At some time during their careers, almost every journalist is sure to run into a situation involving an elected official, a candidate, and funding. It could be the money that the official is spending on the job. Or, it could be the funds that a candidate is raising and spending. In this week’s episode of How to Cover Money, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard discuss the complexities of covering money in politics, especially with the rising costs of campaigns and the rise of Super PACs. They cover the importance of understanding the legislative process and the role lobbyists play in shaping political outcomes.
Transcript
[Intro Music]
Micki Maynard: How to Cover Money: Thinking like a business reporter, even when you’re not one. Welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We’re coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. We’re based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Micki Maynard, Director of the Reynolds Center, and with me is my co-host, Mark Remillard. He’s a Cronkite school alum and a reporter and anchor with KTAR News in Phoenix. Hi Mark!
Remillard: Hello Micki.
Maynard: Today we bring you. Series 1, Episode 10: The Money in Politics
Remillard: Yeah we’re winding down our first podcast season already and talking about one of the most complex parts of covering money. And if you have ever seen All the President’s Men, you certainly know the phrase “Follow the money.”
Maynard: The late House Speaker, Tip O’Neill was famous for saying “All politics is local.” Well, these days it seems like all politics is money.
Remillard: So what kind of money are we talking about here, Micki.
Maynard: Well, when you talk about money in politics, there are two types of money, the money that people spend in order to get elected to office and the money that politicians spend once they get into office.
Remillard: Let’s dive into the first one. How much does it take to get elected to office?
Maynard: There’s a very interesting estimate out there by Vice President Joe Biden, who says the 2016 presidential election could be the first $4 billion campaign. In 2012 President Obama and Mitt Romney collectively spent about $2 billion. So the price of a presidential campaign is doubling. But I want to look at something that people are more likely to cover, which are House campaigns and Senate campaigns. So in 2014 the average winning House of Representatives campaign, that individual campaign, costs $1.2 million. And the average winning Senate campaign cost $8.6 million. That sounds like a lot of money. Interestingly, the numbers are dropping, and there’s a big reason why.
Remillard: That’s because of outside money, correct?
Maynard: That’s right. So there was a very important Supreme Court ruling in 2010 called Citizens United versus the Federal Elections Commission. And if you would like to know the background about it, go on our website, businessjournalism.org. I call it one of the most important Supreme Court rulings that every business journalist should know. Basically, the Supreme Court ruled in that case, and an accompanying case, that spending money on political campaigns is the equivalent of freedom of expression. So that opened up the ability of political fundraising groups to spend freely to support candidates. It didn’t remove restrictions on the individual candidates, but it did create this new class of what are called Super PACs.
Remillard: And it also created a new buzz term, which is “dark money.”
Maynard: That’s right, it’s “dark” because these groups don’t have to disclose the names of individual donors, unless the donors go over the federal limits on donations to political campaigns, and they do this by what’s called bundling. So you go right up to the limit, but not over the limit, and then 10 more people, or 20 more people, or whatever, join you. They’re very sophisticated about keeping you below that disclosure level.
Remillard: And this is something that has become such a big issue in elections since 2010. I know here in Arizona, when we were covering this last election in November, that was like the key issue for the Democratic side was, “dark money this, and dark money that.” And it can be really complicated to look into this stuff. So where can you go for information?
Maynard: Opensecrets.org. That’s the one website that every reporter who covers money in politics should bookmark. You can find all kinds of stuff there. You can find out how much an individual candidate raised. You can find out which groups are raising money on that candidate’s behalf. You can find out the labor organization that raised the most money. And this used to be a big deal, and it’s become a little bit less of a big deal now that you have these dark money organizations. You can find out which lobbying groups raised the most money. You can even put in the name of a donor and figure out how much money they gave to a candidate, and also how many candidates they gave money to. Now I want to just say that the Federal Elections Commission has its own website, and you can get some of that information there. So I would definitely also bookmark the FEC’s website, but opensecrets.org is the go to place for this kind of stuff.
Remillard: Let’s talk about an example of this. I’ve already mentioned Arizona in our last election, and here we just elected a new governor, Doug Ducey. He became famous as the CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, that’s an ice cream shop that lets people mix candy and other ingredients into their ice cream. So let’s look at him.
Maynard: Okay, so if you do a search for Doug Ducey, one of the things that you find out is that he personally gave $500, just $500, to the Republican Party of Arizona. And then you’ll see that he helped put together donations for Senator John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona and former presidential candidate. If you keep digging, you’ll find out that Doug Ducey’s campaign for governor spent $2 million, but outside groups spent $8 million on his campaign. So it’s very interesting to note that even though Ducey is a Republican, he got a lot of money from people who call themselves Independents.
Remillard: Yeah, and they’ll be looking to see obviously, they’re backing this candidate that they businesses and things like that that they know will be favorable to them while in office.
Maynard: Right. Because in Arizona and many, many, many other states, you want to look at political appointees, and not just people who will be bureaucrats and run agencies. You want to look at who gets appointments to boards. And one of the things I would recommend is that, you know, these press releases seem to be very routine, and you’ll see, you know, Governor Ducey appointed eight people to the liquor advisory board or something. Well, go Google or go check these people on opensecrets.org and look up these people who get appointed to the obscure boards, because sometimes there’s a connection between what they gave a candidate and the appointment.
Remillard: What are some other things we should know about campaign finance, when you look at all these numbers, you want to look for trends. And one of the most interesting ones now is advertising. It used to be that politicians only advertised on TV and on radio and in newspapers. And I realize it doesn’t seem that way from sitting through programs on TV with all the ads, but we’re actually seeing that kind of spending drop off. Politicians are now targeting their spending to individual voters, and the Internet has played an enormous role in this. You don’t have to run a TV ad that might convince 100 people to vote for you, when you can send an email much more cheaply to people directly. So you know, we do have tons of spending still on TV ads, and it’s great for the broadcast outlets, the commercial broadcast outlets. But in the future, I think it’s going to be just like print advertising in newspapers. I think that stuff starts to winnow down, and we see this much more targeted approach, which is harder for people covering money to track.
Remillard: Let’s talk a little bit about covering money in politics after people get elected. We know how much it costs and ways to go about covering stories when they’re getting elected. But what do people know about covering Congress or a legislature?
Maynard: I covered the Michigan legislature in my very first job in journalism, and then later on, I covered Congress when I worked for USAToday, and the guidelines are really the same. And I know we’ve been saying all along through this podcast, but first you have to do your homework, and then, in terms of politics, you have to follow the money. So the way you do that in covering the legislature is to follow the Appropriations Committee, which is the committee that authorizes spending money. In a lot of legislatures, the members come up with new laws, but if they don’t have an appropriation, the thing that they’re proposing is just not going to happen. So you might have a bill go all the way through committee and pass the legislature, but there has to be an accompanying appropriation for that. Some states have the budget committee that does the same thing as an appropriations committee. And I point out that city councils and county governments operate this way too.
Remillard: How do you get start getting behind that? Or how do you get into that? How do you start getting to know some of the people that are involved in these things?
Maynard: Well, of course, you want to know as many individual members as you can, and that’s slang for the person who is elected to the office, so they’re a member. But you also want to get to know the staff people. And in many cases, you want you’re going to talk to the staff more than you will to the actual legislators, because staff people are accountants and lawyers and political science majors, and these are people who are schooled in the nuts and bolts of policy. And over and over and over again, I’ve encountered people in office who essentially say, “Talk to my staff. I’m not sure about that.” You know, there’s sort of like, like, senior leadership that skates along with briefings, and these are the people who write the briefings.
Remillard: It never ceases to amaze me how little some politicians know about their own their own bills. They’ll have these kind of, what I’ve noticed, is these cherry picked bills that are the ones that they really care about and the ones that they really are willing to talk about. And that might be another good way to get your face in front of them is to find out the bill that this particular representative is really adamant about and maybe do a story on that. And then while you’re there talking to them, you have the opportunity to ask them about another story or something else that’s really much more what you’re trying to get to.
Maynard: One of the things about covering the legislature is that you are going to spend some time literally wandering the halls. And you can’t do this from your computer. You’ve got to get up and go wander the halls, go walk around the office buildings, and you’ll run into a lot of people visiting the State Capitol. And it happens time and time again, I would go down to get a candy bar or something, a cup of coffee, and I’d see like, a group of people walking down the hall, and I would smile, and I’d say, “Hi, you know, what are you here for? Can I help you find where you’re going?” And they would say, “Oh, we’re here to see you know, Senator Dominic Jacobetti and, and we’re here to talk about a new bridge for our part of the Upper Peninsula.” “Oh, you know, is that a big issue where you’re from?” And so you just pull this information out of people, just and file it away in your head or make a note to yourself.
Remillard: Another way that you might look to get your face in front of some of these people is to look for these private, public-private partnership organizations. A lot of organizations like these business councils that we’ve talked to, talked about, and I was at one the other day, and it was a business council that basically tries to grow business in a part of the Phoenix metro area here. By going to one of their annual meetings that I was actually there to just cover the story, there happened to be quite a few representative, state senators, there that I was able to kind of go up and shake hands with, say hello, chat with them. I walked out to the parking lot with them, just on the side, just talking, you know. So these are also ways that you can start to find out what’s happening and what issues they’re trying to push, and these are things that you can get stories from.
Maynard: Right, and also never overlook the opportunity to go back and check out local news publications or local newspapers, local websites, local broadcasters, because you know, there will be issues that will bubble up in one corner of your state that don’t get to the mainstream. But if you’re always looking through for story ideas, bookmark them, print them out, whatever. Just keep a file of ideas.
Remillard: So you actually there is a useful tool and something that everyone should know about when covering the legislature, and you can explain what that is.
Maynard: Right. So there’s a pamphlet that everybody needs to read, called Robert’s Rules of Order. Every legislative body, whether it’s your city council, your county commission, your state legislature or congress, runs on Robert’s Rules of Order. You know how they say everything runs on Duncan? Well, every legislative body runs on Robert’s Rules. The thing that is important to you is to understand the process of how a bill becomes law, and Roberts are the rules that take place during the discussion. And so one of the frustrating things about being a reporter covering legislature is that you’ll talk all day about something and nothing happens, and you’ve got a notebook full of quotes that you can’t use or whatever because they didn’t take action on the bill. And if you understand how Roberts Rules work, you will understand that this is a process. And don’t, don’t get all frustrated because, oh my god, they talked, you know, in second consideration, and nothing happened. Well, it wasn’t going to happen because they were in second consideration. So you’ll just know that from knowing Roberts. And that’s going to help you too in understanding that someone can propose something and introduce a bill, but until it gets to third reading and until it comes up for a vote, it really doesn’t matter.
Remillard: So another thing that plays a big role in politics and the money in politics are lobbyists. What can we what should we know about lobbyists and the role they play in politics?
Maynard: Well, there are good lobbyists who can be helpful, and there are other lobbyists that want to avoid reporters like the plague and that you should avoid like the plague too. Lobbyists are there for a reason. They are there to represent an interest. Now it might be a benign interest. It might be an interest like the blueberry growers of your state. It also might not be a benign interest. It might be car dealers who want to protect all of the rules governing car dealers, and they do tend to be very, very important lobbyists in any state, because car dealers are so wealthy. You want to know the lobbyists, because a lot of them are very clued into what politicians are doing. And so if your state has an important liquor lobby, you want to check to whom they’ve given money. But you have to be very careful in using them as sources, because they have one job: a good outcome for whomever they represent. So you might get told by the lobbyist for the mine operators that, “Yes, we’re going to get a great bill on mining rules.” Well, yeah, because they want a great bill on mining rules, but the truth might be somewhere else. So you talk to the mining lobbyists, but then you go talk to the staff of both parties and find out where the mining bill actually sits.
Remillard: So there’s definitely a lot of different places you can look and there’s a lot of different ways you can go about cultivating sources.
Maynard: Yes, source cultivation is one of the most important things for a reporter who covers money in politics, and really for any reporter covering anything. You know, you might not cover anything to do with politics, but there might come a day when an editor asks you to do political story. So it helps to know how to get started and where to look for information.
Remillard: That’s it for Series 1 of How to Cover Money. We hope you enjoyed our podcast, and if you’ve missed any episodes, all 10 of them are available, so you can go back anytime and listen to them on iTunes.
Maynard: We hope that you’re able to put our tips into action, and if there’s anything we can do to help you, please reach out to us at the Reynolds Center. Our email address is business journalism@businessjournalism.org. Support for How to Cover Money comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Visit our website at businessjournalism.org, you can find us on Twitter @bizjournalism. That’s at B I Z journalism. You can also look us up on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. For Mark Remillard, I’m Micki Maynard. Now, start thinking like a business reporter.
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