The Audacity of No Street Money

The LA Times reports that the Obama campaign may decide not to pay people “street money” in Philadelphia. 

“We’ve heard directly from the Obama organizer who organizes our ward, and he told us it’s an entirely volunteer organization and that I should not expect to see anything from the Obama campaign other than ads on TV and the support that volunteers are giving us,” said Greg Paulmier, a ward leader in the northwest part of the city.

Neither the Clinton nor the Obama campaign would say publicly whether it would comply with Philadelphia’s street money customs. But an Obama aide said Thursday that it had never been the campaign’s practice to make such payments. Rather, the campaign’s focus is to recruit new people drawn to Obama’s message, the aide said.

The field operation “hasn’t been about tapping long-standing political machinery,” the aide said.

Carol Ann Campbell, a ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, estimated that the amount of street money Obama would need to lay out for election day is $400,000 to $500,000. 

Pro-Public Financing Editorial

I didn’t want The Post’s editorial supporting public financing in Montgomery County, Maryland, to go unnoticed.   The bill never came up for a vote.

Whoever the culprit, the bill’s death is a fine example of the opaque art of legislating in Annapolis, where transparency and good government are no match for the special interests, monied contributors and backroom deals that are the General Assembly’s stock in trade.

It was just those special interests and monied contributors whose influence would be curtailed by the campaign finance legislation. It would pave the way for a system that would set overall spending limits and match small individual donations with public funds. That would provide an incentive for elected officials to be more independent-minded and accountable to the broad electorate rather than powerful public employee unions, developers and other lobbies.

Such a system could cost the county a couple of million dollars. That’s pocket change compared to what might be saved by council members who, feeling less beholden to campaign donors, would be able to say no to special interests at budget time. When you consider the fat contracts regularly lavished on county employees — the early retirements on generous terms, the 8 percent annual raises — the savings from a more independent-minded council could be considerable.  

Catalist Operation Detailed

The Times reports on Harold Ickes’ for-profit company. 

The political world is filled with polling firms, consultants and others that operate for profit. But Catalist’s business structure — and the political motives of its backers — have raised questions about whether the company is using its status as a for-profit company to shield its investors from disclosure and spending rules that would apply to more traditional political organizations.