| Chairman Schumer, Senator Bennet, members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to appear today to address some of the states' interests in the matters you're grappling with today.
Last summer, Montana led more than half the states to ask the court to address the narrow federal isues presented by Citizens United. Instead the court reached a broad decision that questions more than a century of law in Montana and across the country. Yet the case and reactions on both sides of the political aisle have largely overlooked the decision's impact on the vast majority of elections in this country, those that are held at the state and local levels.
And there's a historic meaning to a Montanan's appearance here today. One hundred ten years ago, a predecessor of this committee, the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, expressed horror at the amount of money which had been poured into politics in Montana in elections from 1888 onward.
The setting was the investigation into the infamous bribery of the Montana state legislature by Senator William A. Clark, which led to its refusal to seat him. But the corruption of Montana politics was by no means limited to bribery. Senator Clark and his fellow copper kings dominated political debate in Montana and drowned out Montanans' own voices. This was corruption as it was understood since the framing of the Constitution. Not mere theft or bribery, but harnessing government power to benefit a single corporate faction at the expense of the broader and more diverse interests represented by the people themselves. In 1894, an election establishing Helena as the state capitol, for example, Clark and his arch-rival, Marcus Daley combined to spend between 35 and 70 million in today's dollars to influence 52,000 voters. That's about a thousand dollars per vote.
Mining money reach every campaign: legislators, judges, sheriffs, county commissioners, and assessors. And the result, it was best described by Clark, in his own testimony here before the Senate committee. He said, "many people have become so indifferent to voting there by reasons of large sums of money that have been extended in the state here fore, that you have to do a great deal of urging, and it takes a lot men to do it, to go around and round them up and stir them up to get them out."
Fed up in 1912, our citizens through the initiative process passed several political reforms. One prohibited corporations that would most benefit from government action and from "paying or contributing in order to aid, promote, prevent the nomination or election of any person." The law represented nothing less than the voters taking back a government that belongs to them, and only to them.
Montanans know their history as well as they know their political officials, and their public officials. Over nearly a century our limit on corporate campaign spending and candidate elections has served us well and has never been challenged. Corporations are represented in Montana campaigns. But on equal terms alongside other political committees, all of them speaking through voluntary associations of their money, idea, and voices. It's a system Montanans continue to believe in.
We didn't want this fight in Montana. But the Citizens United decision will likely invite a challenge to the people's law of 1912. And we don't want to be set back a century.
I'm principally concerned about the way state elections are especially vulnerable to corporate corruption, and ask you to keep these concerns in mind as you consider reforms:
First, our campaigns are small compared to the corporations that would corrupt them. In 2008, the average Montana state senator won on 17 thousand dollars of spending. The average Senator in this body won spending 8.5 million dollars. That's more than the combined amount raised by all 327 candidates running for state offices in 2008. With the floodgates open to corporate spending, it won't take a copper king to buy a 17-thousand-dollar election.
Second, the foreign corporations that can corrupt our elections are more like to come from Delaware than offshore. While we can legislate to hold Montana corporations accountable to their shareholders, our state laws may not always reach businesses and incorporated elsewhere. As you protect federal elections from foreign influence, understand that federalism requires room for states to protect their elections from foreign influence, too, whether that influence be international or interstate.
Third, Montana's history shows the special damages arising from corporate corruption in judicial elections. Like the majority of states, we hold our judges accountable through elections. Supreme Court Justices in Montana campaign on as little as a hundred thousand dollars, far less than the stakes in the cases they are asked to decide. As [Caberton] recognized, independent expenditures can have a significant and disproportionate influence corrupting the administration of justice.
Finally I'm encouraged by the Supreme Court's nearly unanimous affirmation of disclosure and disclaimer laws and hope that more can be done. By amplifying disclosure and disclaimer requirements for corporations, voters can know the identify of the wizard behind the curtain. We not be able to stop Acme, Inc, from using other people's money to campaign, but we can ensure voters knowing it's Acme speaking in their elections, not "Citizens for Motherhood and Apple Pie" or some other front group. We can also protect the shareholders who are just trying to save for retirement and want nothing to do with some CEO's politics.
In Montana, we've ensured the voices of our candidates and those natural persons who vote and support them are not displaced by the treasuries of corporations. The Supreme Court has challenged all of us to find new ways to keep those voices heard. I look forward to working with our legislature and Congress in doing so. |
