Jul 21 2009

Culture of Capitol-ism

In order to transform a dying institution, the old, corrupt culture must be rooted out and eliminated.
by Clint Reilly

Sacramento is not just a big small town or the capital of America’s biggest state. It is also a symbol of governmental gridlock and dysfunction, the political version of General Motors or Lehman Brothers.

But unlike GM or Lehman, California won’t go bankrupt – not while taxpayers are guarantors of last resort. So, the blunders continue.

Sacramento isn’t just a place; it’s a culture. Let’s call it a culture of “Capitol-ism.” Legislators are now “Capitolists” who commandeer billions of tax dollars and special interest contributions to re-elect themselves rather than govern California. The Capitol is no longer the seat of government – it is the home office of a massive 24/7 public relations company.

I first noticed this distorted reality when I began managing campaigns in the 1970s.

Incumbent Assembly members had access to a large pool of consultants on the state payroll whose primary job was to legally orchestrate year-round campaigns. The entity was called “Majority Consultants,” and the staffers really worked for the Speaker of the Assembly.

These political operatives manufactured press releases and cranked out expensive newsletters to constituents – paid for by the taxpayers. At election time, they exited the state payroll and seamlessly appeared on the campaign payrolls of members involved in tough races.

A crack team of in-house consultants hand- picked by the Speaker orchestrated centralized direct mail campaigns, designed and written in Sacramento. Sometimes the brochures would be exactly the same. Only the candidate’s name and geographic area was changed.

Major unions like the Operating Engineers owned presses that printed millions of brochures every election cycle for the Speaker’s chosen candidates. As time passed, television spots created by the same experts also began to flow out of Sacramento.

Special interests dominated campaign giving – even decades ago. Millions were raised from lobbyists, corporations, business groups and unions at watering holes like Frank Fat’s (a restaurant owned by a real life Frank Fat).

The Speaker and the Pro Tem of the State Senate both ran full-time fundraising campaigns, doling out cash selectively. In this system, elected members became dependent on the leadership to provide the money and political expertise for their election and re-election.

Power, therefore, resided in the hands of leaders who controlled committee assignments, staff allocations and perks such as office and parking spaces. But the leadership leaned heavily on special interests to put up the money that kept the machine humming.

By the end of the 1990s, the cost of campaigns had exploded, leveraging the role of special interests in Sacramento. Since November of 2001, Sacramento politicians have raised more than $1 billion for their campaigns, and independent committees have spent $88 million more to promote candidates.

Consequently, a massive parallel political consulting arm of the legislature has been deliberately created over generations – funded by taxpayers most of the year and by special interests during campaigns.

This monster manufactures bills that are nothing more than press releases driven by the latest polling data, which are never intended to actually become law. Major policy issues requiring solutions have become an opportunity to squeeze both sides for campaign funds at the price of legislative neutrality or inaction.

The government itself is now a subsidiary of this self-perpetuating campaign machine permanently disconnected from the core responsibility of good governance. California declines further.

Mediocre legislators cannot be defeated by reformers who lack the funds and connections in Sacramento to mount credible challenges. Needed change is blocked and delayed.

Experts say that a languishing company cannot be revived just by changing executives. Nor will we change Sacramento by electing a new governor, as the sagas of Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger have demonstrated. In order to transform a dying institution, the old, corrupt culture must be rooted out and eliminated.

Sacramento will never reform itself. The culture must be transformed fundamentally. Voting for new faces to play within the same broken system won’t accomplish that task. Only a Constitutional Convention that accomplishes true structural reform will break the back of the monster we’ve created.

We might then take our government back from the “Capitolists” and foster a new generation of leaders who are free to do the right thing, competent enough to know the right course, and tough enough to follow it.