Today we wrote letters to the party nominees and asked them to negotiate another Pledge. While we didn’t literally offer our table again, we stand ready to facilitate a negotiation between the candidates. Last time we called for a Pledge we were armed with evidence from the Scott Brown-Elizabeth Warren U.S. Senate race. Common Cause research showed that the Pledge reduced the amount of negativity, the amount of undisclosed money, and increased the percentage of small dollar donors. Now we have evidence from Rhode Island that the Pledge keeps outside money out of the race. And there is a great survey by Lake Survey Partners showing bi-partisan support for the People’s Pledge.

Let’s hear from the candidates between now and November 4th and insist on a People’s Pledge!

The ad in question was an attack on Taveras, paid for by the Providence Fraternal Order of Police. Marion included it in this letter.

“It is my opinion that the advertising does indeed violate the terms of the Pledge,” said Marion, in an email. “I am not yet able to determine the cost of the advertising buy, and subsequently determine how much must be donated to charity.”

The Taveras campaign has asked the other two campaigns to donate to the Federal Hill House. “Federal Hill House is dedicated to enabling people from throughout the Greater Providence area achieve their potential by removing obstacles that hinder them,” according to its website.

Marion said this has been the only violation of the People’s Pledge in a letter to the candidates. “If this is the only violation of the Pledge we see in this primary election it will be a great success and something I think you should all be proud of having taken part in.”

“This represents a watershed moment in Rhode Island politics,” Marion said in a press release, “and we are proud to have facilitated this historic agreement and want to thank the campaigns of the three major Democratic candidates for working together to get this agreement done.”

The agreement signed by Clay Pell, Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras applies only to the Democratic primary and says a candidate will pay the cost of a third-party negative advertising about an opponent, or third-party positive advertising about themselves. It does not cover direct mail or canvassing, as Raimondo’s team had suggested.

You can rad the full agreement here: Rhode Island People’s Pledge. And learn more on Common Cause RI’s website. Also, check out our full coverage of this issue, going back to September 2013, when contributor Sam Howard suggested it in a post titled “Blood primary or People’s Pledge.”

Marion said he initially invited Republican candidates for governor to sign the pledge too, but he did not hear back from them. He hopes a similar agreement can be made for the general election between both parties.

However Angel Taveras, Clay Pell and Gina Raimondo all have different ideas on how to do that. Click on each candidates name in the previous sentence to read their proposals.

“With all three major Democratic candidates having submitted draft Pledges, now is time to get them to agree on the details,” said Common Cause RI Executive Director John Marion, who first suggested the idea and brought the three candidates to the table (and not even figuratively!). “All sides agree they want to conclude this process soon so that they can shift their focus to the campaigns, so I’m optimistic we’ll see progress at tomorrow’s meeting.”

Here’s the Providence Journal article from earlier today.

And click here to check out RI Future’s full coverage of the RI People’s Pledge.

“The sides are pretty far apart on the scope,” said Marion, “but once they present some language I hope things will move along quickly. Everyone indicated a desire to get this done.”

Here’s the statement Marion sent to me when I asked him to comment:

It went well. We got through the ground rules discussion pretty quickly and had a long (2 hr.) conversation about the substance of a possible Pledge. The parties agreed to draft language and circulate it to the group by Monday. By Tuesday I’m going to touch base with everyone and try to set up the next meeting. The sides are pretty far apart on the scope, but once they present some language I hope things will move along quickly. Everyone indicated a desire to get this done.

Democratic candidates for governor could meet Monday with Common Cause RI to hammer out the details of a People’s Pledge, said John Marion, executive director of the good government group who first suggested using the tool developed in Massachusetts to keep outside money from influencing local elections.

Marion said in an interview yesterday that People’s Pledges have been utilized four times in Massachusetts to keep Super PAC and other so-called “dark” money from spending money on negative advertising in local elections – Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown were the pioneers and it was used in two subsequent congressional races; and Marion also includes an agreement   between Bill Weld and John Kerry in 1996.

But, to his knowledge, this would be the first time the ad-hoc workaround to the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that allows unlimited and anonymous money to be spent in elections.

“With the growth of third party spending … the candidates actual message gets drowned out,” Marion said. “That spending tends to be overwhelmingly negative. Those groups acts as proxys for the official campaign.  Official campaigns don’t like to go negative because it reflects poorly on the candidates but when it’s independent of candidate they have no problem.”

Marion said a People’s Pledge could curtail that and be “potentially historic.”

Listen to our conversation here:

“The love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

-First Epistle to Timothy, Chapter 6, Verse 10; King James Version

So proclaims the KJV, and ponder that the famous part, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” is a proverb older than Christianity itself.

“Issues of campaign finance have taken a front seat in this election,” John Marion told RI Future earlier. Marion should know; as executive director of Common Cause RI the task of keeping the three big Democratic primary campaigns of Pell, Raimondo, and Taveras at the table falls to him as they meet to hammer out the details of a People’s Pledge. Raimondo and Taveras also swatted at one another over campaign donations this week.

It is beginning to sound like negotiating a Pledge will be akin to a Herculean labor. The Raimondo campaign hit with a one-two punch of an expansive Pledge, covering all outside expenditures, not simply the Super PAC spending; and also requested that the negotiations be open to the media.

It’s a canny move, given that it’s likely the Raimondo campaign won’t just be facing campaign operations, but also public sector union operations aimed at ending her career. The “typical” Pledge used by during Massachusetts’ Warren-Brown race for Senate certainly seems to harm Raimondo the most, and the blanket outside spending ban will prevent her opponents from mitigating her significant fundraising lead.

As intelligent as that may be in the immediate future, it seems to ignore that limiting the resources campaigns have will probably lead to negative advertising (because it unfortunately works); and then it becomes a race to see who can emerge the least-bloodied in September. Hopefully, instead of these being ironclad demands, the Raimondo team is merely staking out its ideal position, and will allow itself to be bargained down.

Similarly, the call for opening negotiations to the media sounds like a great idea; until you think that few negotiations of consequence have ever been hammered out in the public eye. Negotiations call for discretion and humility, and the court of public opinion rarely rewards those characteristics, especially for politicians.

But a call for transparency about a Pledge aimed at increasing transparency is good politics, and it’s a fine line to walk between voicing legitimate concerns and sounding like you’ve got something to hide.

Make no mistake about it, this is a war of position right now, with each side marshaling what it needs to hammer at each other come the summer and early fall when voters start actually paying attention.

That’s partly why campaign finance has received media attention at all. It is the season of fundraisers and campaign finance reports. With little to report on beyond money, the political scene will be mostly focused on the big political campaigns until the General Assembly starts to take up bills, at which point the media will keep one eye on both.

The problem is that the state is not electing a fundraiser-in-chief, but rather a governor. Ultimately the Pledge is subservient to that goal, providing the voters the ability to select who they think would govern best. Until then, we may find ourselves, like the ancients, pierced through with many sorrows.

“Let’s keep all outside money off of the airwaves, out of our mail boxes and away from our phones and doors,” said campaign manager Eric Hyers in a statement released this morning. “We have a historic opportunity to come to an agreement that keeps all third-party spending out of this race and ensures that the Democratic primary for governor is just between the candidates running.”

Hyers suggested all negotiations be public and that it include “a complete ban on any and all outside spending, including advertising by groups that have not endorsed a candidate in this race in order to prevent outside groups from exploiting loopholes” and “cover all TV, radio and web advertising, all direct mail, paid phones, paid canvassers and opposition research.”

Agreeing to limit third party direct mail could hurt Clay Pell, who would seem to have the support of organized labor so far. A limit on canvassing could handicap Angel Taveras, who is said to have an advantage when it comes to boots on the ground.

Hyers said, “Rhode Island can be a national leader in crafting an airtight pledge and we strongly believe that these negotiations should not be conducted behind closed doors.”

UPDATE: Pell spokesman Bill Fischer said in a statement sent out this evening: “Clay Pell believes the impact of Super PAC money on our elections is a serious matter and should be treated as such. This process should be facilitated by Common Cause according to their protocols.  The public will be best served by a deliberate process, not by dueling press releases. It’s hard to imagine that a fruitful discussion can be accomplished with a roomful of campaign operatives playing to the camera, but this is a call best left to John Marion,” said Bill Fischer, Pell campaign spokesperson.”

RI Common Cause Executive Director John Marion said in an email, “Issues of campaign finance have taken a front seat in this election.”

A People’s Pledge is a tool to control outside spending in local elections. First used in Massachusetts, candidates agree to make a donation to their rival’s chairty of choice if an outside group pays for an attack ad. John Marion, of Common Cause RI, and Sam Howard, a contributor to this blog, were first to raise the issue and Angel Taveras was the first candidate to suggest it be used. Since then, Raimondo and Clay Pell have both agreed, while Republicans have been less enthusiastic.

The three Democrats now need to find a time to get together.

“Common Cause is communicating with the campaigns of Clay Pell, Gina Raimondo, and Angel Taveras to try and find a mutually accommodating time to sit down and begin discussion of a People’s Pledge that all three can agree to,” Marion said.

“I support comprehensive campaign-finance reform,” Block said. “But I won’t do it piecemeal.” And a People’s Pledge wouldn’t address the disadvantage he’d face against incumbents such as Raimondo, “who has spent three full years as treasurer raising money for this race,” he said.

Something similar to “I won’t do it piecemeal” is a common refrain I hear among supporters of change or reform; most notably among left-wing opponents of the ACA (it didn’t go far enough!). I have no desire to rehash that particular battle, but suffice it to say, we have to deal in political realities, not political desires.

It’s a weird thing for a Republican candidate to oppose the People’s Pledge on the grounds of it doesn’t do enough to address the problem. Republicans of the Citizen’s United-era have been generally anti-campaign-finance reform. And if Block is keeping his previous position of “moderate,” a People’s Pledge would be in line with the model New England “moderate” Republican Scott Brown.

The argument that the Pledge is piecemeal is particularly flimsy. Citzen’s United has made the goals of the campaign-finance reform movement relatively unachievable; the striking down of McCain-Feingold’s section of unlimited corporate and union spending has made so-called “dark money” an increasing reality in all campaigns. And the People’s Pledge is proven to work at reducing that dark money spending.

Ideological stringency can be well and good. Refusing to support something over a matter of principle can be quite admirable. Opposing things as not going far enough when they would be ineffective or damaging is sensible. But this is neither of those cases. The Pledge notably advances the campaign-finance reform movement’s goals while providing proof to skeptical citizens that reform has an impact. Furthermore, while Block’s support of reform is proven and well-known, his ability to get it passed is non-existent. Democratic efforts, notably those under Rep. Chris Blazejewski, have been far more successful (unsurprisingly), though they often run into First Amendment issues and sometimes work indiscriminately when a targeted approach is called for.

One factor gone unsung in this is that the People’s Pledge has been a defining issue of the Democratic primary campaign, I think largely because the campaign-finance reform movement in the Democratic Party is far greater than that in the Republican Party (which is next to non-existent as far as I know). Block’s refusal to support it keeps him from supporting a “Democratic” issue, but also gives him space to keep up his usual attack line of the “ineffectiveness” of Democratic policies. However, it also provides the opening for Block’s primary opponent Allan Fung from having to take a stand on the Pledge one way or the other until the general election (should he beat Block, which seems likely).

As a final thought, Block’s criticism of Raimondo rings hollow. After all, what are we to believe Block was doing for the last three years, not preparing to run for governor?

Friday Jan 24, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State Futurists. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Later on in the show, we’ll be checking in with we’ll be checking in with Steve Brown of the ACLU on Waivergate, the latest fiasco with the NECAP graduation requirement. We’ll also here from Rep. Dennis Canario, a legislator who represents Sakonnet and parts of Portsmouth, on why he is pushing a bill this session to label genetically modified foods.

Our show today is brought to you by Largess Forestry. Preservationists and licensed arborists, no one will care for your trees better than Matt Largess and his crew. If you’ve got a tree or a woodlot in need of some sprucing up, call Matt today for a free consultation at 849-9191 … or friend them on Facebook.

It is Thursday, January 24 and the unemployment rate is up, but so is our population. And, if you ask me, so is our collective psyche. I can just kinda feel it everywhere I go that Rhode Islanders are feeling better about the biggest little state in the union … And I give major credit to Linc Chafee, the Rhode Island Foundation and all the other folks who work tirelessly to focus on what’s great about Rhode Island and pick us up by our bootstraps. Seriously, if we can break the inferiority complex that the Ocean State has long suffered from, we’ll have done something a lot more important than simply created some wealth and maybe a couple jobs…

There were 400 more unemployed people in Rhode Island in December than the previous month bringing the total number to an almost eerily even 49,900, reports the Providence Journal this morning.  This has become our monthly box score and reporters, politicians and pundits comb through these monthly numbers the way I poured over NBA agit in the ProJo when I was a kid…