Campaign Finance & American Democracy: What the Public Really Thinks and Why It Matters

By David M. Primo and Jeffrey D. Milyo

In recent decades, and particularly since the US Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision, lawmakers and other elites have told Americans that stricter campaign finance laws are needed to improve faith in the elections process, increase trust in the government, and counter cynicism toward politics. But as David M. Primo and Jeffrey D. Milyo argue, politicians and the public alike should reconsider the conventional wisdom in light of surprising and comprehensive empirical evidence to the contrary.

Primo and Milyo probe original survey data to determine Americans’ sentiments on the role of money in politics, what drives these sentiments, and why they matter. What Primo and Milyo find is that while many individuals support the idea of reform, they are also skeptical that reform would successfully limit corruption, which Americans believe stains almost every fiber of the political system. Moreover, support for campaign finance restrictions is deeply divided along party lines, reflecting the polarization of our times. Ultimately, Primo and Milyo contend, American attitudes toward money in politics reflect larger fears about the health of American democracy, fears that will not be allayed by campaign finance reform.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9780226713137

Book preview

Campaign Finance and American Democracy

Campaign Finance and American Democracy

What the Public Really Thinks and Why It Matters

DAVID M. PRIMO AND JEFFREY D. MILYO

The University of Chicago Press

CHICAGO & LONDON

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2020 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20    1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-71280-2 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-71294-9 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-71313-7 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226713137.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Primo, David M., author. | Milyo, Jeffrey, author.

Title: Campaign finance and American democracy : what the public really thinks and why it matters / David M. Primo, Jeffrey D. Milyo.

Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019052056 | ISBN 9780226712802 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226712949 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226713137 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Campaign funds—United States. | Campaign funds—United States—Public opinion. | United States—Politics and government—Public opinion.

Classification: LCC JK1991 .P75 2020 | DDC 324.7/80973—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019052056

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

For Neeta and Naveena

—David Primo

For Lynn, Audrey, and Luke

—Jeff Milyo

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1. Introduction

CHAPTER 2. Weak Link?

CHAPTER 3. The Uninformed Public

CHAPTER 4. The Malleable Public

CHAPTER 5. The Cynical Public

CHAPTER 6. The Pragmatic Public

CHAPTER 7. What Do the Experts Think?

CHAPTER 8. Campaign Finance Laws and Trust in Government

CHAPTER 9. Conclusion

Appendix A: 2015 and 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) Survey Background, Methodology, and Questions

Appendix B: CCES Questions for Chapter 3

Appendix C: CCES Questions for Chapter 4

Appendix D: CCES Questions for Chapter 5

Appendix E: CCES Questions for Chapter 6

Appendix F: Expert Survey Background, Methodology, and Questions

Appendix G: Survey Questions for Chapter 8

Notes

References

Index

Figures and Tables

Figures

Figure 1.1.   Two conventional wisdoms about money in American politics, 2016–17

Figure 1.2.   Average trust in the federal government, 2007–18

Figure 3.1.   Campaign finance knowledge quiz (including super PAC and privacy questions)

Figure 3.2.   Performance on the campaign finance quiz, 2015–16

Figure 3.3.   Campaign finance knowledge, 2015–16: Proportion of super PAC spending in the most recent election

Figure 4.1.   Liberty vs. equality in political participation, by ideology and partisanship, 2015–16

Figure 6.1.   Can campaign finance reform reduce corruption?, 2015–16

Figure 6.2.   Support for restrictions on campaign spending and contributions, 2015–16

Figure 7.1.   Comparing experts’ and Americans’ attitudes on campaign finance

Figure 7.2.   Can campaign finance reform reduce corruption?, experts vs. Americans

Figure 8.1.   Trends in state-level trust, before and after campaign finance reform

Figure G.1.   Survey observations by year

Tables

Table 3.1.   Knowledge of campaign finance regulations, 2015–16

Table 3.2.   Campaign finance knowledge by group, 2015–16

Table 3.3.   Campaign finance knowledge, 2015–16, regression results

Table 3.4.   Campaign finance and political privacy, 2016

Table 4.1.   Government regulation of speech accuracy and political balance, 2016

Table 4.2.   Does the First Amendment go too far?, 2015–16

Table 4.3.   Money vs. speech framing effects: Support for First Amendment protections of political activities, 2016

Table 4.4.   Money vs. speech framing effects: Support for First Amendment protections of political activities, 2016, regression results

Table 4.5.   Support for political speech restrictions, various speakers, 2016

Table 4.6.   Support for corporate political speech restrictions, 2016

Table 4.7.   Support for corporate political speech restrictions, 2016, regression results

Table 4.8.   Support for US Supreme Court campaign finance rulings, 2016

Table 4.9.   Money vs. speech framing effects: Support for constitutional campaign finance reform, 2016

Table 4.10.   Money vs. speech framing effects: Support for constitutional campaign finance reform, 2016, regression results

Table 5.1.   Trust in the federal government, pre- and postelection 2016

Table 5.2.   Perceptions of federal government corruption, pre- and postelection 2016

Table 5.3.   Changes in trust and perceptions of corruption, pre- and postelection 2016

Table 5.4.   How often do elected officials deviate from voter preferences?, 2015

Table 5.5.   The scope and prevalence of corruption in elective office, 2015–16

Table 5.6.   Cynicism score, 2015

Table 5.7.   Corruption scope index, 2016

Table 5.8.   Cynicism score, 2015, regression results

Table 5.9.   Corruption scope index, 2016, regression results

Table 5.10.   Is meeting with a lobbyist or making a campaign promise to a group corrupt?, 2016

Table 5.11.   Is policy agreement with an interest group corrupt?, 2016

Table 5.12.   Is legislative bargaining corrupt?, 2016

Table 5.13.   Is using model legislation from a think tank corrupt?, 2016

Table 5.14.   Rigged elections rhetoric and faith in the 2016 election, 2016

Table 5.15.   Rigged elections rhetoric and faith in the 2016 election, 2016, regression results

Table 6.1.   Skepticism about campaign finance reform, 2015–16, regression results

Table 6.2.   Introducing the True Believers

Table 6.3.   Support for public financing of campaigns, 2015–16

Table 6.4.   Support for campaign finance disclosure requirements, 2015–16

Table 6.5.   Support for restrictions on campaign spending and contributions, 2015–16

Table 6.6.   Support for restrictions on campaign spending and contributions, 2015–16, regression results

Table 6.7.   The benefits and costs of campaign spending, 2016

Table 6.8.   Beliefs about campaign spending and support for campaign finance restrictions, 2016, regression results

Table 6.9.   Using regulations to harass political opponents, 2015–16

Table 7.1.   Liberty vs. equality in political participation, experts vs. Americans

Table 7.2.   Support for US Supreme Court campaign finance rulings, experts vs. Americans

Table 7.3.   Support for constitutional campaign finance reform, experts vs. Americans

Table 7.4.   The benefits and costs of campaign spending, experts vs. Americans

Table 7.5.   The scope of corruption in elective office, experts vs. Americans

Table 7.6.   Perceptions of federal, state, and local government corruption, experts vs. Americans

Table 7.7.   Can campaign finance reform reduce corruption?, experts vs. Americans

Table 8.1.   Descriptive statistics for individual-level pooled survey data

Table 8.2.   State campaign finance laws, 1987–2017

Table 8.3.   Descriptive statistics for state-level variables

Table 8.4.   The effect of state campaign finance laws on trust in state government, 1987–2017

Table 8.5.   The effect of campaign finance laws on trust: States with N > 250, 1987–2017

Table 8.6.   The effect of Clean Elections and Citizens United on trust in state government

Table A.1.   Descriptive statistics for CCES variables

Table G.1.   Survey observations by state

Acknowledgments

The publication of this book marks the twentieth anniversary of our first joint publication in the area of campaign finance: a 2000 article, Corporate PAC Contributions in Perspective, which was also coauthored with Tim Groseclose. In that article, we take on the conventional wisdom that corporate political action committees (PACs) are a dominant and nefarious force in American politics. Our independent and collaborative research has since continued to focus on subjecting obvious claims about campaign finance that are near and dear to the hearts of reformers—that money in politics hurts trust in government, suppresses turnout, and so on—to empirical scrutiny.

This is risky research. If you find that reformers’ claims are borne out, well, you have established the obvious. If you find that they are not borne out—this is where most of our findings lie—you are faced with publishing null results, a notoriously difficult task in the social sciences. This book, then, can be thought of as really risky research—it is a book-length treatment of the idea that campaign finance reform is not a cure-all for what ails American democracy—at a time when it is viewed by many academics and practitioners as essential medicine.

The University of Chicago and its press are known for a commitment to free inquiry, and for us, it was clear that Chicago would be the ideal home for this project. We therefore are immensely grateful to Chuck Myers, our editor at Chicago, who was enthusiastic about the idea from day one and understood the importance of the questions we tackle in this book. Chuck is known in political science for his professionalism, judgment, and insight—all of which we experienced throughout the review process. We are also grateful to Chuck’s colleagues at Chicago who helped manage the many details associated with getting the book into production.

We had discussed a book project over the years, but it might never have come to fruition had it not been for the vision of Bob Bauer, Ben Ginsberg, and Nate Persily, three leaders in election law who were determined to convene a task force of leading social scientists to write a report about how campaigns are financed today. After they invited us to join the task force, we proposed conducting national surveys of public attitudes regarding money in American politics over a two-year period, as we were not aware of any multiyear studies of this sort conducted by social scientists since the US Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision in 2010. Bob, Ben, and Nate were fully supportive and helped make the surveys—and ultimately this book—a reality.

We are also grateful to the Democracy Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for their financial support of the task force, which ultimately made our surveys possible. We also thank the National Science Foundation for its long-standing support of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. That said, we had full control over the research design, our analysis, and the interpretations of our findings. (Portions of the literature review and results in this book first appeared, in some cases verbatim, in reports we prepared for the task force. For clarity of presentation, we only note this once, here.)

Our work on the task force reflects our belief in the importance of scholarship for public policy debates. Campaign finance law is the subject of frequent litigation, and both of us have served as expert witnesses in several campaign finance cases (and filed amicus briefs in others) because we believe that judges can make more informed decisions if social scientists’ input is part of the record. We served as experts in many of the cases mentioned in this book, including McConnell v. FEC (Primo), Speechnow.org v. FEC (Milyo), and McComish v. Bennett (Primo). In addition, we both signed on to an amicus brief in the Citizens United v. FEC case.

Few academic books exist without the input and assistance of others, and ours is no exception. The anonymous reviewers at the University of Chicago Press and reviewers of our task force work improved the quality of our argument with their constructive suggestions. We received very helpful feedback on the surveys during task force meetings and are especially grateful to Steve Ansolabehere and Charles Stewart for their feedback. Andrew Dominic, Nick Foti, and Rochelle Sun provided excellent research assistance and offered extremely useful feedback on a draft of the manuscript. We also thank Shuaiyu Chen for assisting us with the book’s figures, Susanna Supalla for help designing the interface for our expert survey, and Mitch Sanders for his guidance on Qualtrics. Gretchen Helmke, John Matsusaka, Paul Sherman, and Brad Smith offered feedback on various aspects of the project. We also thank the many individuals at seminars and conferences around the country who offered comments on a working paper version of what became chapter 8 of the book. Lastly, we are grateful to those inside and outside the profession—including those who disagree with us on many campaign finance matters—who have encouraged and supported our research.

We also have some individual acknowledgments to offer. From David: I thank the University of Rochester for granting me a sabbatical during which much of this book was written. I am grateful to Ani and Mark Gabrellian for their vision in establishing a professorship recognizing the importance of multidisciplinary research addressing real-world issues and for their subsequent interest in my work. We all could stand to break out of our disciplinary silos more often. I have been fortunate to work with amazing undergraduate and graduate students at Rochester, including several who helped with this book. The students I have worked with, taught, and learned from are committed to the open exchange of ideas, and their enthusiasm and energy power our universities. On a personal note, for my daughter Naveena, the book writing process was a new experience. She helpfully asked why anybody would want to write (or read!) a book on money in politics—an excellent question! She also contributed to the project, offering advice on writing (always write the chapters in order—turns out she was onto something) and even drawing mock-ups of the book cover. Finally, and most importantly, I want to send my everlasting gratitude and love to my wife, Neeta, for her understanding during the process of making this book a reality. She has been down this road before with previous books. But, like running a race on a familiar course, just because you know what’s coming doesn’t always make it easier. Neeta stuck with me even when the finish line seemed very far off. Neeta is, in a word, amazing.

Finally, from Jeff: I am grateful to the taxpayers of Missouri, who through their support for Mizzou have provided me the opportunity to conduct this research. Most importantly, I am thankful for my wife, who said on more than one occasion, You need to write a book, and for her love, support, and patience as it became clear just what that suggestion entailed.

Chapter One

Introduction

Campaign finance reformers, politicians, and academics have been arguing for decades that democracy is imperiled by a threat that permeates all of politics: money. Money in politics, these elites tell us, is to blame for a wide array of ills in American society that threaten democracy: moneyed interests buying elections, rampant corruption, and declining trust in government. The elites are wrong, yet the American public believes them. This book is about why that matters.

Just a few days after the US Supreme Court issued its 2010 Citizens United decision striking down several restrictions on political spending, President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to warn that the decision would open the floodgates for special interests.¹ Later in 2010, he warned that a loophole in campaign finance law posed a threat to our democracy.² Obama even used his final speech to the United Nations as president to opine that there is too much money in American politics, and at his farewell address to the nation as president, he claimed, When trust in our institutions is low, we should reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics.³

Obama is not alone. During her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton pledged that she would work to overturn Citizens United and fight for constitutional campaign finance reform. In 2018, she identified overturning the decision as essential for saving our democracy.⁴ Donald Trump, while not mentioning Citizens United by name, railed against money in politics during a 2015 debate of Republican presidential candidates, calling the campaign finance system broken.⁵ US Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (2019, 361), in a speech bemoaning the loss of faith in government, referred to big money as a gut punch to [US] democracy, with the rich and powerful buy[ing] their way into congressional offices. And remarkably, in a late 2018 interview soon after his retirement, the author of the majority opinion in Citizens United, Anthony Kennedy, said, All of us are concerned with money in politics, and It’s true there’s a problem of money in politics.⁶

Reform groups and even some scholars follow a similar script. The Campaign Legal Center calls undisclosed campaign spending a serious threat to our democracy.⁷ If serious threat were not ominous enough, American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein argues that campaign finance represents an existential threat to our democracy.⁸ Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, in criticizing the corrupt campaign finance system, puts it succinctly: "Citizens United is ruining democracy."⁹

Entertainers—no strangers to script reading—also get into the mix. Actor Martin Sheen rues the poverty of spirit engendered by money in the political system.¹⁰ Not to be outdone, superstar actress Jennifer Lawrence took a year off from her craft to advocate for reforms that will unrig American politics. In a compelling video watched more than one million times as of February 2020, Lawrence asserts, We are witnessing a total political system failure in America.¹¹ The hyperbole of Lawrence’s and Sheen’s statements fits right in with the long-standing claims of professional political observers, but the rhetoric has become particularly heated in the wake of Citizens United.

The media’s coverage of campaign finance often adopts the language of reformers. The term dark money, for instance, is hardly impartial and yet is commonplace in media reports, often without scare quotes around the term. The Center for Public Integrity even calls it a term of art, as though it is neutral expert jargon.¹²

It is tempting to dismiss all of this language as just political bombast and media hype, but the relentless negative framing of money in politics surely influences the views of Americans. How could it be otherwise? After all, the typical American is not scouring Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings or studying the relationship between roll call votes and campaign contributions to understand money’s influence or lack thereof.

It is therefore not surprising that Americans believe the political system is rotten to the core—that is the incessant message they receive from the media, politicians, reform groups, and scholars. These elites nurture the public’s cynicism with their rhetoric and in turn use this cynicism as evidence of the need for reform. For example, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig points to the nihilist politics of resignation among the public as evidence of the need for wholesale reform of the political system.¹³

Arguments for campaign finance reform are often not so much well-informed, well-reasoned policy briefs, as cri de coeur (cries from the heart) followed by the assertion that a particular reform will make it all better. This formulation works because of the widely held conventional wisdom regarding the dominant, pernicious role of money in American politics and the associated need for reform.

But what if the conventional wisdom is fundamentally wrong? What if there is no good reason to think that stricter campaign finance rules would have much effect on attitudes toward government? What if the Supreme Court’s decades-old justification for restricting political speech rests on the mistaken belief that campaign finance laws will reduce the appearance of corruption associated with campaign contributions? What if the usual justifications for campaign finance reform reflect a naïve and starry-eyed view of democracy? To answer these questions requires a deep dive into what Americans think about money in the US political system.

The interplay of public opinion, corruption, and campaign finance is the focus of Campaign Finance and American Democracy. In an area that generates more heat than light, more assertions than evidence, our book will be relentlessly empirical in its approach, using survey data to study the foundations of public opinion on money in American politics. Despite all the attention given to campaign finance, scholarly and otherwise, ours is the first book-length treatment of public opinion and campaign finance written after the Citizens United decision, and it is the first research to contrast public opinion and the scientific consensus on the role of money in American politics.

Using original survey data, we ask what the public thinks about money in politics, what drives these perceptions, and why it matters. Our primary line of inquiry is whether public opinion regarding corruption and the undue influence of money in politics is connected to reality, and whether changes in campaign finance regulations are likely to affect attitudes toward government.

Questions like these arise out of a political economy tradition that rejects the romantic view of democracy on which most justifications for campaign finance reform rest. For the romantics, if we could just get money out of politics and get the right people in office, democracy would produce the correct policies and, in doing so, help us save the environment, provide government-funded health care for all, and otherwise implement a very particular view of government—what John Samples (2006, 42), in an important account of the historical roots of campaign finance law, calls the progressive vision of politics.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known colloquially as McCain-Feingold, was signed into law in 2002 and is an excellent example of how campaign finance reform is sold to the public. Supporters of this legislation, which among other provisions banned unlimited contributions to political parties known as soft money, claimed that it would limit the power of special interests, end the appearance of corruption, reduce political advertising, promote democracy, increase political equality, realize the public interest, restore trust in government, increase electoral competition, improve political discourse, and reduce spending on elections (Samples 2006, 3–6).¹⁴ Apparently this didn’t come to pass, as similar promises are offered in support of new reforms that will work this time around (Really!, you can hear the reformers saying).

The progressive vision of what ails America remains alive and well today. After the Democrats took control of the US House in the 2018 midterm elections, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Sarbanes wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that it was time to end the dominance of money in politics. For far too long, big-money and corporate special interests have undermined the will of the people and subverted policymaking in Washington—enabling soaring health-care costs and prescription drug prices, undermining clean air and clean water for our children, and blocking long-overdue wage increases for hard-working Americans.¹⁵

In 2019, US senator Sheldon Whitehouse proposed legislation to increase the disclosures associated with independent campaign spending, stating, On issues from climate change to gun safety, a torrent of dark money spending has for too long prevented Congress from pursuing solutions that are overwhelmingly supported by the public. We need to pass this legislation to put power back where it belongs—in the hands of the American people—and restore trust in democracy.¹⁶

Later that year, in announcing his entry into the 2020 presidential race, Tom Steyer spoke of the stranglehold that corporations have over our politicians and how reducing the influence of corporate money in our democracy will allow us to finally solve the many challenges facing our country.¹⁷ Pelosi, Sarbanes, Whitehouse, and Steyer are not outliers. This is the standard rhetorical script for campaign finance reformers.

The romantic view of democracy also extends to survey design. For instance, in a late 2015 poll, 41 percent of voters answered 10 on a 10-point scale when asked whether changing campaign finance rules in order to get money out of politics would help their families personally.¹⁸ The phrase get money out of politics conjures up images of an idyllic view of government where all influence from nefarious sources is excised from the system, producing the Platonic ideal of a representative government. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Americans in this survey felt that campaign finance reform is more family-friendly than improved job-training programs.

The belief that a new layer of campaign finance regulations will improve perceptions of government by clearing a path for the enactment of better public policies stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of preference aggregation in a collective. By contrast, a political economy approach takes into account the features and limits of collective decision-making as well as the incentives of politicians who enact campaign finance laws and the reformers who propose them. Our perspective is one of politics without romance, to borrow from Nobel Prize–winning economist James Buchanan’s (1984, 11) description of a branch of political economy known as public choice theory. In short, we approach the topic of money in American politics as scientists, relying on logic, evidence, theoretical insights, and careful consideration of data.

In national surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016, we find that while the public is very cynical about the role of money in politics, it is also skeptical about the potential for reforms to dramatically alter the political process. Americans do not see campaign contributions as uniquely corrupting, nor do they view reforms as a panacea. Consequently, public opinion simply does not offer a strong foundation for expanding campaign finance regulations; the argument that reform will improve trust in government or public perceptions of democracy does not hold up in the data.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. How did we get to the point where the public’s perceptions of democracy became the primary justification for restrictions on campaign contributions and expenditures? For this, we can thank the US Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court and the Appearance of Corruption

In the aftermath of Watergate, Congress in 1974 amended the Federal Campaign Finance Act of 1971. These amendments created the Federal Election Commission, the regulatory body that oversees federal campaign finance; imposed spending and contribution limits on campaigns; and reformed the system of publicly financed presidential campaigns, among other changes. (For a detailed history of campaign finance law and its evolution through the early 2000s, see Corrado et al. 2005.) The law was challenged on First Amendment grounds, opening the door for the US Supreme Court to lay the groundwork for modern campaign finance law.

In its 1976 decision Buckley v. Valeo, the court split the baby, ruling that spending limits were unconstitutional impositions on the free speech of candidates for public office, while contribution limits to campaigns were permissible. The court’s rationale was that the primary purpose of the law, "the prevention