Here's what it's like to run for Congress: You sit in a
small room for at least 30 hours a week and you stare out the window at a
parking lot while calling hundreds of people to ask for money.
When
there is a spare afternoon, you can knock on doors to meet voters or
deliver a policy speech at a luncheon. But the small room with the
phones always impatiently waits.
"If there is one message I would
want to get across, it's that it's not glamorous," recounted Elisabeth
Jensen, 50, a Democrat who this year unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep.
Andy Barr, R-Lexington, to represent Central Kentucky's 6th
Congressional District.
"I was surprised when I traveled to
Washington and met with the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee) and some members of Congress, and the only thing people asked
me was, 'How much money can you raise? Where are you gonna get your
money?'" Jensen said.
"There were no questions about my positions,
no questions about my experience, no questions about why do you want to
do this. The only thing was — it was like a script, word for word,
everyone I talked to — 'How much money can you raise and how are you
gonna do it?'"
Jensen plans to take Barr on again in 2016, despite
being outspent $3-to-$1 this time and losing by 20 points. She sat down
last week with the Herald-Leader at the office of the academic
nonprofit that she co-founded in 2002, The Race For Education, to offer a
candid look at life on the so-called "campaign trail."
More than anything, she said, the trail was a chair from which she dialed for dollars.
"Call
time starts at 9:30 in the morning," she said. "One person dials and
hands me the phone if they get somebody, along with a sheet that has the
biography so I know who I'm talking to. I introduce myself, talk about
the campaign and make the ask. If they say 'Yes,' then I hand the phone
to someone else so they can take down the credit card information. And
then the first person hands me another phone with the next call."
Although
the DCCC never put much money behind Jensen's candidacy — it focused
instead on protecting incumbent Democrats, then lost a dozen House seats
overall — it insisted that she send in weekly spreadsheets so it could
track how many numbers she dialed. When she put down the phones because
her son was ill and briefly had to be hospitalized, "they said, 'Well,
you lost eight hours of call time this week, when are you gonna make
that time up?'" she recalled.
Money is crucial because it pays for
the 30-second television commercials where so many Americans learn
about political candidates. Nationally, $1.7 billion went into political
TV advertising during this two-year election cycle, according to the
Wesleyan Media Project in Middletown, Conn.
Even then, not
everyone gets the message. In the weeks before the Nov. 4 election,
despite Jensen and Barr having raised $3.4 million between them, she
still met people who were unaware of either candidate's existence or the
fact that they shortly would be called upon to elect their U.S.
representative. Ultimately, 53 percent of the district's 512,845
registered voters didn't cast a ballot in the race.
There's not
much you can tell voters in half a minute, Jensen said. A typical ad
gave her enough time to speak fewer than 75 words, including the legally
required disclaimer: "I'm Elisabeth Jensen, and I approve this
message."
"It's disappointing," she said. "The average person
doesn't read the newspaper. Very few people are going to sit through a
debate. They pay attention to the commercials they see on TV. That's
where they get their information. We had a strong case to fire Andy Barr
based on what he has been doing for the banks, for the payday lenders,
rather than for families. But you can't explain a CLO (collateralized
loan obligation) to someone in 30 seconds."
Secluded with donors
Candidates
tethered to a call sheet of potential donors spend too little time
interacting with people who don't have money, Jensen said.
Only
0.21 percent of the American population — about 666,000 people out of
310 million — gave a political donation of $200 or more during this
election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.
Fewer than 25,000 Americans were the sort of big donors who gave
$10,000 or more; it's likely they got a lot of calls.
Members of
Congress can be just as cloistered with their financial backers. The
political parties set up "call centers" near the Capitol where — between
committee hearings and floor votes — lawmakers commonly are expected to
spend four hours a day chatting up contributors. That doesn't count
in-person fundraising events with lobbyists and industry groups that
bring in tens of thousands of dollars over steak dinners or rounds of
golf.
For example, the cost to attend Barr's 41st birthday party
at a Washington bourbon bar in July — a fundraiser — was $500 per
person. Another Kentucky congressman, Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville,
charged people $1,500 each in August to spend a weekend with him at The
Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. The hotel's poolside cabana was
reserved for Whitfield's celebration.
Jensen said she was struck
by how politicians can be out of touch with working-class Americans
while touring rural Wolfe County with a local Democratic Party power
broker.
"He said 'Come back in October and we'll walk all these
streets and go up in the hollers and you can introduce yourself. And if
people tell you they will vote for you, then they will vote for you.
They will not lie to you standing at their door. But if you don't go up
and ask them, then they won't vote,'" Jensen said.
"I had my
campaign manager there, and he said, 'Well, wouldn't it be much more
effective to just do a very targeted direct-mail piece?' And we looked
at (the local official), and he said, 'With all due respect, sir, these
people can't read.'
"You don't think about that, that there is a
big segment of our population that cannot read. So how can we bring any
kind of jobs in there? How could they fill out a job application? What
are we doing about this? There is a huge disconnect between this
population without marketable skills and the kind of jobs available in
the 21st century. That needs to be addressed. But you don't see that
discussed."
'An ethical issue'
Another
flaw in the system, Jensen said: Politicians who constantly have their
hand out for money are tempted to offer favors in return, even if it's
just a sympathetic ear when a big contributor wants a tax break
sponsored or a regulation repealed. There were some deep-pocketed people
on her call sheet, Jensen said, whom she decided not to approach
because the conversations would have been uncomfortable.
"I knew
about what their interests are, and I knew they were different from my
own perspective, so ... " Jensen said, her voice trailing off. "It's an
ethical issue. We can't be taking that much money from people with a
financial interest in what government does and realistically think that
it's not going to affect the decision-making process."
Jensen said
she likes the idea of public campaign financing, using tax dollars to
lessen the influence of wealthy donors and let politicians spend more
time among their constituents. Roughly two dozen state and local
governments offer public financing for candidates, as does the federal
government for presidential contenders.
However, congressional
races are not part of that trend. Given Republican control of the
incoming 114th Congress, they probably won't be anytime soon.
Traditionally, the GOP opposes public campaign financing as "welfare for
politicians." And recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have eliminated
several campaign-finance restrictions, allowing a flood of private, and
often anonymous, money into electoral politics.
Even Jensen, who
was overwhelmed by Barr's fund-raising, acknowledges that she had the
advantage of well-off relatives and friends, including many in the
region's Thoroughbred horse industry, where she once worked.
Realistically, most Kentuckians never could run for Congress, she said.
"I
raised close to a million dollars this election cycle," Jensen said.
"There's just a handful of Democrats in this state who could raise that
kind of money.
"There was a time in this country when only white,
land-owning men got to vote, and they controlled who got elected and
what got done, what legislation got passed. It kind of feels like even
after the civil-rights movement, making sure women can vote, making sure
African-Americans can vote, we've come full circle and we're back to
elections being decided and legislation being dictated by people who can
spend a lot of money."
John Cheves: (859) 231-3266. Twitter: @BGPolitics. Blog: bluegrasspolitics.bloginky.com
