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KEVIN SHELLEY, California Secretary of State
FRED KEELEY, Former Speaker Pro Tem, California State Assembly
BOB HERTZBERG, Speaker Emeritus, California State Assembly
BILL JONES, Former California Secretary of State
Moderated by DAVID BRODER, Columnist, The Washington Post
David Broder: As a political reporter, I was struck by the fact that, at least for the U.S. House of Representatives, this state had virtually no competition in '02. Smaller states with far fewer, smaller delegations produced whatever turnover there was, and it was a significant turnover. What happened in California, and why does it happen?
Fred Keeley: It was not by accident, it was by design. I served as speaker for the California State Assembly during the time the redistricting took place, and it is called old reapportionment of districting. The legislature in each state is charged with the task of drawing four different kinds of lines: Members of the House of Representatives, the state Senate, the state Assembly, and the state Board of Equalization. The secret handshake agreement between parties was that the status quo would be preserved. You can understand why the Democratic leadership would make such a deal, because Democrats enjoy substantial majorities in the state Senate and Assembly.
Why, you might ask yourself, would Republican leadership agree to permanent minority status in both houses of the California legislature for the balance of a decade? What they were playing for was not that. They were playing for the status quo in California as well as the Congressional redistricting. The Republican leadership can assure the White House that in 2004 the president would not lose the United States House of Representatives because of anything that happened in California. California's a terribly expensive state from which to campaign and has all kinds of volatility. The idea was to just lock it down and forget about it and go play in other states.
Why would the Democrats agree to that relative to the House? Because California was gaining new House seats. Democrat leadership was willing to make that deal because by locking down everything you could get a two-thirds vote out of the legislature to do it. That would be an urgency bill, the governor would sign it; it would become law the day that he signed it. If we only passed the redistricting bill on majority vote basis, they don't take effect for some time - thus permitting an initiative to be circulated. If Democrats overreached and said, "We know that we got locked down, we want more, and the Republicans aren't going to be our partners if we can get this passed on majority vote," the Republicans would go to the ballot with something that would clearly dislodge the Democrats' huge majorities in the Assembly and the Senate and the House of Representatives, and who knows how a statewide ballot measure might play out?
Bill Jones: Unfortunately, I have had the opportunity to have been involved in three reapportionments, starting in 1981. At that time, Phil Burton, brother of the current speaker pro tem, was driving that process, and for many of the same reasons - national politics - that effort was geared toward a gerrymander that brought both Democrat majorities in California and locked us out as Republicans for the decade. Out of that came efforts to have commissions and other opportunities to change the manner in which reapportionment was done. In '91, when I was Republican leader under Pete Wilson, we were able to put together a fair reapportionment drawn on the basis that people live and go to school where they work, and with two Assembly districts nested in one Senate district. Drawing the lines fairly, it changed dramatically the gerrymander from the past and Republicans had an opportunity to pick up the House of Representatives in the 1994 election.
The most difficult job for the legislature to do is to redraw their own lines. It is a very personal process that oftentimes is not done with the best interest of the general public in mind. That is true with both parties. By drawing the districts fairly, and the courts basically did a masters - they had three judges, they drew them, they mirrored pretty much the way people lived, worked and went to school - the Republicans did win, for one period of time had the state Assembly as the majority.
It's imperative that both Republicans and Democrats have a chance to win and lose. Not having fair and dynamic lines gave us term limits in California. Eventually, if it's not done properly, frustrations build, and in California, with the initiative process, the people respond, as they should. If we find that this current reapportionment gives us the same results as the '81 reapportionment - a static legislature unable to be changed - we'll see a reaction again on the part of the public as we did with term limits.
Kevin Shelley: What you have before you in the three Democrats - myself, Bob Hertzberg, and Fred Keeley - is the leadership of the Assembly during the time of this past redistricting. Bob Hertzberg served very well as the speaker of the House, our leader; I served as the majority leader, responsible for moving policy through the Assembly; and Fred Keeley has served with grace and distinction as our pro tem, who managed all the day-to-day functions of the floor in the House.
I was working for Phil Burton in 1981, when that reapportionment took place. I personally was not involved in that reapportionment, but I certainly watched it. One of the requirements constitutionally for redistricting under the one person, one vote requirement is contiguity: boundaries have to be contiguous of a particular district - near each other. You remember the infamous John Burton district that Phil grew for his brother that crossed over five counties from Marin, Solano, San Mateo, San Francisco and Sonoma. Someone said, "It's not contiguous," and Phil said, "Well, it is at low tide."
That redistricting was challenged by a referendum; the referendum did not succeed. The measure went into effect. In 1980 Willy Brown assumed the speakership of the California State Assembly with six Democratic votes; perhaps naïve at the time, Republican members voted for him as well. Howard Berman from Los Angeles challenged then Speaker Neil McCarthy for the speakership. They had a standoff, and that's when Willy Brown kind of snaked in between them. So in accommodating Willy Brown and Howard Berman both, Phil Burton in that reapportionment created Congressional seats for members of the Berman faction in the Assembly so that they would have a safe landing in Congress and would not be in a position to challenge Willy Brown for the speakership. All based upon public interest, of course.
Howard Berman went to Congress, Rich Lehman went to the Congress, a number of their other allies went to the Congress. You had, without question, a "political redistricting." That's the norm, historically, when a party controls the process. What needs to be pointed out in '90 is that may or may not have happened again, but in that particular instance the state legislature was in the hands of the Democrats, and the executive governor's office was in the hands of the Republicans. It had to go to master because there was never going to be agreement between the executive and the legislature.
This time accommodations were made on the national level. I don't know whose hands were shaken, but none of us up here. (Mr. Hertzberg now has to leave.) There was an understanding that it was in the interest of both parties, and their perspective to not have to address a referendum.
There are two different strains of thought in terms of what is appropriate redistricting in representational democracy. One is that you put together the maximum number of competitive districts so that Democrats and Republicans are as even as possible, and as a result you have a responsive politician. There was a strong argument to be made that the founding fathers and their respect for democracy wanted that to happen. The other perspective is that having a certain number of safe Democratic seats, safe Republican seats, particularly in an era of term limits, provides continuity of leadership, and you have strong points of view in the legislature, not just a big mushy mish-mash in the middle.
Bob Hertzberg: I'm the first term-limited speaker to have to do redistricting in California's history. John Burton, whose brother had done redistricting with Kevin, and the governor all had been around a long time. I'd been around for a short period of time. The game's been shifted; the politics gets played, and it was very concerning to me.
Both the Unites States Constitution and the State of California Constitution give the authority to the executive branch and the legislative branch of government to draw the lines. Populations grow. The judicial branch is there to make sure that the Voting Rights Act and Constitution are respected. For the last 50 years, in every redistricting, the matter has gone to court. As a practical matter, you say to yourself, What are you going to do, you're killing yourself to go and make a plan that 30 seconds after the ink is dry, the courts overturn it? What's the value in that?
We hired the brilliant genius, Joe Remcho, who, unfortunately, just recently passed away - a lawyer here in the Bay Area. We hired Voting Rights Act professors from Stanford. Normally the politicians draw the lines and then toss it at the lawyers. We did it exactly the opposite, for a couple of reasons: Legalistically, by virtue of the reasons I explained, and practically, because I wanted to change the debate. I wanted this under all circumstances to be an open, honest and fair process.
We scared the heck out of members. We saw something in the paper that some member said something relating to the "R" word, which you can't use as it relates to redistricting. It's about communities of interest and contiguousness in all the necessary constitutional principles. We lectured the heck out of our people - any staffers that talked out of turn, we brought them in and took their statements in front of lawyers and lights and gave them the hardest time possible. The discipline that was implemented in our process was extraordinary. Every single line that was drawn for the California State Assembly plan was approved by three lawyers. The political types looked at it, but then the lawyers reviewed it to make sure that it was legal and appropriately constitutional.
In August when we were on break and we were in Los Angeles going through the lines, memorizing every line and doing all the homework, I got a telephone call from the Republican leader in our House saying, "A deal has been made." The White House made a deal because they didn't want any fights in California. In the last election our party took out four of their members. It cost them a lot of money, the president lost this state by a lot of votes, doesn't understand California and didn't want it on the map. They were too scared that the impact of California would impact the outcome of the speakership in Washington.
Personally, I had told our caucus (we had 50 seats; the other party had 30 seats), "For us to go out and draw a plan that protects everybody and loses in the courts does nothing for the causes that we believe in. We'll get you jobs. We'll help you, but some people may have to take the bullet." But when the other part came to us and said, "We'll give you 50 seats. You can keep every single seat" - what do I tell the members who will lose their jobs? What do you do in that circumstance? We took the deal.
Broder: The theme here is the question of the health of our democracy. I'd like to ask you now to talk among yourselves to talk a little bit about, was it healthy or unhealthy? What are the implications of this process? Does it provide an element of stability and continuity in the leadership of both parties, or does it deprive people of choices that they ought to make?
Jones: The bottom line is community of interest, not whether Republicans or Democrats control, and not whether someone has a job or not. When I pushed the reapportion of '91, the reapportionment I pushed on my caucus put three of our members in districts together; they voted for that plan knowing full well that the three of them were not coming back. The court's role is to make sure that the legislature does this, and the only issue is community of interest. It's not even competitive districts.
Broder: I want to be sure we understand what you mean by that. When you're talking about community of interest are you talking about a geographical community? Are you talking about an ethnic community?
Jones: I'm talking about all of those. You have a voting rights issue - at least we had one in '91 - the law had since changed. It's where people live, where they go to school. It's crossing county lines. It's all those elements that the court has decided are flags that can be used to determine whether or not a reapportionment is appropriately drawn. Having said that, they did an excellent job. But the focus was based on members. The focus never should be based on members. It always should be based on the community of interest. The court's role is to be able to give us the guidelines to do this. Unless you have a Democrat legislature, Republican governor or the reverse, what you end up is either in '81 or in 2000.
Unless the people can reflect their will through a legislature that's dynamic like pistons in an engine moving, you end up with frustration and with something like term limits blowing the top off. That will happen no matter how hard people tried to draw them right. We will see a repeat of that over a period of time if the legislature is not reflective of the people's will.
Keeley: I don't think redistricting ought to be about member protection. It ought to be about, Does the outcome result in a legislature that looks like California? Term limits accelerated the pace at which the legislature looks like California: There are more women, there are more persons of color, there is greater age distribution, there is greater distribution of occupation, there is greater sexual orientation distribution - because of term limits.
The redistricting adopted 2000 did the same thing. It assured that the representative democracy as manifested in the state Senate and Assembly looks like California, and it looks like California not only on the demographic dimensions but in terms of party. There are a heck of a lot more Democrats than there are Republicans in California. There is a lot of "decline to state," and you can argue in which area of the state they tend to break - right or break left - but you look at the lines in the Senate and Assembly, you don't have some weird circumstance where you've got a terribly conservative district that somehow has been worked out in such a way that a Democrat gets elected. It does, in fact, reflect the people in those districts.
Hertzberg: Do you believe in the republic? Since the inception of this country, this is how the redistricting has been done. There are jurisdictions now because of politics where it changes. Some attorneys general together with secretaries of states and others make it. Do you think that the standards of who makes those decisions are any less political? How do you otherwise do it? It's easy to poke fun at politicians who are drawing lines. Hey, it's not a lot of fun, it's making sausage. Forty-six of the other states have a simple majority for budgets. Politics works on the enlightened self-interested principles, the checks and balances - that's the genius of this democracy.
Shelley: In this last election cycle, the intrigue took place not in the general elections but during the primaries. The end result of this past redistricting plan was to have less competitive districts. One had much more competition in the Democratic primaries and the Republican primaries. You had a number of Republicans who had voted in favor of the budget last year. Some within the Republican hierarchy took exception to that, and very aggressive efforts were made to take those Republicans out. That indeed happened, they lost, and a moderate Republican was replaced by a more conservative Republican. The same thing happened on the Democratic side. There was a growing number of Democrats on the Assembly known as the business Democrats, and a number of traditional coalitions within the Democratic Party took exception to their more moderate positions on issues related to court reform and the like. There was a very aggressive effort made by a number of traditional Democratic coalitionists to take out some of those on the Democratic side who were perhaps too much towards the middle for the Democratic Party. And they were taken out. You elected people that were perhaps more to the extreme for that particular district. A byproduct is a legislature that this year may have even greater difficulty in reaching consensus with a $34 billion deficit where you have to reach two-thirds support in order to pass the budget.
Broder: However upset people may be about the way in which district lines are drawn, there is more public anxiety about the way in which campaigns are financed. Is there a problem in the way in which our campaigns are financed in California? If so, is there a solution?
Hertzberg: Yes. And yes. He didn't ask me what the solution was…
Broder: Tell us what the problem is. Is it, as many people think, that this government is for sale?
Hertzberg: No. Our current governor raised a lot of money - they were talking about this great scandal, about how much money this governor raised - but they failed to mention that he spent $58 million paying for their airwaves. That's the real tragedy in the whole thing, what it costs to get your message out.
What is the problem that we're trying to solve? Everybody reacts with an assumption that if somebody gives you a bunch of money, you owe them a bunch of favors. So from a policy perspective we say, We can't give as much money. If we give you money, we're going to buy favor. The underlying issue that we're trying to get to in campaign finance reform is the assumption that the bigger the number, the greater the expectation. Someone writes you a check for $100,000, you're going to go to their kid's bar mitzvah and their grandkid's bar mitzvah, and you're going to do anything that they want to ask you. But if they give you a check for $25, you're not going to do it.
What if you could prove that someone was honest, and you knew that they would never be influenced by money? We want to create a set of rules that say we want to stop influence. What's the effect? In Congress, up till recently, it was a thousand dollars. These people are spending all day doing nothing but dialing up for money. Instead of focusing on the important issues of public policy, they're spending four hours a day across the street from the capital in their political fundraiser's offices dialing for dollars. Everybody wants to take the influence of money out of the process. But one of the big weaknesses - and it's the weakness particularly in larger democracies - is that what we are always doing, and what we end up getting with candidates, is this impression management: How can we manipulate the public?
The principles, given our constraints, have to be: one, full disclosure; two, getting the Unites States Supreme Court to get rid of the case that says rich people can write as much money as they want to. That's what the Supreme Court currently says the law is, that's free speech. Three, the bigger issue for me (though it doesn't work in statewide races): reduce the size of governmental units so that people can walk door-to-door. There are 423,376 people per Assembly district. There's no way you can meet that many people. If you had smaller districts, you don't have to worry about a bunch of money.
When the founding fathers created this country, the largest city in the United States of America was 31,000 people - Philadelphia. Communities were very different things. Democracies require a certain level of social connectedness so we know who we are.
Jones: There is a problem, and it's more than just perception. Sunshine is the best antiseptic for campaign finance: open disclosure laws the legislature passed, the secretary of state's website, give you the opportunity to see who gives what. Though when you get right down to the problem of reapportionment, we are arguing against ourselves here. We want safe districts that nobody can lose. Most members are not going to do anything for money - but if you get some people in that would, how do you ever get them out? You have a system that locks them in.
Solutions: One, free media access. If there was a threshold based on contributions from individuals, and a certain amount of the airwaves need to be provided so everybody can hear what people are saying - the amount of money that you have does not limit the people's ability to hear what's right and wrong. They can make up their own mind.
Public financing I don't support. All of us need to be forced to go out there and hustle. I've raised millions of dollars over the last 25 years I've been in public life, and my average contribution was in the hundreds of dollars. What would level the playing field would be if you created a situation so anyone meeting the threshold had a chance to serve?
If we don't do something, you have a situation like we saw in our last governor's race, where a huge amount of money was raised by our current governor and then spent. Because it was spent to a great degree on negative publicity directed at other candidates, you end up turning off the process. How do you get people to participate?
The final point I would just make again. You have to take responsibility to elect ethical people.
Shelley: Personally, I just want to point out publicly that when I attended Bob's son's bar mitzvah, I did not accept a fee.
Seriously, the problem is not so much the $100,000 that goes to someone and then they feel obligated to go to the bar mitzvah or to their grandson's bar mitzvah and everything in between. The problem is the $100,000 or $10,000 if it goes to the person holding an office, perhaps the executive office that then makes the decision from that office that disproportionately benefits his or herself to the detriment of the public. That has happened recently. That's why our former insurance commissioner is in Hawaii someplace.
There's a number of ways of getting at it. I agree with the importance of disclosure. Secretary Jones did an outstanding job of creating the Cal-Access program which I now oversee. We want to expand that, so that you're not just able to access what moneys were given to a particular politician, but we're going to be also creating a searchable database whereby you can access who is giving those moneys.
As I was preparing to run statewide, a current constitutional officer whose name I shall not mention who was not the governor said to me, "You know, you can do it a couple different ways, you can do it a way when I lost, you can do it a way when I won." I said, "What's the difference?" He said, "Well, you know, the one time, all of us in public life liked to go around, we like to talk to people, we like to communicate with groups and we like to communicate our message, but we like to get out there, and that's important to democracy. But you know you can't really politic 34 million people. So do it a little bit, but don't do it to the detriment of your fund raising."
I took his advice. I did it. I got out there, and I went around the state, I was somewhat impeded, my wife had just had a baby, but also I parked my butt in the chair, and I raised $5 million. I was pleased to secure the endorsements of organizations that support numerous groups, but I didn't get out there and travel the state perhaps as much as I would like to. Had I done that, I wouldn't have raised $5 million, I wouldn't have gone on TV and I wouldn't be secretary of state. Yet there's something wrong with that, that I wasn't able to spend the time that I should have in talking with the people throughout the state of California learning really what their issues, needs and concerns were as applies to the government, as applies to the core process for regulating overseas corporate entities. So I do support, if not total, some form of public financing.
There are a number of methodologies in place. There are "clean money campaigns" that have been put in place in states such as Arizona and Maine, there are methods underway perhaps in California where a check-off on your income tax forms to allow it to go to campaigns where there's some allocation of resources.
I hope at some point the Supreme Court - that says that a person can give unlimited amounts of their own money; if you make it, you should be able to spend it - but if we just have rich people in government, that is not what the founding fathers had in mind and certainly not what the people here in this room have in mind and certainly not what I have in mind.
Keeley: My desire would be not to have a sick process that is going to need antiseptic to solve problems. It is a very sick process. In the state of California, it costs for a competitive seat $8 million in the lower house to get elected; it costs $4.5 to $5 million to win a competitive seat in the state Senate. And it is an obscenely sick process that says that you can't play in statewide race for governor without ponying up $30 million to $60 million.
You may have a reformed input, but you may not have a reformed outcome by simply rearranging bricks. Say we took this bottle of water and it's full. You gave me a set of bricks to put around the table and said, "Arrange them anyway you want. When you finish arranging them, I'm going to turn this bottle of water over, and your objective is to keep the water from getting off the table." There is no way I can arrange those bricks in a manner that can keep the water from getting off the table. If what you don't like is the relationship between campaign contributions and the perception and the reality that they are related in the establishment of public policy, then you have to give up the notion that you can arrange the bricks efficiently to keep the water from getting off the table.
The city of Los Angeles has a wonderful hybrid system, which says the objective of public financing a campaign is that wacky liberals like me say, "I don't want my tax dollars going to fund someone for the Ku Klux Klan running for the State Assembly. I'll be damned if that's going to happen." Some Republican doesn't want their tax dollars going to support somebody from Green Peace or the Communist Party or whatever running for the state Assembly. Fair enough. But you don't have to have that with false starts. What you can do instead is say, for the state Assembly, for the state Senate, for the state constitutional office, you have to raise fill in the blank X amount in contributions under $100,000. When you've reached that amount, you can access public financing for your campaign and/or go to walking, talking and knocking on doors. You can have a schedule that says every signature is worth 25 cents. We will credit you with 25 cents for every signature you get. That has the beauty of saying people way out on the extremes are highly unlikely to be able to access public financing.
Broder: Would we change things in a positive direction if you had multi-member districts and some form of cumulative or other form of proportional voting in California?
Jones: I don't know if it would change anything. The current break up - two houses, 40 and 80 - is fine and it works. It's good to have two houses rather than one. I think it gives them checks and balances.
Keeley: It would make the state legislature perform like a parliamentary system. You could have a circumstance where very small parties - the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Natural Law Party -with some voice in that legislative process. That assumes a number of other things; it assumes that you want to change how the executive branch works. In the progressive community there is a lot of talk, especially among Greens and others, that some kind of proportional representation makes sense. That depends on where you sit. For all that it's worth, this system works better in regard to a representative democracy than proportional representation. Look what just happened in Israel in the last couple of days.
Audience Member: I'm Steven Hill from the Center for Voting and Democracy, and we specialize in redistricting. From the point of view of nonprofits like ours, some of the things that stood out to us were that Democratic Party incumbents paid $20,000 apiece to the to political consultants redrawing the district lines, according to the Orange County Register and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, to draw them a district in which they could not lose. Districts were drawn by one of the incumbent's brothers; Michael Burton was consulted. The impact is you basically did away with legislative selections. Given these realities, isn't it time to turn redistricting in California over to a nonpartial, independent, nonpartisan commission like they do in Iowa and Arizona, or even a bipartisan commission like they do in New Jersey?
Jones: Yes. I've been in support of that in the past. The answer to your question is this is not something the legislature physically can do well; it is a very important but very difficult job. If you had a masters panel of retired judges being held to the standard of the criteria only - community of interests - that is the best process, not a partisan panel.
Hertzberg: I don't know the answer to the question. If you have really good people in the process you get a really good solution, and if you have really crummy people in the process, you get a really crummy solution. It's always easy to beat up government and say that the democracy reflects the people that you want in office and that it's flawed; it's the old Platonic argument of The Republic: if you got really good people the answer would be "yes."
Prop 68 set up the exact system Fred talked about, partial public financing: if you raise the money locally you get a benefit. It was unbelievably fabulous. It was modeled on measure H that was drafted by the same people; Common Cause was involved, and the people of California passed it. But you also voted for another measure, Prop 73, which got a couple of votes more, and it spent ten years in the court system. Because Prop 73 was perceived to be inconsistent with 68, and 73 got a few more votes, they nullified 68. We tried it again in with Prop 131, and it lost.
Shelley: There is an inherent assumption that if one is not elected one will make a more impartial and fair decision. If one is elected, one will make a more political and therefore a less fair and impartial decision. That is a faulty assumption. You don't necessarily take the electoral aspect out of it, but you try to fix the electoral process. A general theory of government that sometimes people buy into: If someone is just appointed and not elected they're going to be bearable, that's if they're a good, decent person. But if they aren't a good, decent person, what is the process for removing them? Do they stand for election? Or do they serve a locked-in term of five years or ten years as is often the case with appointed positions?
Broder: With public financing of some form - either matching or not - why would you want to limit the check-off to $1? Let the person check off as much as they want to do and put in the fund. Second is a question that goes to something we haven't talked about, which is campaign finance limits. This is a sophisticated questioner, because he or she says free airtime but no paid ads. Second, no limitation on volunteer contact, but a limitation on the number of free mailings that you could get.
Keeley: The notion of not limiting the check-off is a good idea: throw a whole bunch of money into public financing and they lose control of the dispersion of those dollars - hallelujah - sounds wonderful. On the notion on free airtime and no paid ads, I'm less taken with that; people ought to be free to run the campaigns they want to run. If somebody decides they do want to throw mud, let them throw mud. I'm not interested in the least in controlling content and behavior in campaigns. I'm very interested in seeing how it is we break the link between contributions and public actions, real or perceived.
Shelley: If someone wants to give more than $1 we should encourage that. We should find a way to provide free media. That would allow campaigning to be more affordable. If we are going to provide free media then perhaps - just like if you are going to provide partial public financing - if you don't take the public financing then you are limited, if you do take the public financing then you can do this with some incentive. If someone chooses to run campaigns that don't involve free media, they perhaps shouldn't have the same option for free media. There might be benefit that would encourage people to pursue free access. But we have to find a way to make that affordable. Should we make it affordable by way of public funding mechanism? How do you pay for that? And who pays for it?
Jones: I don't support public financing. Most of the money goes to have access to the airwaves. How you put a level on it makes more sense. Bear in mind that in the final analysis there's still going to be a need for resources, and there's still going to be a need for candidates to go out and knock on doors and look you in the eye, ask for your vote. As you saw with Senator McCain's measure that was passed in Washington, in the case of the national concept - presidential races - where they have public financing, you're seeing campaigns opting out of that process and just raising money in a much larger way. There are new rules now, but there will always be a way to get around this process. The simplest way is the least rules and to open the process up - give everybody an opportunity and a threshold to use what's already there, which would be helpful for disclosure.
Hertzberg: One of the big issues here in all of these races whether you're running for state-wide, raising money out of the state, or in a district and raising money outside your community; an incentive to raise money inside the district is a weakness. In Los Angeles there were districts that were more wealthy than others, so you have to adjust to that, so that there's a real constituency that's supporting you versus a constituency outside of your district.
We own the airwaves. Every presidential campaign has talked about it since John Kennedy, and nothing has happened. I don't anticipate us breaking the backs of the people we've given the airwaves to, or the FCC and the federal government changing its rules, but the amount of money we have to spend…
Broder: I would hope that many Californians would have the opportunity to visit Iowa during campaign season, as all of us political reporters get to do. There is something powerful that happens in the combination of competitive districts and small constituencies that force candidates at all levels - from United States Senate down to the state legislature - to go door-to-door asking people for their help and their support. There is an enormous difference between sitting on your couch and being a spectator to a campaign that's taking place on television through ads and having a candidate come to your door and say, "I want to know what you think so I can ask for your support." To the extent that that is possible to create in a state of this size and complexity, you have created a condition in which, from my point of view as a reporter, real democracy can take place.
Tom Campbell
Dee Dee Myers