At a star-filled party here last month, Sen. Russ Feingold found himself lined up outside a men’s room stall. When the door swung open, there stood Sean Penn, holding the toilet seat.
With Hollywood aplomb, the actor gave the Wisconsin Democrat the seat and walked off.
These days, a few colleagues might wonder if Feingold himself is holding aloft a Port-a-Potty as he tries what’s virtually impossible: to embarrass the mega-egos of the U.S. Senate.
At issue is the aroma of the campaign finance system, a smell known well to the 46-year-old populist with a Harvard Law School degree. He wants to change it and, teamed with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), keeps pressing a plan to cut the guts out of the way the system works. In particular, they’d emasculate the unlimited donations to political parties known as “soft” money.
There is a Don Quixote aspect to the so-called McCain-Feingold reform bill in that it seems at times as if the two men are tilting at windmills. Their plan has substantial support in the House of Representatives but much less in the Senate. And the Senate forces behind the status quo are potent and will remain so as long as the Republicans maintain a fat majority.
But in a generally spineless group, give Feingold credit for persistence mixed with imagination and, it turns out, an accidental sense of history.
Until now, Feingold essentially had two ways to voice his chagrin with campaign finance, atleast in the Senate. First, he could await the possible rescheduling of debate on the subject. Second, he could use what the Senate calls “morning business,” namely a period set aside for individual senators to prattle on, usually in a virtually empty chamber.
But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), whose woeful performance as a leader has been missed amid fixation on the stumbling of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), may be inclined to wait until the next solar eclipse before rescheduling McCain-Feingold. As for opining during morning business, the practical impact matches throwing a pebble into the Atlantic Ocean.
“So I was in a staff meeting and came up with this idea as I tried to figure out a way not just to discuss the issue when the bill comes up or in morning business,” Feingold recalled Friday.
His solution was to make his point about money’s influence within debates on other legislation, not just on the once in a blue moon campaign finance bill. That meant he’d get recognized during debate on, say, whether to delay implementation of new mining regulations and then have the chance to speak bluntly about the contributions of special interests that stood to gain.
It was only a day or so after his staff meeting that a Feingold aide informed his boss of a juicy historical coincidence.
It involved Robert M. La Follette Sr., one of the great Wisconsin populists and a Feingold predecessor in the Senate. La Follette arrived in 1906 after serving five years as governor and quickly shook up the Senate.
He not only made extended floor speeches (freshmen weren’t supposed to do that), he publicized the extent to which colleagues were shills for the biggest interests of the day, notably the railroad monopolies and oil goliaths.
It’s hard to imagine now but, back then, most citizens didn’t know much at all about how their representatives voted on measures. There was no C-Span or little vote boxes in newspapers.
So La Follette toured the country naming names in what he termed the “Calling of the Roll.” He was especially strong on the power of the railroads, citing specific legislation and amendments and how individual senators voted and thus played footsy with the railroads to the detriment of the public.
The obvious point was that corporate interests had undue influence, which many years later is the Feingold worldview. So when the former Rhodes Scholar heard about his famous predecessor, he decided on a handy play on words and to “Call the Bankroll.”
“I’d like to say I knew about what La Follette did, but I didn’t,” Feingold concedes. He was especially excited when he learned that La Follette had an impact on long-pending legislation, finally passed in 1907, that banned corporations from making political contributions in federal elections.
For tactical reasons, Feingold decided to start off low-key, only later announcing what he was really up to, which he finally did on June 16. By then, he had made his La Follette-like points about the power of certain groups.
He started when an arguably anti-environment mining proposal hit the floor of the Senate on May 20. He noted that political action committees (PACs) linked to members of the National Mining Association, as well as other mining-related PACS, gave more than $29 million to congressional campaigns between 1993 and 1998. In addition, mining interests gave $10.6 million in soft money during that period.
“Mr. President, that is nearly $40 million in campaign contributions from an industry that stands to benefit from this rider that has been stuffed in this bill,” Feingold said that day, addressing the colleague overseeing debate on an emergency appropriations bill intended for funding the war in Kosovo.
“It should come as no surprise that a process characterized by secret negotiations and back-room deals should be dominated by special interests and produce such questionable policy,” he said as he skewered the mining amendment. “These interests have succeeded in presenting Congress with a take-it-or-leave it deal, and they are betting we will acquiesce for fear of delaying the true emergency assistance that I and everyone else have said is truly urgently needed.”
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That same day, he made known the obvious links to a debate on a juvenile justice bill, in particular its modest gun-control provisions. He took the floor and noted that gun rights groups, notably the National Rifle Association, gave about $9 million to individual candidates, PACs and the political parties from 1991 to 1998. On the other side of the ledger, he said, Handgun Control Inc. also gave money, though just $146,000.
In subsequent days, he spoke up during debates on the following:
– Defense bill. In particular, there were doubts about the F-18 Super Hornet fighter plane, the product of a controversial and wasteful Pentagon procurement program. He noted how Boeing, the fighter’s prime contractor, gave $3 million in PAC money during the past 10 years and more than $1.5 million in soft money.
– Y2K bill. Raising doubts about giving companies legal protection from potential screw-ups, he noted that the computer and electronics industries gave about $6 million in PAC and soft money contributions during the 1997-98 election cycle. On the other side, he said, the Association of Trial Lawyers gave $2.8 million.
– Patients Bill of Rights. Underscoring the stake in the bill by backers and opponents, he noted that the managed-care industry gave $3.4 million during the last election cycle, the pharmaceutical industry gave $10.6 million, the American Medical Association gave $2.4 million and the AFL-CIO gave nearly $2 million.
On June 16, he finally made clear his purpose. On the Senate floor, he disclosed his “Calling of the Bankroll.” He was doing it, he said, because, “It is almost as if the influence of campaign money on our business here is an abstract proposition, relevant only when we debate changing the way we finance campaigns. But we all know that the power of money in this body is much more pervasive–and I’d say insidious– than that.”
Feingold has not and will not single out individual senators, in no small measure because that would violate a particular rule of the decorous Senate by “impugning the integrity” of a member.
So far, a few colleagues have ribbed him slightly, but nobody has called him nasty names–at least not to his face. (Given the predominant spinelessness, few would have the courage, anyway.)
And, so far, he has received scant attention.
Maybe it’s because of the Colorado high school shootings or the war in Kosovo.
Or, perhaps, because people are resigned to the game being rigged, whether or not one feisty Midwestern soul opts to “Call the Bankroll.”
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.