Category Archives: Elections

Follow the money

Elections, Legislature, Politics, State government

Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, argues for House Bill 1427 in committee.
By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s a scene in “All the President’s Men,” the movie about the Washington Post reporters who dogged the Nixon White House until the president resigned over Watergate. Reporter Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, meets in a darkened garage with his background source, “Deep Throat,” played by Hal Holbrook, and says the story is stuck. “Follow the money. … Just follow the money,” Holbrook’s character tells him.

It’s as true today as it was then. It’s my experience covering the State Capitol that most elected officials at the state level are decent folks, and when they compromise, it’s more often out of strategic necessity than a failure of character. Still, if you want to know the whole story in politics, you always have to follow the money.

Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, agrees, which is why, just as she did in her first legislative session in 2015, she’s sponsoring a bill that would make it much easier for any citizen with an internet connection to do what Woodward was trying to do.

House Bill 1427 would require candidates for constitutional offices (governor, attorney general, etc.), judicial offices, and state legislative seats to file all of their campaign finance reports online in a new, searchable database.

Here’s how that would change things. Currently, anyone can go on the Arkansas secretary of state’s website (votenaturally.org) and pull up the campaign finance reports for each individual candidate, one month at a time.

If House Bill 1427 passes, journalists, watchdog groups and average citizens could quickly search everything in the database and determine which lobbyists or political action committees have donated how much to whose campaigns. If an industry gets special treatment under the law, it would be much easier to see if campaign donations might have played a part.

If that last paragraph sounds like I’m bashing elected officials, I’m not. Winning elected office requires campaigning, and campaigning requires money, and then afterwards the winning candidates must make decisions that affect their donors. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the one we have.

Efforts to limit campaign donations in recent years have failed, partly because of court decisions and partly because ours is a free market society where money will find its way to power. But we also have an open society where information is often even more powerful than money. So one very workable solution that is consistent with both a free market society and an open society is to make it really easy for average Arkansans to follow the money.

Della Rosa’s bill failed in 2015 based on some good excuses and some lame ones. Legislators said many candidates did not have access to reliable internet service, and they complained about the state’s balky online reporting system – both very good excuses. In 2016, Della Rosa pushed through an appropriation to build a new and very good online system that cost $670,000. So that good excuse is out. There’ve been two more years of improving internet service across the state, and the bill would let legislators in truly underserved areas file their reports the old-fashioned way, by paper. So that good excuse is pretty much gone, too.

That just leaves the lame excuses, such as the one offered in 2015 by one legislator who said he represented a district with a large paper industry presence, so he couldn’t vote for a bill that would reduce the use of paper.

Della Rosa’s bill passed the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee comfortably Wednesday on a voice vote. Several legislators spoke supportively. Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, said the bill would force him to change his habits, but he was willing to do so because of the good that would come of it.

The bill now moves to the full House, where it was expected to be debated Friday and where it must pass by a two-thirds majority because it changes two initiated acts approved by the voters. Then it must pass through a Senate committee and the full Senate before landing on the governor’s desk.

Every legislator who votes for the bill is inviting more accountability and transparency. Instead of forcing voters to stumble around a darkened garage, they’re bringing a flashlight and shining it on themselves.

To borrow a line from another movie, “Jerry Maguire,” if it passes, it will show us the money. If we don’t follow it, it’s our fault.

He was playing chess; she was playing checkers

Elections, Politics

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Donald Trump won the Republican Party nomination because he was playing checkers while the other candidates were playing chess, and it was a checkers year. In November, the opposite happened: He checkmated Hillary Clinton while she was playing checkers.

Remember the primaries? Those 16 other mostly conventional Republican candidates were all playing chess – trying to execute their grand strategies and position themselves for Trump’s inevitable fade, or to be the last person standing against him. While they were staring at the chessboard, he just kept bouncing from state to state on the checkerboard until he reached the back row and shouted, “King me!”

In the general election, however, it was Clinton who tried to play checkers, while Trump realized it had become a chess match.

Checkers is a simple game, which is why we don’t hear much about “checkers masters.” The strategy involves a balance of offense and defense: You try to reach the opponent’s back row without allowing them to reach yours. If you play too aggressively, you leave yourself open, so it’s best just to plod along, pick up pieces and look for the double jumps.

That’s what Clinton did. Once she had that small lead in the polls, she played it safe and ran a same-old, same-old campaign. She didn’t reach out to voters who ordinarily wouldn’t support Democrats; those were discarded into her “basket of deplorables” and forgotten about. She thought her back row was protected by that supposed “blue wall” of states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that of course would vote for the Democrat because they always had. When that old Trump video where he talked about grabbing women surfaced, she thought she’d made a double jump right onto his back row.

Trump, meanwhile, was playing chess. Chess is an offensive game where you win by taking the opponent’s king regardless of what it costs you, and often by surprising the opponent. With checkers, you always know who’s winning; with chess, the player with fewer pieces can suddenly strike and end the game. So while Clinton’s campaign (and most pundits) were counting the number of checkers left on the board, Trump’s campaign found some holes in that blue wall and exploited them.

Meanwhile, Trump did what Clinton refused to do or could not do – find new voters.

The modern Republican Party has been an awkward coalition of business elites and socially conservative regular Americans whose interests sometimes conflict, particularly lately when those business elites are getting really rich while many regular Americans are struggling.

Trump saw that there are a lot more regular Americans than there are business elites, and some who typically vote for Democrats could become his voters. He could speak to them in a way that Mitt Romney couldn’t in 2012 because Trump is blunt and earthy and understands popular culture, and because Clinton, the daughter of a middle class Chicago small businessman, had become one of those elites herself. He wasn’t going to lose the regular Americans he already had, and he didn’t need the elites’ money because he’s already rich, he was getting so much free air time, and he’s a wizard at using free social media.

He realized that he could appeal to regular Americans’ legitimate fears and concerns – and, for some, to their misplaced grievances and their unacknowledged prejudices – by using the most effective and darkest campaign slogan in recent American history. A lot’s implied in “Make America Great Again,” especially that last word, “again,” as in, “It used to be great, but it’s not now, and here are the groups of people responsible for that.”

In the end, Clinton had 3 million more votes across the country, but Trump won the states that mattered most. Her checkerboard had more pieces, and so did her chessboard, but the checkers game didn’t matter, and he had surrounded her king with a bunch of pawns.

He recognized what no other candidates saw this election except perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders – that the game was different this time. In fact, both games were, and the trick was knowing when to play which. That’s why the Republicans who were playing chess had to king him in checkers. That’s why he captured Clinton’s king in the general election chess match while she was moving her checkers around the board. And that’s why he’s the nation’s 45th president, and they’re not.

Related: Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year

2016 wasn’t so bad

Elections, Inspirational, Legislature, Politics, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

More than a few people are expressing their hopes for a happy new year by saying good riddance to the old – the basis being that they aren’t happy with the presidential election, along with the fact that a lot of famous people died in 2016, especially lately.

The truth is that famous people die every year, and it’s not the year’s fault. Also, whatever you think about the election, the good news is that we had one.

Consider that on March 1, almost 632,000 Arkansans went to the polls to help select the two major party candidates. Then in November, about 1.13 million Arkansans voted in the general election for one of those two candidates or for one of six others. In January, the current president will peacefully hand the Oval Office’s keys to his successor and become a private citizen, while the new president takes the reins of power only temporarily.

This process is fairly common around the world these days but rare throughout history, when power has often been transferred through war or intrigue or birthright. George Washington came along and just gave power up. As flawed as it was, the 2016 presidential election was a blessing, not a curse, when you consider many of the possible alternatives. As Winston Churchill once said, “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

In fact, the 2016 campaign in some ways was remarkably open and democratic. The Republicans offered 17 candidates for president, each of whom had ample opportunities to make their case to the voters. Donald Trump won in part because he inspired first-time or infrequent voters to go to the polls. The Democrats offered the first female major party nominee, and her gender was not the defining issue. Third party candidates were treated, at least for a time, as candidates, not asterisks.

The campaign gave a shot of adrenaline to a political process that has grown predictable and stale. This time, the usual left-versus-right narrative simply didn’t apply. Both Trump and Bernie Sanders gave voice to legitimate concerns about global trade and the unevenness of the economic recovery. Moreover, they made their cases largely through oratory and direct communication rather than formulaic 30-second television advertising, which has been the norm. In November, the candidate who raised a lot less money and ran far fewer ads won by using tools that are at least theoretically available to others: a message that drew crowds and media attention, and social media.

Here’s where some of you say, “But Trump …”

I know, and I share many of your concerns. I voted for John Kasich in the Republican primary and the independent Evan McMullin in November – two candidates I believed offered positive, unifying visions. But, for one column, let’s look on the bright side, or at least all sides. It’s wrong to look at the world through rose-colored glasses, but it’s also a mistake to reach for the gray ones instead. In fact, it’s worse.

It wasn’t just in national politics where 2016 wasn’t so bad. In Arkansas, the Legislature met three times and along with Gov. Hutchinson produced tangible results in health care and highway funding. The unemployment rate in Arkansas is about 4 percent, which is far below the national average. Granted, that’s partly a result of the high number of former workers who have dropped out of the labor force, but clearly things are better than they were.

The Charles Dickens novel, “A Tale of Two Cities” begins with the words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Based on the way so many people talk these days – and have been for the past decade or two – you’d think these are just the worst of times. Let’s be realists, not cynics. By many measurements, Americans live better than 99 percent of all people who have ever lived.

So may we each have a happy new year while keeping the right perspective on the old one. Maybe it wasn’t the best of times, but the times certainly weren’t the worst.

The six voters who mattered

Elections, Politics

Arkansans hold signs imploring electors not to vote for Trump.
Arkansans hold signs imploring electors not to vote for Trump.
By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The campaign that began a year and a half ago finally, mercifully ended Monday in the Capitol’s Old Supreme Courtroom, when the only six Arkansans who ultimately mattered in this presidential election one by one said firmly and clearly, “Donald J. Trump.”

Those six were Arkansas’ electors who, in the previous month, had been the subjects of a campaign themselves. Keith Gibson of Fort Smith said he received 70,000 emails, along with 100 handwritten letters and about a dozen phone calls. Most were from out of state and many were just copies sent to other electors with his name inserted, and those didn’t demand much of his attention. But many were personal, emotional and sincere as they pleaded with him not to vote for Trump. Mom was right; he paid closest attention to the handwritten ones.

The campaign to change the electors’ minds occurred because, while they were pledged to Trump, they could vote for whomever they wanted regardless of that little exercise involving 1.13 million Arkansas voters Nov. 8.

Did any of it make a difference? No, but Gibson did listen.

“What I can say is that I read the letters and considered the position of those who asked me not to do that, but I don’t think I ever came to a point where I said I will not do that, I will vote for someone else,” he said. “I never reached that point.”

In the courtroom were about 40 protestors sitting quietly, many of them holding handmade signs. “Our forefathers planned for this day,” read one sign, while another encouraged the electors to vote for Ohio Governor John Kasich, who managed only 3.72 percent of the vote, including mine, in Arkansas’ May primary.

Billy Marshall of Malvern held a sign saying, “I’m sorry I voted for Trump. Save America.” He said he had voted for Trump because, “Like everybody else did, I guess, make America great.” But events since the election had changed his mind, including the involvement of the Russians and Trump’s cabinet appointments.

“What I’ve seen, he lied through his teeth,” he said. “He’s not even keeping up with what he said he was going to do.”’

The electors made their selection while sitting in the old justices’ chairs, which sit regally several feet above the rest of the courtroom. They were separated from the sign carriers by a distance of 10 yards and by a wooden railing.

The gap between what they were doing and what the sign carriers wanted them to do was much wider, but Gibson and several of the electors tried to bridge it. Prior to the vote, they approached the protestors and spoke sympathetically with Suzanne Scherer of Fayetteville, who voted for Hillary Clinton and wanted them to do the same.

“I long for the day when we can have cordial dialogue again, where both sides can participate in a meaningful debate without hating each other,” Gibson told me he said to the protestors that day.

Despite their earlier conversation, after the votes were cast for Trump and his running mate Mike Pence, Scherer said loud enough to be heard, “You voted for a facist.” “President! He’s our president!” replied a man not carrying a sign from the other side of the room. At that point, Secretary of State Mark Martin announced that anyone else who spoke out would be escorted from the room. “You voted for a homophobe,” said a woman, and she was led out by Capitol police.

This is the second time in five elections that the winner of the popular vote lost the election. We’re told that’s a non-issue because the wishes of voters in small, rural states like Arkansas were protected against the potential power of those Left Coast Californians who happen to be on the wrong side of the not-one-person-one-vote system. And if something would have happened since Nov. 8 that unquestionably called Trump’s legitimacy into question – and goodness knows what that would have to be – the electors would have served as the nation’s reserve parachute.

So six Arkansans voted for Donald J. Trump based on the wishes of 684,872 voters who cast ballots for him Nov. 8. We could do better and we could do worse, but we’re not going to do anything different any time soon. So after this long, bitter campaign, let’s try some of that cordial dialogue and meaningful debate Gibson was talking about, without hating each other.

Related: Every county is purple.