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Few denizens of the Capitol would question that for years, the building's two most influential interest groups have been the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and the Indian tribes that own casinos.
Both were virtually invisible as political powers until about 15 years ago, but they amassed and spent many millions of dollars, mostly on political campaigns, to acquire hegemony over decisions that affected them. At the apex of their political power, they even set up a joint operation to help friendly politicians gain and hold office.
The ouster of former Gov. Gray Davis, who had been joined at the political hip with both, has dented the political standing of the union and the gambling tribes. And the overall impact of campaign money may have faded somewhat due to political structural changes that have made incumbent legislators less concerned about their re-elections, most notably term limits and a status quo redistricting scheme. But it still plays a powerful role in any group's political action program.
The influence of special interest money on both elections and post-election decision-making utterly galls what Capitol insiders call "goo-goos," shorthand for "good government groups" such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. The goo-goos perennially promote schemes to limit and regulate political money, contending that removing its influence would somehow produce a better quality of governance.
A goo-goo coalition calling itself the California Clean Money Campaign unveiled the latest version of reform this week: Legislation that would clamp even more severe limits on private contributions and provide up to $89 million in public funds each year to candidates for statewide and legislative offices.
Characteristically, the plan - incorporated in a bill carried by Berkeley Assemblywoman Loni Hancock - is complicated in the extreme, setting forth minute requirements for obtaining money from the state treasury and attempting to offset both personal spending by wealthy candidates and politicians who simply refuse to participate in the public financing system.
Hancock, adopting time-worn goo-goo rhetoric, said her measure, if approved by the Legislature and voters, would allow candidates and politicians to spend "less time dialing for dollars" and more, presumably, on the state's problems.
It's all very nice in theory, but it totally ignores the fundamental reality of Capitol politics, one that all the reform measures in the world cannot change. Governors, legislators, other elected officials, and their appointees affect, by their actions, hundreds of billions of dollars every year - the state budget, federal funds, insurance premiums, utility rates, worker benefits, insurance coverage, lawsuit rules, land development standards, tax policies, etc. - and those with stakes in the decisions are motivated to affect them.
That's why the prison union and the gambling tribes involved themselves, and why thousands of other interest groups hire lobbyists, contribute to campaigns and in myriad other ways attempt to alter the outcomes.
It's doubtful whether the Hancock bill or any other campaign reform measure can truly block the influence of money in politics. Interest groups and politicians immediately figured out how to get around the much-heralded McCain-Feingold bill at the federal level. The net effect of that measure was to drive the trade in political money underground, making it much more difficult to figure out whom was trying to help whom. But even if the flow of campaign money were to be dammed, the multi-billion-dollar motivation to affect political decision-making would remain, and it would simply take some other, perhaps more insidious form.
You've got to give the goo-goos high marks for trying and for sincerity, but you have to wonder why they keep trying to accomplish something that, if successful, might be worse than the malady it purports to cure. We should junk the complex regulatory schemes on political money and substitute one simple rule: All contributions must be fully and quickly reported with severe penalties for failure. Sunshine is the best cure for murky deals.
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