignorance. And I fear ignorance above all else.

[Carl Hay]

Ah, Greg, don't you mean KEITH Bee, not TIM Bee?

Went to school with Keith, who was (and is) a good guy.

He cleaned up DMV (kind of like cleaning the Auguean stables).

Tim, on the other hand, is pathetic.

[State Rep. John Kavanagh]

Great post and an appropriate one right after the Republic ran yet another story reporting on (promoting?) the new reformers' agenda. If you can fluff this post up with a few more words, it could be a doctoral dissertation in political science.

About the only "reform" you did not comment on was independents voting in party primaries. I would be interested in your opinion on that one.

[Whitney]

It's Sen. Russell PEArce and Sen. Steve PIErce. By the way, Sen. Steve Pierce was one of those (R) candidates who "attacked" an (R) incumbent from the right. Then Pierce turned out to be a bit more moderate than adveertised.

I like Rep. Carl Seel too.

Spot on anlaysis. The new batch of "reformers" are not non-political. Platform Republicans need not apply for these committees. The Arizona Republic loves these propsed "reforms." It has to be bad.

Close the primaries.

[ron]

So the Phoenix 40 (now the Phoenix 100) will decide for us, poor-lowly people, what is best for us? No, thanks.

[Matt Sh.]

Did the "under 30 caucus" ever have to deal with a $4 billion budget deficit? Could they have? Oh, I supposed they "never would have been there in the first place." hmmmmmmmm....

[Falcon9]

The core reform argument is a belief that a) we have the worst k-12 schools in the nation and b) that our universities have deteriorated since the early 90's.

The truth is different.

The very best studies rank our k-12 schools slightly above average. For educated consumers, we have the best k-12 school system in the nation. Our number one ranking in school choice enables every parent to find a free school whose performance is among the very best private schools in the nation.

In the early 90's, only 12% of ASU graduates rated the quality of their education excellent. Today, 32% rate it excellent. Satisfaction, a lower level of quality, is stratospherically higher. This improvement in quality is part and parcel of why ASU has exploded in student count.

Another fiction they share is the lack of performance of our economy. In 1993, the average wage level in Arizona ranked 26th in the nation. In 2005, that had slowly risen to 21st. Only one other state in the nation gained more than 5 slots.

They prefer per capita income, believing that an increasing population share of retirees and children is a bad thing.

The cities bear the standard for the reformers. Our Maricopa county cities are among the most obese in the nation. Over the last two decades they have claimed an increasing share of our economy with just an iota improvement in quality.

The last few years, cities went into a feeding frenzy, comparing salaries with each other competing furiously to be the most expensive. Their claims against our retirement funds soared by billions of dollars.

Inadvertently, that is the kind of government the reformers want to see - fat, mediocre and contented.

The reformers are all good people, dealing with reality as a construct of the mind constructed by our mainstream media. The challenge they have is with blogs like this where reality is a construct of reality and people are knowledgeable enough to separate fact from fiction.

[ron]

Greg, you wrote,

"Well, in 1984 men like Burton Barr controlled the money. Lobbyists gave their contributions to the leadership PACs and the leadership doled it out to individual candidates. That meant that the caucuses worked as a team and fell in line with leadership. If you weren't "statesmen like" you didn't come back--actually, if you weren't hand picked, you never got to the legislature in the first place. It worked like a well oiled machine...true, a political machine, but a well oiled one."

Thanks for admitting that political machines like this are welcomed by you. Richard Daley would be proud of you. You have already written about the fruits of this kind of 'political machine':

"What a stunning rebuke. Maybe Obama can go on Letterman again and talk through it. I don't know if the International Olympic Committee was just trying to poke Obama in the eye...or if it's possible that even an organization as corrupt as the IOC can't tolerate the amount of corruption that would have occurred if the Olympics had been held in Chicago during this administration."

I will put up with populism over political machines any day.

[Paul W]

Best Post Ever. PJ O'Rourke's "Parliament of Whores" had it right - we get exactly the government we deserve. And really, it's not THAT bad.
At some point it gets old hearing people describe how awful things are in Arizona. Let's look at it realistically. Great freeway system in Maricopa County, and Pima County is (finally) expanding its freeway. Reasonable energy prices. Excellent water management. Good Universities in Phoenix and Tucson, with lots of private university options. Lots of hospitals and health options. Yes, the government is going to have to cutback - just like every business has done - but is that really a disaster?

[BobH]

Ron:

You say: "Thanks for admitting that political machines like this are welcomed by you."

But Greg said in two different places that he prefers the current system.

Para 6: "For the record, let me say that I'm pretty happy with the current system."

The last sentence before the PS: "I happen to like the current system and the current legislature--of course, I also like to shop at Wal Mart."

[x4mr]

A well written, thought provoking, and insightful post.

[Bill]

I grit my teeth every time I read one of the Republic's articles about Lattie Coor or Sandra Day O'Connor. I'm sure both of them would make nice neighbors. But the fact is, neither one of them has ever had to meet a business payroll, and frankly, that is the skill set our state needs.

Arizona's main problem right now is that it's broke. None of the so-call reforms being proposed by Coor, O'Connor & company would have helped if they had been in place. Arizona is broke because Janet Napolitano, in conjunction with Democrats and moderate Republicans, dramatically increased state spending beyond inflation and population growth.

Having spend every sent of the tax revenue generated by the real estate and credit bubble, it's no wonder we're ready to bounce checks.

Thank goodness we didn't have more tax-and-spend "moderates" in the legislature -- we' would just be further in the hole.

State government is un-sustainably large at the moment. Downsizing is going to be painful. We don't need Coor or O'Connor right now. We need tough men and women armed with machetes, ready to slash away at spending. Scissors will not cut spending fast enough to save us. Tell the politicians who show up with scissors to go home.

Finally, the term "moderate" should always be put in quotation marks. Typically, the so called "moderate voter" is the one who barely pay attention to politics. How being a "moderate" is a political virtue is beyond me.

[Bill]

Here's an interesting article, consistent with Greg's theme, questioning whether our increasing mania for "transperancy" has actually done anything to improve government:

http://www.tnr.com/article/tnr-debate-too-much-transparency-part-i

[bingo- we have a winner!!!!]

Bill, you are hilarious.

State government, as a percentage of the state's population is smaller than at any time since the second world war. At 32,000 state employees, you can check it out yourself.

Now, you want cuts- okay we kick prisoners, and we kick students. Nothing else left.

We are now pretty much at federal minimums for welfare and medicaid/medicare. Nothing there to cut.

Oh yeah, stop building roads- cause we stole that money to pay the bills.

We are trying to sell our buildings, which will force a tax increase all on it's own to pay the interest.

So, do you feel stupid now?

Cause you are.

[Les]

Great post.

[ron]

BobH,

I think Greg's tongue was planted deeply in his cheek when he wrote,

" I happen to like the current system and the current legislature--of course, I also like to shop at Wal Mart."

[Tom in Kingman]

First time I ever heard Jeff Groscost, Rusty Bowers and Lisa Graham called moderates. I suppose Bill English was a moderate too. Rusty couldn't give away the State fast enough to the mining industry. The Arizona Republic's endorsements in those days were not "Moderate" but only went to the rightwing. Maybe you flew in Duke Tully's squadron too. Burton Barr was a pragmatist, but you always had the Mesa extreme right wingers. You miss the real point. What we need are legislators who believe in the State and its people first, and are not looking for the next job up the ladder. What we need are legislators who don't believe that God gave them a personal agenda and that they are God's instrument to tell everyone what to do. The legislatures waste's loads of time on these items. What we don't need is rotating legislators, from one side of the Capitol to the other, then into an agency, and then back to one side of the Capitol or another. Sorry, I actually like the $5 Clean Election system. We do get some wing nuts, but lots are people are able to run who could not otherwise get the money to spend. I greatly resent the idea that spending money IS the First Amendment. But you are probably on the right track talking about the lack of turnout in primaries and I blame that on the Republicans. That is how we got Governor Mecham. By the way, I am a registered Republican. But relatively, Arizona's State Government is not that big, and the population and demands keep growing. And lots of it supported the development industry, including the Land Department. Janet N. tried to bring Arizona into the 20th Century, let alone the 21st, and that was needed. Yes, if I had a real choice I would want Janet N. not Mecham or Fife.

[PoliticsDMZ]

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Thanks,
Ric Rubino

[Travis]

Tom in Kingman writes: "I actually like the $5 Clean Election system....I greatly resent the idea that spending money IS the First Amendment."

You can "like" $5 "Clean Election" all day long, but it DOESN'T cost $5 and it's not "clean." It takes my money and gives it to my opponent, it suppresses people's ability to give money to the candidate of their choice and arbitrarily and inconsistently enforces it's vague rules. If this doesn't bother you, you're too ignorant to even be a part of the discussion. Furthmore, if you don't think government telling me who I can and cannot donate money to, isn't a violatoin of the constitution, you're beyond hope.

[Aaron]

I thought this was an excellent post. I liked the idea of publicly funded elections and I still do, even though very often I am not impressed by the winning candidates. I am interested too in what(if any) impact the open primaries have had in the process. Seems to me that with such large numbers they would have more of a voice in the process if they actually voted.