Tangle - PREVIEW: The Friday Edition: Talking money in politics with Dave O'Brien.

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

This week, editor Will Kaback sat down with Dave O’Brien, the policy director for RepresentUs, to ask him some of the questions our readers always ask us about money in politics — how it works, how it’s changed, and what can be done to stop it. The conversation touched on how wealthy individuals like Elon Musk impacted the election, the ballot initiatives on campaign finance reform that RepresentUs supported in 2024, whether there’s anything good about super PACs, and some of the innovative ways that local governments are regulating money in politics. This is a preview of today's Friday edition that is available in full and ad-free for our premium podcast subscribers. If you'd like to complete this episode and receive Sunday editions, exclusive interviews, bonus content, and more, head over to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. If you are currently a newsletter subscriber, inquiry with us about how to receive a 33% discount on a podcast subscription! You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, that coffee smells good. Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? That's salt, not sugar. Let's get you another coffee. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus

with mortgage payments on their minds. If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank. The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider Flu-Cilvax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province.

Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCelvax.ca. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. This is Will Kavak. I'm one of Tangle's editors.

I'm going to be filling in for Isaac today on this interview that we have with Dave O'Brien. He is the policy Director at RepresentUs, which is a cool organization. They're a nonpartisan, anti-corruption organization focused on reforms to address ineffective governments, corruption in government, and money in government, which is the focus of the conversation that we had. They work with groups across the political spectrum

and they focus on passing laws, dealing with special interests and representative government, all those kinds of things that we hear a lot about but aren't exactly sure how they manifest in our government and our elections. So we had a great conversation with Dave, excited to share that with you all today. We put the transcripts of this interview as our Friday edition in the newsletter, so if you want to read the Excited to share that with you all today. We put the transcripts of this interview as our Friday edition in the newsletter. So if you want to read the interview, you can do so over at our website, readtangle.com,

or if you're subscribed to the newsletter, it'll be sent right to your inbox this Friday. Really excited to share this with you all. So let's jump into the interview with Dave. All right, Dave, thanks so much for joining us. you with Dave. All right, Dave, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. We are very excited to have you.

This is a conversation that our audience has been asking for for a long time. So excited to get right into it. So I want to start off just talking very broadly about the role of money in our current politics and the way that you think about this issue. So I'd love if you could just outline kind of your broad philosophy when it comes to the role that money plays in our current politics and what you're working on right now

in your role at RepresentUs. Well, thanks. Wow, starting off with a real easy question there. Yeah. Yeah, so RepresentUs was was actually as an organization was founded in the wake of the Citizens United case, which I'm sure all your listeners are very familiar with. But long story short, we'd always had a lot of money in American politics, but there had been a regulatory system in place to at least

try to sort of restrict and control it a little bit. And after Citizens United, the floodgates opened, basically. So we started seeing just almost just eye-watering amounts of money poured into our election campaigns. And as a result, there has been, you know, there's always a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the political process and the elections generally. You know, it's a zero sum system. There's always winners, there's always losers. And, you know, it's, it's pretty common for many people to feel sort of like disempowered and not heard. So often people feel like their vote doesn't matter and it's really hard to get them to sort of like

feel like that one vote they're casting in an ocean of millions of vote makes a difference. But it does, we know it does. I think there is a house race in California that might be decided by a few dozen votes or something like that. Yeah'm following that. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, like it's pretty wild to think about that, like, you know, maybe a neighborhood or a few dozen people are able to like swing the outcome of big election like this. And this does happen. And it happens in the aggregate too. You know, we often feel like, you know, the elections are decided ahead of time. You know, It doesn't matter what one person does. But it does, we're actually seeing a lot of examples of that now. But when you add to that situation,

not just millions, but hundreds of millions and now billions of dollars coming in, and not from a lot of people. There is an argument that money in politics is democratic in a way, because people are giving money just like they're giving votes, right? And it's just another way to sort of express their political views. But in reality, what we have is a situation where a very small number of people are able to spend tens, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, more money than any of us will ever see in our lifetime, more money than, you know, than, you know, entire, like often more than the GDP of like a town

or a small country kind of thing. And when you see a situation like this, and when you have this persistent feeling that the people in charge aren't listening to you, and you don't think they're responding to the problems that we have in everyday life. People are worried about climate change. People are worried about basic civil liberties

and kind of things. People are worried about the economy, and you feel like the people that you've elected aren't listening to you, but they are spending a lot of time listening to people who give lots of money. It's hard to escape the feeling that it's not your votes that they're paying attention to,

it's the money that's being dropped on these races. And it also creates, and this sort of infusion of money creates a feedback loop where, you know, a big donor can drop a lot of money into a race, into an election, someone gets elected, they then do things that are maybe beneficial to the finances of that big donor. And as a result, the donors will keep pumping money into it.

We have, you know, there's been a persistent effort to, for the past several decades, to erode the restrictions on money in politics. And a lot of money has gone into that effort, and it's almost as an investment. And now we have a situation where since some of those guardrails are down, even more money can get into the system.

And it creates this sort of vicious cycle where money continues to grow and grow where and for everyday people feel like their influence is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller. We'll be right back after this quick break. Whether renting, renewing a mortgage or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash it pays to know.

A message from the Government of Canada. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which has nearly doubled the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider Flu-Celvax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCelvax.ca. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. Yeah, I think that's a great segue into the next question I had, which is I think for a lot of people we hear about the sums of money that's being poured into politics. And it's such an, it's an amount that's hard to wrap your mind around. But I think what can be more opaque for people is what exactly that money is being deployed to do and the degree to which it's effective in helping politicians win elections. So I would love if you could just talk a little bit about,

is this money mainly going towards advertising? Is it going towards staffing campaigns? Like how is this money being deployed in a way that's effective? That's a great question. And it goes to a few things, but one important thing to keep in mind is when we talk about like money and politics, it could be going to a few different places like money and elections, a few different places. So one is it could go to the campaign itself. Like, you know, you decide you're running for city council or something, you set up a city council campaign, you solicit donations, and you will then use that money to pay, you know, to hire

campaign staff and, you know, take out ads and, you know, rent places for rallies and things like that. Like the kinds of things we normally traditionally think about when we think of the costs of an election campaign. So that's one bucket. And then there are things sort of nearby. There are the political parties themselves that will do some of those things too. Once they've got a candidate nominated, they'll take some money. Party staffs might help out on some things and they might do some of their own ads, or pay for canvassers and people to go door to door and create that kind of stuff. Those are the traditional areas where we go. We think of political committees and canvass and that kind of stuff, but there's this entirely different bucket that gets called like outside spending or independent expenditures.

And that's where we get our sort of like a super PACs and a lot of what we think of as dark money groups and things like that. And those are organizations or entities that are often not like officially supposed to be like working directly with the candidate or the campaign. They're not supposed to coordinate a lot of the times, but they don't have the same kind of restrictions of accepting donations that say a candidate does. If you are running for Congress, there's only a certain amount of money you can accept for every single, from individual donors. Those rules are still in place. But if you're running for Congress and say, I am a supporter of yours, and I start a super PAC, the will for Congress super PAC, and as long as we don't

officially coordinate, I can un-raise unlimited sums. Now, what can I do with that money? Well, I can buy ads, like you said. If you're in a swing state, I'm sure you have seen more political ads than you care to remember. And it often be said in it might in it might be something like in with this ad has been paid for you know It might be will for con you know, like, you know supporters of you know, will or you know, you know America freedom good happy everyone wins an election kind of thing. So By your bootstraps back exactly, you know all these sort of like vague names that sound kind of good. So they might be spinning on ads like that kind of thing. They might be hiring lots of political consultants just like the campaigns.

Well, you know, any sort of personnel is going to cost money. They might be doing some sort of direct messaging stuff. So I think a lot of people probably got a lot of emails and text messages over the past year or so. It is not free to send those and a lot of the money that and those are often paid for are paid for by what we would, you know, by the political contributions here, right? Which, by the way, if for whatever reason, you're not concerned about the effect of money in politics and like it being corrosive to democracy,

if you get annoyed by the sheer amounts of like spam you get in the elections, then you actually do care about money in politics and being corrosive to democracy, if you get annoyed by the sheer amount of spam you get in the elections, then you actually do care about money and politics a little bit. At the very least, it's making your life that much worse. So that's the way to do it. And traditionally, it was thought that, okay, it would be much like those outside ads and things like that. But because they can't coordinate, those, it would be much like those outside ads and things like that, but because they can't coordinate, those independent expenditures would really just be limited

to that. And it is expensive to run lots of ads, especially in swing states. But an interesting thing that we've started to see this year is that for some campaigns, traditional aspects of the campaign itself, like just really basic, like travel arrangements and booking it out to vote kind of stuff. For a few campaigns, we saw that with Ron DeSantis in the primaries and Donald Trump's campaign in the general, sort of those roles that have traditionally been taken by the campaign itself have now been taken over by super PACs. So I think a lot of the travel for DeSantis'

presidential campaign when it was around might have been actually taken, like, done, been done and paid for by super PACs supporting his campaign rather than his campaign itself. A lot of Donald Trump's get out the vote work. I think everyone's probably seen news reporting about Elon Musk getting really involved, like in Pennsylvania and swing states and all of the things they were doing. He wasn't doing that as like a member of the official members of Donald Trump's campaign and political committee. He was doing that through a super PAC that he started, and that was being paid for by funds from his super PAC, which he basically single-handedly financed.

A few decades ago, even a few years ago, a lot of those things would have been taken care of by the campaign, which is under much more strict donation rules. But now that they've been outsourced to super PACs, they can take even more money. So you can see the appeal of giving up a little contripetive control to the campaign to these outside groups who can spend as much money as they want. We'll be right back after this quick break. Oh, that coffee smells good.

Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? That's salt, not sugar. Let's get you another coffee. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with mortgage payments on their minds. If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank.

The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider Flu-Silvax-Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu

vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. Yeah. I mean, hearing you describe all the different facets of campaigns and elections that the super PACs touch, it makes me think that if they were to go away tomorrow, the entire foundation of how modern campaigns are run would kind of crumble because sounds like there's so much reliance on them, like you said, outsourcing them for these key functions. Like, do you think now that these modern campaigns are just completely built, at least, you know,

on the level of like a presidential election or a major Senate election, are completely reliant on these super PACs? Yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone, I'll say two things. One, yes, absolutely. We are now at the point where that is just, love them or hate them, These kind of outside groups, super PACs, are just so effective and so influential that just everyone has to utilize

them to stay competitive. The second thing though is, I mean, yes, it's true they're really dependent on it, but sometimes it's easy to forget just how new they are. The idea So super PACs are about a decade, the idea of super PACs are about a decade old. They, you know, right after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, which was 2010, 2011, I should know that off the top of my head, but you know, but around, we'll put it in there. Whatever. Yeah, we'll fix that in post. Yeah. Like just, just a few months later, I'll sort of another court, the DC Court of Appeals, decided a case called SpeechNow.org, and that created the Super PACs. And so about as long as we've been upset about Citizens United is about the length of time that Super PACs have been around.

And so in a pretty short period of time, they have almost totally come to almost completely dominate political spending. Now, there are regular PACs, there are other groups that have a lot of money too, but what we are seeing is just the increasing reliance on these entities because they don't have to play by the same rules everyone else does, so it just makes more sense if you're a candidate or a party to rely on them. Now, I want to say that this doesn't mean we're stuck with them, right? Because super PACs are pretty new. We've had elections for hundreds of years without them. So we can do that. There are plenty of races where they're not a big deal. And also, we should remember that we There are plenty of races where that's not a big deal. And also,

we should remember that we're not the only democracy on earth. In fact, most other countries have much, much stricter rules on spending. Some countries, it's illegal to actually start campaigning more than a few months before the election. A lot of countries have really strict rules about how and where you can campaign, how much you can spend. Now, obviously, different things are going to work for different countries. We've got a First Amendment that will limit what we can do here. But this idea that, well, lots of money is the only way we can function,

and it has to be that way, just isn't true. Real quick, could you distinguish for our listeners and readers who aren't super familiar with this, what's the difference just between a PAC and a super PAC? Yeah. So really, the main, they're both PAC stands for Political Action Committee. And they've been around since like the 50s or something. They haven't become that big.

It wasn't probably until like the 80s where they became as influential as they are now. They are both groups created to spend money on election, It wasn't probably until the 80s where they became as influential as they are now. They are both groups created to spend money on elections. Not just elections, they can spend money on other things. Other things can't pay, but they're generally created to influence politics somehow. Elections are just the way that most do it. The difference between them is that PACs can be much more tightly aligned with the candidates

themselves in the campaigns. It's pretty common for most candidates or elected officials to create their own PACs. Will, you're running for Congress, you will create your own PAC. Nothing super about it. That pack can accept some more donations that your campaign can't necessarily do. There'll be some rules about how you can use them and do a different thing. But crucially, there's going to be some restrictions on how many donations from different people your pack can accept. The difference is a super pack is that a super PAC is not officially coordinating with your campaign.

So, you know, maybe I'm a good, you know, a good friend of yours or your brother or like, you know, I used to work on your campaign. And when it becomes clear you're going to run for office, I'm now going to create a super PAC to support it. So, you know, we want like we want to officially coordinate anything. You're not going to call me up and tell me your strategy or where you want me to spend money. Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition.

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In the meantime, if you sign up for a newsletter subscription and you'd like to receive the podcast subscription as well or vice versa, we will offer you a 33% discount to sign up for the other. This is the best we can do in the short term while we work on a long term bundling solution. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. We've got a special surprise for this week's Sunday podcast, and I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off.

For the rest of the crew, this is John Wall signing off. Have a fantastic weekend, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bacopa, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.