Money and Interest Group Politics
Mike Kotlarczyk

 
"Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction."[1] The opening sentence of James Madison's Federalist #10 clearly states the importance of factions in a government.  Some have contended that Madison understood"factions" as what are today known as political parties, but the essay reads equally well interpreting"factions" as the modern equivalent of interest groups.  Over two hundred years later, the significance of such groups in the public mind has hardly diminished, though it has perhaps transformed.  At the time of Madison's writing he believed the danger of factions was their ability to senselessly rally everyday citizens behind causes, which were contrary to the"general welfare" of the country.  Today many fear the undue power possessed by interest groups over elected members of government by influencing representatives through money donated by their political action committees (PACs).  This is a serious concern for citizens because at its core it questions the very health of American democracy.  If our elected representatives in Congress are not representing our interests but the interests of a group that makes donations to that representative's coffers, then the system is failing.  This common perception regarding the influence of interest groups is one of the greatest affronts to democracy and therefore must be dealt with thoroughly.

To begin with, a basic understanding of the current campaign finance laws is necessary to understand the ways in which interest groups can use money as campaign contributions.  The modern campaign finance laws have their roots in 1971 with the Federal Election Campaign Act.  This act (and its subsequent amendments in the 1970s) was perhaps as notable for what it accomplished as for what it failed to address.  First, the act created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and required disclosure of all campaign contributions to candidates.  Second, it created the system of political action committees (PACs), wherein any group wishing to contribute money to a campaign needed to form a PAC that was licensed and monitored by the FEC.  Finally, it set limits on contributions that individuals and PACs could give to candidates-so called"hard money"-at $1000 for an individual and $5000 for a PAC.  The act also set up spending limits on candidates, but these were declared unconstitutional in 1973 (Buckley v. Valeo). 

However, serious"loopholes" exist in this structure.  First, PACs can give an unlimited amount of unregulated and undocumented"soft money" directly to parties instead of candidates.  Second, individual members of a group can each send in up to the $1000 individual limit and the group can send these donations together in a process called"bundling." In this way, a group can easily donate more than the $5000 PAC limit.  Finally, interest groups can make independent expenditures and advertise on the behalf of a specific candidate by airing"issue ads." Essentially, as long as these advertisements do not explicitly endorse a candidate, they are legal under current laws.  This framework of campaign finance is important in understanding the ways in which contributions by interest groups can influence elected officials.

It should be stated that this paper attempts to prove that American democracy is safe and that so-called"special interest money" does not have an improper amount of influence in determining how representatives will vote.  At the same time, money clearly does play some role for special interest groups, or else their ever-increasing budgets make absolutely no sense and are merely drastic misallocations of resources.  The first part of this paper will attempt to dispel the idea that PAC money has an inappropriate role in Congress.  The second part will try to develop a more coherent way of understanding the role interest groups play in America, taking into account money and other factors as well.  Finally, this paper will examine the National Rifle Association as a case study to apply the theory presented in the first two parts of the paper.  A thorough investigation of the problem demonstrates that special interest money has not in fact corrupted American government.

I

Former Congressman Michael Barnes (D-MD) related the following story about a House vote:

I remember standing on the floor of the House one night when we were voting on the issue of regulations affecting the funeral industry that were, in my view, eminently practical.  The funeral industry was opposed to this regulationä[and] a rumor swept across the floor of the House that anybody who voted against the regulation would get $5,000 from the industry PAC for his or her up-coming campaignäI was standing next to a guy whoäsaid,"You know, I was going to vote against the industry on this thing, but what the hell, I can use the $5,000."[2]

Such stories produce the common revulsion felt toward interest groups in America.  Indeed, it seems to verify the cynicism felt by many that a representative's beliefs are so malleable and capricious that the slightest offer of money can change his vote.  However, very few people would advance an argument stating that American government is free from unprincipled representatives such as the one in the above example. In reality, no large-scale government in history has been free from corruption and despicable persons.  Additionally, no interest group would hinge its fate upon an unsubstantiated rumor spread around minutes before the vote about possible financial rewards to supporters.  If this rumor was in fact true, it merely demonstrates that the industry was truly desperate and had exhausted all other channels.  Allowing for dishonest individuals, whom no reforms could hope to wholly eliminate, PAC money does not corrupt the institution of Congress.

Then why has PAC money grown at such a dramatic rate in the past 25 years? Indeed, PACs has exponentially increased campaignspending since their entrance onto the political scene in the 1970s when they were created by the election reforms in order to create a more open and transparent view of who was spending how much money.  In the 1999-2000 election cycle, PAC contributions to candidates totaled $259.8 million, compared to $35.2 million in 1977-1978.[3] Even accounting for inflation, this is a drastic increase in spending by PACs in the past twenty-two years.  Furthermore, this does not even account for"independent expenditures" - money spent by organizations on behalf of a candidate - or "soft money," which is donated to political parties as opposed to individual candidates.  Since campaign spending by interest groups has grown so rapidly in the past few years, there appears to be strong evidence that money must have a strong effect on representatives.
Indeed, money does have an important role in Congress, though it is not the one apparently suggested by Barnes' anecdote.  The reason so many people believe that money buys votes in Congress is due to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy ("after this, therefore because of this").  In other words, viewers observe that large quantities of money are given to candidates in campaigns by an interest group and the candidate is then observed to vote for legislation favorable to that group.  It appears that this proves the validity of the odious form of vote buying offered by Barnes.  However, as will be more rigorously demonstrated in parts II and III, interest groups largely donate money to candidates they know to be supportive of their interests.  For example, labor group PACs, who traditionally receive broader support and more favorable legislation from Democrats than Republicans, gave over $40 million to Democrats campaigning for the House in 2000, as opposed to only $3.6 million to Republicans.[4] There is something of a chicken and egg effect here, in that while labor groups often support candidates who have been allies in the past, they also expect continued support for labor legislation in the future.  Nonetheless, money is used more to reinforce friendly candidates and help them to win election than to change the minds of hostile or ideologically neutral candidates.  Money is actually just one of several tools used by interest groups in America and is best understood in the context of examining interest group power as a whole.

II

Fundamentally, interest groups lobby.  Other actions taken by interest groups, like campaign contributions, are best understood in terms of how they affect lobbying efforts.  Lobbying, in the sense that it will be employed in this paper, is"when an interest group attempts to influence policy makers."[5] A dichotomy of lobbying here may be useful in understanding the different ways in which it works to influence policy makers.  The first kind of lobbying, the kind most people associate with the term"lobbying," is applying direct pressure on elected officials to enact or push for a certain policy; this is the so-called"inside the beltway" lobbying.  The other type of lobbying is done when interest groups appeal to the public, who then put pressure on their representatives in Congress.  This is commonly called"grass roots" lobbying and is often overlooked, as it does not fit the movie conception of the professional lobbyist pressuring the Congressperson in a dark room through intense whispering.  Nonetheless, grassroots lobbying is an important reality of American political life.  Taken together, the two types of lobbying constitute the focus of interest groups in America.

As mentioned above, interest groups do not hand out money indiscriminately, but instead carefully target individuals who will implement policy favorable to the group.  Likewise, lobbying resources are not evenly distributed throughout Congress.  The economic principle of scarcity ensures that any group with limited resources must prioritize how to expend those resources.  Party and ideology, since together they comprise the basis upon which individuals make policy decisions, are significant determiners of whom the group will target for lobbying.[6] This accounts for the large amount of money spent by labor PACs in the 2000 election for Democrats.  Additionally, personal (or at least quasi-personal) relationships, in the form of past experience working together, help to ensure the group a meeting and thus influence with the Congressperson.  Here again money enters the scene, for prior campaign contributions are often the manner in which an interest group has had contact with a representative.  Campaign contributions are significant in that they"grease the wheels" for a lobbyist seeking access.[7] In"inside the beltway" lobbying, then, it is clear that money plays a significant role, though it is not used in buying votes.

Jeffrey Birnbaum describes the role of the lobbyist as a) contributing money for reelection, b) providing policy information, and c) convincing Congresspersons that voters are on their side.[8] Providing policy information is an aspect of lobbying with which much of the public is unfamiliar.  Interest groups are very specific organizations, dealing with one major issue and rarely more than a small number of policy issues at any one time.  However, what they lack in breadth they make up for in depth, which is important when lobbying Congress. "Members [of Congress] and staff cannot be expected to understand the arcania of [an] issue in the abstract; they are generalists by nature and focus on the broadest range of concerns."[9]  Lobbyists thus present detailed information concerning policy matters that members of Congress otherwise do not receive.  Additionally, interest groups are able to be quite persuasive in presenting information, for a group whose existence necessitates a certain interpretation of facts will not present the information objectively.  Members of Congress' votes depend on how they interpret an issue; interpretations are impressionable and can be changed by lobbying.[10]  For example, a Senator's vote on environmental regulations will depend largely upon whether the Sierra Club and other groups convinced the Senator that the legislation fundamentally helps the environment or if business groups swayed the Senator into believing that the legislation primarily causes the loss of jobs.  Thus even presenting information, which appears to be a relatively neutral role of interest groups, is another source of power for them.

The final role of lobbyists pointed to by Birnbaum concerns grassroots lobbying efforts.  An underlying assumption of democracy is that elected representatives are essentially servants of their constituents.  Senators and Representatives are elected to represent the interests of the people who sent them there, and if they fail to do so, they will not be reelected.  Grassroots lobbying consists of convincing constituents that the group's particular position is right and, in turn, that they should pressure their representative to either vote with the group or risk defeat in the next election.  This concept is similar to a President's power of"going public," in which he tries to convince the people of the country that the position he is advocating is the"right" one.[11] There is some evidence that this is a tactic that has been used increasingly over the past few decades.  As one indicator, in 1973, the House of Representatives received over thirty million pieces of mail.  In 1994, they received over ninety million.  Staffers believe some of this is due to the increasingly prevalent strategy of writing more than one letter by a small group of highly concerned constituents, but also believe that there has been a marked increased in the number of people writing.[12] Additionally, in 1994 one out of every four citizens in a Times-Mirror survey reported having called, faxed, or written to their representative.[13] Just as the increasing use of money by PACs suggests an important use of that money, the increasing number of constituents contacting their representatives indicates the importance of grassroots lobbying.

As one example of the responsiveness of representatives to the power of grassroots lobbying, the Third Congressional District of Washington is a combination of the liberal university town Olympia and the surrounding conservative rural areas.  In 1990, a liberal Democrat-Jolene Unsoeld-was facing her first reelection campaign.  Recognizing the number of NRA members in the rural areas and the NRA's remarkable ability to turn out voters, she became pro-NRA, helping her win the rural vote and subsequently the election (she lost her seat in the Republican Revolution in 1994).[14] In this instance, the NRA merely had to threaten the use of its vast resources and potential mobilization power to ensure that the elected representative from the Third District in Washington was a friend.  Clearly, the power of grassroots lobbying is significant and compels the attention of members of Congress.

Campaign money, then, appears to have less of a corrupting presence in the federal government than is often perceived.  Indeed, as Professor Larry J. Sabato put it,"[S]pecial interest money of all types has always found its way into politics.  Before the [reforms of] the 1970s it simply did so in more disturbing and unsavory ways."[15] In congressional lobbying, money is an important means of access to elected officials and is important in campaigning to ensure that people who share similar values as the group are elected.  Also, money is important for lobbying on both sides of the beltway, in that it enables a group to have better personnel, a larger staff, more offices throughout the country; in short, more resources.  While the scarcity principle still ensures that resources must be prioritized, a group with more money can afford more resources and, potentially, more influence. "Vote buying" appears to be an extremely rare case that may be impossible to entirely eliminate in any large government.  Whatever the case, interest groups do not derive their power from money-for-votes schemes.

To provide further illumination of these theories, it is useful to examine a single case study.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) is often pointed to as a unique interest group, due mainly to the efficiency with which it uses the tools outlined above.  This past year, the NRA and its 4.3 million members surpassed the 35 million member American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) as Fortune magazine's most powerful interest group in Washington.[16] The questions to be addressed, then, is why is the NRA so powerful and what role does money play in that success?

III

Until the 1970s, the NRA was largely a rifle club that focused on offering special programs to its members. In fact, in the wake of the JFK assassination, NRA President General Franklin Orth testified before Congress in favor of a gun-control measure banning mail order gun purchases, an action that those familiar with the NRA today may find surprising.[17] A change of leadership in 1975 and the creation of the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF)-the organization's PAC- for the 1976 election, turned the group into a political force.[18] Today the NRA numbers 4.3 million members, up a remarkable 2 million since 1998, and the NRA-PVF was the biggest spending PAC in the 2000 elections, spending nearly $18 million, over $3 million more than the second biggest spender (EMILY's List).[19]

For an annual fee of $35, members of the NRA receive a magazine subscription, options of insurance packages, discounts on hotels and car rentals, and a number of other material perks.  However, belief in the group and what it stands for (so called"purposive incentives") tend to be the strongest lure for members.[20] As proof of this, membership has nearly doubled in the past three years, even though the material incentives being offered have not really changed.  What has changed is the political climate.  In the wake of Columbine and other school shootings, gun control became a more popular issue and, somewhat ironically, caused an increase in membership in the NRA.  The threat of the government imposing tougher gun laws pushed many people into joining the NRA as a way to ensure the principles of the organization.  This is an example of David Truman's theory of"potential" interest groups, wherein members of society that are not in an interest group will become an active member when they feel that their interest is threatened by opposing groups.[21]  However, there is another significant factor that resulted from this.  Even though public sentiment was strongly pro-gun control in the past few years, very little has been accomplished for gun control advocates.  A large reason for this has been the immense influence and lobbying prowess of the NRA.

The grassroots organization of the NRA provides the organization with much of its strength.  With contacts in every congressional district across the country, the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) sends mail, faxes, emails, and makes phone calls to the 250,000"legislative volunteers" who comprise the grassroots network.  These volunteers, who attend NRA sponsored training sessions, are called on by the ILA to mobilize contributions to the NRA-PVF, write letters to members of Congress, or turn out voters for elections.  In short, while many members may view the NRA as a provider of benefits and incentives, the leadership views the members as"political resources."[22]"Its members will mobilize.  They'll call.  They'll send faxes.  They'll threaten and they'll cajole," observed Robert Ricker, head of the American Shooting Sports Council,  in a Newsweek interview.[23] This power has explosive consequences in a representative democracy.

There is very low turnover in Congress; even in 1994, the year of the"Republican Revolution", there was a 90% success rate for members who sought reelection.[24] Thus only a small percentage of seats are contestable in any election.  The NRA, then, because of its large scope and operatives in every congressional district, can influence the small number of races where a swing of 5% could be decisive.  Many of those attracted to the NRA's message are the 15% of the electorate who are"swing voters"-often single-issue voters.  Swing voters can align themselves more with an issue (such as anti-gun control) than with a party, and are thus available to be mobilized by groups such as the NRA.  An efficient minority group like the NRA can exert disproportionate influence because of the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system in the United States.[25] Since electoral victory requires merely a simple plurality of votes, a few thousand votes can often be decisive in any given congressional race.  In 2000, for example, two of Florida's twenty-three congressional races were decided by fewer than five thousand votes.[26] When this is viewed on the macro scale of the entire country, an effective group like the NRA is quite capable of being a deciding factor in many races.

Though supporters of the NRA are a minority, those who advocate an NRA-like agenda (even if not actual NRA members) are more unified than those who do not.[27] There were some indications that this was changing in 2000, as gun-control groups sought to copy the NRA's strategies: building a grassroots movement through nationwide offices, training volunteers, making carefully-planned media campaigns, and extensive fundraising.  The mass shootings of the past few years made the issue very prominent in 2000, prompting Peter Hart, a pollster with Handgun Control, to say that"In the twenty-two years I've been working on this issue, I have never seen the climate as favorable."[28] And the antigun groups did spend more money than they had in years past.  Handgun Control raised $1.2 million from July 1999-July 2000, three times what it spent in the 1996 election.[29] However, the NRA remains the united force (though there are a few smaller groups, they are all close allies of the NRA) for anti-gun control measures, while the gun control groups remain separate and less cohesive.  These various groups are often campaigning for different sorts of legislation, have different organizational structures from each other, and do not work exclusively together.  As a result, the NRA was able to outspend all of the gun control groups combined 27:1.[30]

While the NRA focuses its lobbying efforts-very successfully, as has been evidenced-on the grassroots level, the organization is hardly foreign to the area inside the beltway.  This is essential to ensure that their pro-gun coalition stays together in Congress.  While three quarters of House Republicans vote with the NRA, so do about fifty Democrats (forty of whom received an 'A' on the NRA report card), and fifteen more are considered"reliable friends," according to NRA lobbyist James Jay Baker.[31] The 2000 elections showed something of a shift of strategy by the NRA, as they began to more overtly support the Republican Party as opposed to just individual candidates.  From April 1999-April 2000, the NRA gave $540,000 in soft money to the Republicans, and nothing to Democrats.  In 1996, the NRA gave less than $100,000 to Republicans.  The reasons for this are the feelings of the NRA that many Republicans have distanced themselves from the group and the fear of Democrats gaining control of the House.  The 2000 campaign showed a more overtly partisan NRA than ever before, not just in campaign contributions, but also through speeches of its members (one NRA spokesperson said early in the campaign that the NRA would"work out of [the President's] office" if Governor Bush won) and through direct-mailings.[32] Yet even this sort of lobbying, which is focused on controlling Congress, is based essentially on the grassroots level.  While the NRA is too large to ignore the insider lobbying in Washington, they recognize that their power derives from the grassroots level and use that power whenever they can.

The NRA has established itself as the most significant force among interest groups in the past twenty-five years.  It has done this through intensive grassroots lobbying, which depends upon a massive organization of over 250,000 active volunteers.  They also have an active lobbying force in Washington, D.C. that has been able to prevent any significant gun control legislation from being passed in the past few years despite strong popular pressure for it.  The NRA has deep pockets, which allows it to have such a large, highly efficient organization.  But the money alone does not account for the effectiveness of the group.  Gun ownership is an issue that many people feel strongly about and one that often turns out voters in large numbers to support it.  The NRA is an unusual organization in that it is the most well-organized and successful interest group in the country today.

IV

The passage of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill in the Senate and the Shays-Meehan bill in the House as well as the continuing Enron investigation have brought renewed attention to the issue of money in politics.  The rampant cynicism that has been growing in the American public in the decades since Watergate is adequately sustained by the idea that Congressmen are unprincipled"For Sale" signs, ready to sell out to any interest that offers them campaign money.  However, reality does not appear to confirm these pessimistic views.  Undoubtedly, money opens up points of access for interest group lobbying and can sometimes heighten positive feelings a Congressman has for a particular group (i.e. a Republican might become even less likely to support any gun control legislation when they receive donations from the NRA).  Money also allows a group to have a larger and more efficient organization with more pervasive influence.  But PAC donations cannot possibly account for all of Congress' actions.  As former Senator Robert Dole (R-KS) said,"There aren't any Poor PACs or Food Stamp PACs or Nutrition PACs or Medicare PACs," but we still have welfare, food stamps, health programs, and Medicare.[33] There clearly must be deeper and more complex motivations for Congress's actions than what money dictates.  The representatives, or most of them, do have principles that they believe they were elected to uphold.  They have a duty to defend what is in their constituents' interests, and if they fail to do so and instead act based upon who gives them money, they will likely find themselves out of office after the next election.

It has been argued extensively in this paper that money does not yield an"inordinate" amount of influence on elected officials.  Yet the definition of"inordinate" has been essentially confined to money-for-votes schemes, as it was acknowledged that money is an important means for interest groups to gain access to elected officials.  Many would argue that this in itself is more than should be allowed, for ordinary citizens that lack the financial power might be shut out while big-moneyed interests are given access.  This has largely been the argument of those supporting the campaign finance reform bills in Congress over the past year.  These bills would effectively ban all soft-money donations by PACs and individuals to parties, and prohibit"independent expenditure" advertisements thirty days before the primary and sixty days before the general election.  Whatever unintended effects might result from these bills, their main purpose is rather clear: to prevent any individual or organization from contributing so much to a campaign as to grant that person or organization access or influence that would be denied to others.  Essentially, this paper was rooted in addressing the much deeper aspect of money in politics, namely whether or not it corrupts politicians.  The proposed legislation has mostly dealt with more of a surface problem, that of limiting the amount of access and other limited forms of influence that interest groups still yield.  Thus the pursuance of campaign legislation is not inconsistent with this paper's contention that interest group's money does not corrupt members of Congress.

Returning to the original dilemma posed in this paper, how safe is America from special interest money?  In the sense that interest group money plays a significant role in American politics, America is not at all insulated from interest group money.  It is pervasive in the American legislative and executive branches and is responsible for a sizable proportion of the ever-increasing campaign budgets.  However, in the commonly held view that interest group money buys votes, it appears as though the nation is safe from these effects.  Money might make it easier to convince a representative that he or she should vote this way or that, but the representative is ultimately responsible to his or her constituents.  This was the reason for the short two-year term of Representatives and the Seventeenth Amendment, which allowed for direct election of Senators: to make the elected representative directly responsible to the people who he serves.  This has been a ruling principle of America since its founding, and that tradition remains unblemished by the role of interest groups.

Endnotes

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[1] Madison, James."No. 10." The Federalist Papers. New York: Penguin Books, 1961. p. 77

[2] Stern, Phillip M."Still the Best Congress Money Can Buy." Points of View. ed. DiClerico, Robert E and Allan S.
Hammock. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. p. 133

[3] Available: http://www.fec.gov/press/053101pacfund/053101pacfund.html.

[4] Available: http://www.fec.gov/press/053101pacfund/tables/paccon00.xls

[5] Berry, Jeffrey M. The Interest Group Society. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co, 1984. p. 6

[6] Wright, John R."Contributions, Lobbying and Committee Voting in the U.S. House of Representatives."
American Political Science Review. 84 (June 1990): p. 434

[7] Wright 434

[8] Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. The Lobbyists. New York: Times Books, 1993. p. 6

[9] Wolpe, Bruce C. Lobbying Congress. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc, 1990. p. 27

[10] Smith, Richard A."Advocacy, Interpretation, and Influence in the U.S. Congress." American Political Science Review 1990: p. 44

[11] Goldstein, Kenneth M. Interest Groups, Lobbying, and Participation in America. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999. p. 3

[12] Goldstein 16

[13] Goldstein 17

[14] Richie, Rob and Steven Hill."Don't Blame the NRA, Blame the 'Swing' Voters." Christian Science Monitor. 28
June 1999: p. 9

[15] Sabato, Larry J."The Misplaced Obsession with PACs." Points of View. ed. DiClerico, Robert E and Allan S.
Hammock. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. p. 138

[16] Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. and Russell Newell."Fat and Happy in D.C." Fortune 28 May 2001: p. 94

[17]"In the Cross-Hairs." Economist 8 July 2000: p. 27

[18] Shaiko, Ronald G. and Marc A. Wallace."Going Hunting Where the Ducks Are: The NRA and the Grassroots."
The Changing Politics of Gun Control. ed. Bruce, John M. and Clyde Wilcox. Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, 1998. p. 158

[19] Available: http://www.fec.gov/press/053101pacfund/tables/pacrec00.xls

[20] Shaiko 156

[21] Truman, David B."Governmental Process." American Government: Readings and Cases. ed. Woll, Peter. New
York: Lougman, 2002.

[22] Shaiko 159

[23] Bai, Matt and Debra Rosenberg."Caught In the Cross-Fire." Newsweek 28 June 1999: p. 31

[24] Baker, Ross K. House and Senate. New York: W. W. Norton and Co, 2001. p. 133

[25] Richie

[26] Available: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.html

[27] Shaiko 161

[28] Dao, James."Gun Control Groups Use N.R.A. Tactics For Fall Elections." New York Times 24 July 2000: A1

[29] Dao

[30] Richie

[31] VandeHei, Jim."Guns 'N' Poses." New Republic. 28 June 1999: p. 15

[32] Dao, James."NRA Tightens Its Embrace Of Republicans With Donations." New York Times 26 April 2000: A18

[33] Sabato 142