“When I have to choose between voting for the people or the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget.”
- Henry Fountain Ashurst

Anyone who has been following politics in Oregon or at the national level knows that our political system has become increasingly polarized and divided along partisan lines. It’s an unfortunate sign of our times that seemingly every major issue facing the country eventually becomes a straight party-line debate.

Throughout our nation’s history, our politics occasionally have devolved in similar ways. In 1856, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks physically beat Sen. Joseph Sumner with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate in protest of Sumner’s abolitionist policies. A hundred years later, Joseph McCarthy would use the Senate floor to disavow virtually all of his political opponents as anti-American or Communist.

But while these divisions have revealed themselves from time to time, they have only rarely become so pervasive. When a push to ensure that every American is covered by health insurance is treated by mainstream political leaders as a step towards totalitarianism, replete with death panels, or when a significant minority of voters clings to the belief that a sitting president is not a naturalized citizen, then one wonders to what extent rational debate is even possible.

There are many reasons for this decline. More than at any time in the last hundred years, we have seen a retreat from “straight” news coverage about our politics in favor of news from partisan media sources such as Fox News, MSNBC, talk radio and Internet blogs. Many of the most partisan among us, it seems, prefer to dwell in parallel universes populated only by like-minded souls.

When the two sides do come together for discussion, it often seems as though two ships are passing in the night.

We also have seen a retreat from reasoned policy debate during campaigns. Public discourse largely has been replaced by 30-second attack ads and glossy mailers designed to manipulate voters rather than to honestly address important issues.

These reasons speak to the divisions we are experiencing, but they don’t address some of the structural changes that have helped lead us to this sorry state of discourse. I’d like to address a few factors that have generally gone unexamined.

Political campaigns are now a $5.3 billion industry. The price has gotten so high that serious candidates for the White House tend to opt out of our public financing system, which limits spending on presidential elections to a “paltry” $200 million.

To get a sense of how much the cost of campaigns has increased, one need only look at how things have changed in Oregon. In 1994, a total of $4.2 million was spent on political campaigns. By 2008, that number increased to more than $55 million. A contested state legislative campaign could be conducted with $20,000 just 10 years ago, but now frequently costs $300,000 or more. One race in 2006 saw more than $1.5 million spent to influence just 15,000 voters in the general election — $100 per vote cast!

But if races have gotten more expensive, their funding has not gotten more democratic.

Fewer than 1/10th of 1 percent of eligible voters donate money to political candidates, and more than 70 percent of the total money spent on political campaigns in Oregon comes from contributors who gave $5,000 or more. The result is a system that is susceptible to undue influence, which has contributed to a widening of the partisan gap.

For example, 95 percent of the time this year Democratic legislators voted for legislation supported by the Oregon Education Association, which last year gave 97 percent of its contributions to Democrats. Meanwhile, the highest support among Republicans was 50 percent. By contrast, Republicans went for legislation supported by Associated Oregon Industries 94 percent of the time, while Democratic support for AOI legislation was approximately 30 percent. AOI and its members lean heavily Republican.

Politics is a team sport, and there has always been a division in terms of giving between business and labor. But the amount of influence that money buys is increasing in proportion to the cost of political campaigns. In the 1990s, a candidate who could run a contested legislative race for $20,000 was more able to “just say no” to a potential big money donor than a candidate in 2008, who needs $500,000 just to be competitive.

We have grappled with the issue of money in politics for more than 100 years, and the political landscape is changing in Oregon and America. At the end of the day, we need to balance partisanship and the promotion of narrow special interests with service to the public. Campaign finance reform could make our system work for the most good for the most people. That’s what democracy means to me.

However that happens, the debate would be improved if the public would keep just as long a memory as the special interests that fund our elections now. By maintaining an active interest in our elections and political process, citizens have the power to effect substantive change.

Commentary By Sal Peralta - Guest writer Sal Peralta is a political consultant and public interest lobbyist. When he isn’t politicking, he spends his time working on his home and garden.

Guest Column in the Yamhill Valley News-Register 9/19/2009