The party system in this country is dying. It’s been killed off mainly by a weird combination of laws meant to restrict money in campaigns and ones meant to allow more. A bill passed by the legislature in North Carolina just created four new state parties to compete with the two existing ones and the independent expenditure groups already in place.
The new parties will be the Speaker Party, the President-Pro Tem Party, the House Minority Party and the Senate Minority Party. None of these parties is democratic. They are controlled by a single person who attains a position within a caucus. They are funded largely by special interests and members of their caucuses. And they’ll siphon money away from already struggling state parties.
These new entities join other groups we’ve seen emerge. In North Carolina, there are numerous Koch and Pope funded parties on the right and a bunch of parties on the left funded by coalitions of rich people and progressive interest groups. They can funnel large amounts of money into campaigns that couldn’t legally accept the money otherwise. In essence, they are money launderers more than parties.
At one time, most of the money in campaigns that didn’t go to candidates had to come through state parties. That kept people with influence engaged with party activities. That’s no longer the case.
In a misguided attempt to limit money in campaigns, parties were weakened by McCain-Feingold campaign finance act by limiting transfers of money from the national parties to state ones. Then, Citizens United allows for unlimited, essentially anonymous, donations to flow into organizations not affiliated with state parties. These new entities drain funds that used to go to state parties.
All of it has left the two-party political system broken. Instead of resources flowing through a party that is run by top elected officials who were broadly chosen, the money is now going to a diverse group of entities that are tightly controlled by a few people. They can pick and choose candidates based on narrow criteria and get them the resources to compete.
It’s getting easier to see how the two party system will begin to dissolve. It’s not pretty.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
It’s certainly killing off the two-party system – if all you think the party system is supposed to do is launder money from the donors through to the candidates and their consultants and vendors to con enough voters to vote for the desired candidate – who will then reveal their true colors and do everything possible to keep the money-laundering operation running smoothly.
The party platforms are almost an afterthought – if they are thought of at all.
So in a way it’s good that this bill was passed and strips down the money-laundering operation to the bare essentials. That just means that the rest of us will see what sort of fools we’ve been taken for all along – and then we can rise up and cast out these bums.
This will give us the opportunity to throw the bums out – and go back to parties that speak for the officers and delegates elected from the precinct on up – to elect people who will work to turn the party platform into public policy once elected. If we focused on getting enough of our nearly 2780 precincts organized with a full slate of officers and delegates who kick up enough money from the grassroots, we can have GOTV operations that were as good if not better than we had under the old system. Let’s say we have 10 people in each precinct and they kick up $10 – $15 per month. We’d have between $3.36 to $5.04 million a year per party. Split that with the counties – and you’d still have $1.68 to $2.54 million a year – which is more than the NCDP got with it’s half of taxpayer checkoff. And if we got that organized, no statewide state or national campaign could possibly compete with that “going concern” – and they’d have to buy-in and play ball with the party.
I know that scares the hell out of the donors, consultants and vendors – it’s the reason why this bill was passed in the first place Blame the Hagan campaign and the DSCC wiz kids who thought up a way around the NCDP in early 2014 because they didn’t want to work with Randy Voller and his reform of the money-laundering machine. Getting the Wake Dems to start up a statewide federal account was sheer genius – except that once you chose that option, you can’t get the genie back in the bottle or Pandora back in her box.
After the Republican base elected a non-establishment State Party Chair, the GOP establishment knew they had to do something like the Wake Dems did – but they didn’t have any county party chairs they could trust to play ball. So they passed a bill that allowed the ultimate benefactors of the money-laundering schemes (those elected via the money-laundering scheme) to set up party committees they would run themselves.
More sheer genius – until they run into the legislative party leader who loses an election – and then what happens to the money someone other than an elected legislator controls? What consultant chosen to be chair of the “legislative party committee” is going to give up that money – and the control they have?
Welcome to Hell everyone!
This is a sad day. I remember when someone who did not have money could get involved in politics and meet leaders by getting involved in the Country or Precinct Party, going to rally’s, putting up signs. Now you have to have a checkbook before meeting or talking to your leaders
Now, the only remaining function of the North Carolina political parties is that they are the vehicles for nominating candidates. Legislative candidates, however, will now will owe their nominations to the GOP majority and Democratic minority leaders in the state legislature. These are the same people who tell us that they believe political and governmental power should be shifted to the local level. Sad.
“A bill passed by the legislature in North Carolina just created four new state parties to compete with the two existing ones” Um, EXCUSE ME??? THREE existing parties, thank you very much!
Hurrah. Good riddance to the “two-party” duopoly. There are political parties that do not kowtow to special interest groups or rely on big donors for support because they are based on promoting principles, not just obtaining and maintaining power. And I don’t mean just the Libertarian Party, which has been on the ballot in NC for many years.
This is just the latest step in a long-running process that I have heard politicians and political activists talk about for over 20 years.
What has usually happened in the past is that a given Party will throw its support behind the “electable” candidate, even during a primary, and attempt to mobilize volunteers and voters in that direction. “Electable” means being able to afford adequate media exposure and expert mercenary help – i.e. having money to spend. Candidates in races that had no credible opposition usually funneled their money to other members, or potential members, of their caucus. Since powerful members of the NCGA received the lion’s share of lobbyist donations in exchange for their votes, and thus had giant war chests, they rarely attracted credible opposition. So powerful members like the head of the House and of the Senate were always handing out large sums of money to less entrenched political allies under the old system.
We also know that the state parties cooperated with big donors in making sure that their contributions to the General Fund of the Party ended up in the war chests of the candidates the donor really wished to give to, but couldn’t because they have already maxed out their individual contribution. This has never really been a secret. I’ve heard it described as one of the job duties of the Executive Director.
So what has actually changed with the latest rules? I’d say its a change of scale rather than a change of kind.
Perhaps it will increase the power of the head of the House and of the Senate in Party affairs, but that’s about all. The damage to democracy you speak of, and the problem of one-man control of political slush funds, was all a done deal long before this latest legislation.
And let’s not forget – during the last election cycle we had the senior statesmen of the Party openly telling people not to give to the Party, but to give to the Caucuses and individual candidates instead.
Now THAT is a major factor in the demise of the Party system that needs to REALLY be hammered home. The idea that the Party system is objective, or somehow insulated from the whims of the big donors, is just a sick joke – and it always has been.
Amen, Dan R.
You have identified a huge problem not just for North Carolina but for the entire country. For a number of years now I’ve encountered so many people who mindlessly say they think the two major political parties have too much influence and power. I find this breathtaking and can’t imagine how these people are oblivious to the waning influence of the parties in favor of private interests with narrow self serving agendas.
After the 1968 Democratic National Convention the party did a major rewrite of the rules which dramatically changed the way our presidential nominee was chosen. I recall someone saying (with a bit of disgust) that we had taken the choice away from a few thousand folks in smoke filled rooms and given it to a few thousand Iowa farmers. Well those folks in those proverbial smoke filled rooms were not bad actors. They were people who had a coherent governing philosophy who had devoted a good deal of their lives to advancing that philosophy in order to better their communities and the nation as a whole.
Organized money always has an outsized place at the table. By diminishing the political parties we are going to give organized money a near monopoly on our politics and our government. And that ain’t good.
For those who believe the parties have become hopelessly corrupted, I would submit that trashing them in favor of moneyed special interests is no solution. It is leaping from the frying pan into the fire.
What is a problem, in my opinion, is the stranglehold the two major parties have on ballot access in the fifty states. It is pretty near impossible to crank up a new political party and get access to the ballot. So when faced with a situation like we have today where the Republican Party has gone completely batshit crazy and long ago stopped showing the slightest interest in actually governing, it is almost impossible for rational conservatives to abandon it and create a party that might appeal for the votes of sane people with a conservative political philosophy.
If you want to open up the process to increased competition in the marketplace of ideas I am all for that. Large groups of like minded citizens coming together and trying to sell their fellow citizens on the efficacy of their ideas sounds like democracy to me. But killing political parties in favor of handing the government over to narrow moneyed interests? Not so much.
We really need to reverse this trend.
“Well those folks in those proverbial smoke filled rooms were not bad actors. They were people who had a coherent governing philosophy who had devoted a good deal of their lives to advancing that philosophy in order to better their communities and the nation as a whole.”
I beg to differ. Some of the folks in the smoke-filled rooms were the most vile and despicable people around. Those folks in the smoke-filled rooms might have had a coherent governing philosophy, but it wasn’t necessarily a “democratic” philosophy. They wanted to govern to control the flow of tax dollars and benefits to certain groups of people and away from others.
In 1898, they wanted to put rich white folks back in control and take it away from poorer whites and blacks who worked largely in agriculture. So the rich white males took $1200 and bought a Gatling gun and shot up Wilmington and ran off the legitimately elected folks and replaced them with folks who weren’t – then they manipulated the election laws to keep them in power.
Later on the descendants of the same rich white males decided that poor whites and blacks who worked in their mills and factories were getting too uppity wanting higher wages and better working conditions, So they got strike-breaking goons hired on as sheriff’s deputies and they shot the striking workers DEAD in broad daylight.
And much later on, when more descendants of those same rich white males could no longer keep blacks and poor whites from voting and participating in the political process, they switched parties and became Republicans – and continued the “southern strategy”.
I know we have statues and buildings dedicated to the white men in the smoke-filled rooms who either ordered the purchase of the Gatling gun or who actually pulled the triggers and/or led “red-shirt” mobs against white populists and blacks who dared to think they could have a seat at the table. Those white men in the smoke-filled rooms have descendants who love them and cherish their memories. But those men in the smoke-filled rooms were bad actors in light of what we know now based on current definitions of “democracy”. It can’t be helped – so why fight it?
It was always about handing the government over to narrow moneyed interests. That’s what’s behind the change in the law to allow the legislature to create independent political party committees in the House and Senate that are separate and apart from the political parties run by officers and delegates elected from the precincts on up.
I actually welcome this law, because it pretty much tells the rest of us that unless we want to become total sheep to the donors, consultants and vendors, we must rise up and “strike” them down, and take back control of our government. Anyone who represents the white men in the smoke-filled rooms – whether it be Aycock, Simmons, Morrison, or even Saint James Hunt – their time has passed and they need to let go of the reins of power or have them yanked out of their old hands.
I’d prefer we have 100% total public funding of campaigns, and ZERO private donors, PACs and superPACs. That way the 1% won’t be able to control the rest of us through a system of candidates, consultants and vendors who enable the donors to use our government to make them richer and the rest of us poorer!
Interesting analysis. Sad to see the destruction of a democracy happening in so many ways. Makes me wonder what WWII veterans would say to this madness.