DISMAYED, NOT DEFEATED

Campaign reform `father' Gardner laments costly races

STANFORD -- When John Gardner, dubbed by some ``the father of campaign
finance reform,'' reflects on the 1998 elections, his strong hands grip his
sturdy cane as if to steady a rising ire.

The American campaign system that he and his followers succeeded in
partially reforming so long ago is once again awash in cash and corruption.

He doesn't have to look far to prove his lament.

The California gubernatorial race, where candidates are spending more than
$100 million, is the most expensive non-presidential contest in the country.

The race for California's U.S. Senate seat is expected to reach at least $20
million. And Gardner predicts the next presidential election will top $750
million.

It's disheartening to the 86-year-old founder of Common Cause and current
Stanford University professor of public service, who for nearly 30 years has
been preaching the need to limit money in campaigns.

But if Gardner is disheartened, he is not defeated.

``Most people have even forgotten what Common Cause was founded to do,''
said the octogenarian, a quietly intense man who speaks in a direct but
soft-spoken manner. ``I founded it to see if we could hold government
accountable to the citizens.''

Dressed in a conservative lightweight tweed jacket, gray slacks, pressed
shirt and tie, Gardner could be mistaken for any other venerable professor
on campus. Though he moves more slowly now through the halls of his office
inside the Center for Educational Research at Stanford, Gardner's mind
remains agile.

He points to that day's lead editorial in the New York Times. It tells a
tale about Congressional Republicans and their long-running attempt to oust
the general counsel of the Federal Election Commission because the attorney
has aggressively sued groups in both parties for gross campaign finance
violations.

That kind of political arrogance rankles Gardner. He calls these
Republicans -- and those Democrats who remain hostage to special
interests -- ``the corruption lovers,'' and he has a suggestion for them.

``I believe the corruption lovers should take down the American flag in
their offices and put up a flag with a dollar sign. Because that's what they
salute every day,'' said Gardner, just getting warmed up.

``In our society,'' he said, ``it is important to study how the relationship
of money and investments in the election of candidates can produce a gain to
the donor. There are very interesting examples.''

Take the high-powered agribusiness conglomerate, Archer Daniels Midland Co.,
a leading producer of ethanol, a type of gasoline blended with corn-based
fuel2E

``The government subsidized it for environmental reasons, presumably,''
Gardner said. ``But just to make sure they got that subsidy, since 1991 the
company has given $2.9 million in `soft' money to both parties.''

The result? In the last seven years, the ethanol subsidy has cost the
federal treasury at least a billion dollars for a product that, a government
study showed, has negligible benefit. ``I don't think the taxpayers are
aware of that,'' Gardner said.

Reagan's corporate tax

He talks about the corporate alternative minimum tax that President Ronald
Reagan administered in a 1986 -- ostensibly created to prevent corporations
from using tax shelters and loopholes.

``It was a pretty good measure,'' Gardner noted, until a number of top U.S.
industries such as oil, auto, chemical and steel lobbied to loosen the rules
in those industries.

They did it the old-fashioned way. They threw money at politicians. Since
1991, Gardner said, the industries have paid $22 million in soft money --
unlimited, unregulated donations to political parties -- to both the GOP and
the Democrats. The projected cost to taxpayers over the next 10 years,
according to Congressional Quarterly, will be $18 billion in lost tax
revenues.

It is this kind of mounting abuse that continues to corrode American
democracy and its elected leaders, and, Gardner believes, contributes to
widespread apathy among voters.

It is why, almost 30 years ago, Gardner started Common Cause. Now 250,000
members strong, his followers have carried on the war of their visionary
leader.

``He said early on that the two evils of government are money and secrecy --
the ability of money to buy political outcomes, and that old, bad habit of
the government doing the public's business behind closed doors,'' said
current President Ann McBride. ``And these are what we continue to battle.''

When Gardner formed the Washington, D.C.-based group in 1970, he was a
59-year-old Republican who had most recently served as the secretary of
health, education and welfare in the Johnson administration.

But by then he had already built a commendable reputation as the former
president of the Carnegie Corp., chairman of the National Urban Coalition,
and had written books on excellence and self-renewal, among other subjects.

Today, Gardner is proud of the substantial victories Common Cause has won
for open and accountable government. It has helped reform the presidential
campaign finance system; ended secrecy in Congress through ``sunshine laws''
and helped to enact historic tax reform. It helped establish tough
congressional ethics standards and financial disclosure laws and ended the
honorarium system that allowed members of Congress to collect lucrative
speaking fees from special interests.

``We always believed in government of the people, by the people and for the
people. Now, it's a government of monied interests, by monied interests and
for monied interests,'' he said.

``I'm not against monied interests. I just don't want them buying political
outcomes.''

Yet Gardner has not grown cynical. ``The main fuel for cynicism is the
distance people feel from the center of decisions,'' he said. ``I'm
convinced the issues of alienation and cynicism can only be turned around by
citizen involvement.''

If Americans will make their voices heard, he said, stricter campaign reform
laws can -- and will -- be passed. Witness the support behind Proposition
208, a campaign finance reform initiative that California voters passed in
1996, though it was later declared unconstitutional.

Looking ahead, Gardner said widespread publicity remains paramount.

``The first thing you can do is talk about it, speak up about it. People
have to speak out and they have to name names. Nobody likes to name the ones
who voted no,'' he said of those politicians who did not support recent
efforts to reform campaign finance. As they hit the campaign trail in the
next few weeks, Common Cause members plan to pressure their congressional
candidates to address the topic of campaign reform during public forums.

``I have urged every Common Cause committee to make that effort,'' he said.
The group also is publishing a report card on its Web site of those U.S.
Senate and House of Representatives candidates who voted for and against
campaign finance reform in the last go-around.

`Soft money' bill

In August, the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Shays-Meehan
campaign finance reform bill by a vote of 252 to 179. All of the Bay Area's
congressional representatives voted in favor of the bill, which would ban
soft money and so-called ``issue ads,'' which indirectly promote or smear a
candidate by reminding voters of issues the candidate is aligned with.

A similar effort in the U.S. Senate, called the McCain-Feingold bill, backed
by California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, was ultimately
killed by a filibuster in the Senate.

Gardner blames the defeat on Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott,
among other powerful Republican incumbents, who say bans on soft money limit
free speech.

Gardner doesn't buy it. ``The advantage to incumbents is to build pipelines
to money'' for upcoming elections, he said. ``It isn't a Republican vs.
Democrat or conservative vs. liberal issue,'' he said. ``It's the party of
incumbency.''

Gardner also advocates public financing of federal candidates to lessen the
influence of big money. Public funding of federal elections originally
proposed by President Roosevelt in 1907 began to take shape in 1971 when
Congress set up the income tax checkoff to provide for the financing of
presidential general election campaigns and national party conventions.

Most important, though, Gardner wants to annihilate soft money. ``It's a
Mississippi River of money flowing to candidates,'' said Gardner. ``The
system is out of control.''

Common Cause was among the groups that lobbied Congress to establish the
46ederal Election Commission in 1974 to administer and enforce federal
campaign finance law. But in 1978, the FEC ruled that limits on campaign
contribution need not apply if the donations went directly to the political
parties.

``And this opened a loophole that you could drive an army through,''
recalled Gardner wistfully of the debut of soft money, which would come into
play prominently 10 years later in the 1988 presidential race.

``It's not guess-work,'' said Gardner. ``If you are giving to a candidate,
you give to his party with the understanding it goes right back to the
candidate.''

255 percent gain

As of June 30 this year, Republican national, state and local committees had
raised $71.8 million in soft money, 255 percent more than in the previous
midterm election. The Democrats' receipts of $53 million represented a 70
percent increase.

``It's on a steep curve, and it's buying political outcomes,'' Gardner said.
``And it buys access. It's buying politicians. They're up for sale.''

Checked-by: Don Beck