Pay to Play: The view from my patio

Doing the "Ask" at a political fundraiser.

A perspective on why Sanders did so well and why Trump has a strong argument against Hillary, if he has the self discipline to make the case and stay on script.

My wife and I hold political fundraising events at our home.   In May of this year we did five separate events.

We know how to do them.  We are generous (i.e. pay for everything.)  We are "turnkey": the candidate's campaign staff simply tells us when the candidate will show up, and whether they want this to be a small high-donor event ($500-$1,000 contribution expectation) or a big event with up to 200 people with a zero to $50 contribution.   Once we know what the campaign wants, we take care of everything else.  

Here is Senator Merkley, on my patio steps.  In a minute I will do the "ask".

We arrange the house.  I set up the Public Address system.  We arrange the caterer.  We supply the alcohol, the caterer supplies the food and servers.  We have a reputation for being reliable and dead-easy, so we are the first call.  

If we are in town, we do it.  Once telephone call and the campaign has a complicated event taken care of for them. 

The result is we do them for Transit District levies, for Library levies, for Senators Wyden and Merkley, for Governors Kitzhaber and Brown, for Attorney General candidates, for local and statewide judicial candidates, for local candidates for every office.   

And the campaigns as me to do "the ask."   The "ask" is when, toward the end of the event, after the candidate has spoken and before anyone leaves, a "citizen" who identifies not as staff but as a member of the public, goes to the microphone and asks people to dig deep and to give more money yet.

Here I am, asking, at a Democratic event with the Governor

I am asked to do this for two reasons.  One is that the campaign knows that the person doing the "ask" has to be someone who has given personally, and often there is a last minute surprise "additional" gift challenge, to which the campaign arranged beforehand for me to donate.  The audience, which generally has already given to the campaign, is asked to give again, and more.

Here is what I say, primarily to audiences of Democrats and people who support public services like libraries and transit districts and community colleges.   The campaigns like what I have to say, apparently, and I like to say it.   

***I tell people that all of us are sick to death of political fundraising that feels sleazy.   I tell people that campaigns need money and that a lot of people who donate money want something or other from the candidate.   Vote for this.  Don't vote for that.

***I tell people that there is something wonderful and magical happening right here in front of us, because we have the opportunity to change the system and provide money for a candidate the right way.  We are helping to clean the system because the money we are raising here is the best, cleanest money possible.  It is money supplied in the interest of good government itself.   Good, clean, selfless government, money that allows a politician to do the job honestly and well.   What better thing can you do with your money, I ask, than help make good government possible?

***So give, I plead.  Give to send a message that uncorrupted self government is possible and that we support it, and we are doing it right now.

An event for Gov. Kate Brown.  Al Bates is introducing me to do the ask.

That's it.   Done right it is about a 90 second talk.  

Sometimes I have arranged for a person or two in the audience to shout out that they will make a large gift if others join in.   I say I will join that person.   Then, ideally, people begin saying that they, too, will add $250, $500, $100, $300, until we have approximately doubled the amount of money previously given to come to the event.   
That is how it is done.  Now you know.

After the ask.  People stand around and feel good.

This brings me to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation and the phrase I have used about Hillary Clinton for months in this blog.   I describe her--objectively I believe--as a successful practitioner in the current system of political advocacy and alliances, working successfully with donors, interest groups, media, think- tanks, and citizens.   Hillary Clinton is not unique beyond the fact that she is unusually successful and adept, but she does pretty much what everyone successful in high level politics does.  It is the system and it is how the system works.  

She is part of a revolving door of politician, speech making, book writing, media appearances, donor cultivation, lobbyist cultivation, election and re-election.  She does what Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani and the other faces one sees on Fox does.  It is how one raises the friends and the money to survive in politics.

Washington Post article.  Even the liberal press is worried.

Donald Trump is accusing her of being part of that system, which he refers to as "pay to play".  This system exists and I know that people resent it because that is what I see from my patio steps.   

I live in a world where $1,000 and $5,000 political gifts are a big deal, but I recognize that there are other leagues in which gifts are a hundred thousand and a million dollars.  (I also realize people who cannot afford $1,000 gifts mightily resent the $1,000 givers.)   People who cannot give at higher levels resent the extra access given to people who donate more than they do.  I speak to that resentment and it is the heart of my appeal to people in the "ask", to strike a blow against that system.

Donald Trump has a powerful and persuasive argument to make.  People agree with him.  I see it in the faces of people who are shouting out their extra gifts.  Trump is a flawed messenger of this argument because he is associated with sleaze and pay to play of his own, but he says he has reformed, that he sees the light clearly because he used to play the game, and the game is crooked.

New, "kinder, gentler" Trump lets Pence make the charge

Some things about Hillary's behavior are unclear and muddled and maybe-legal and barely-legal and arguable, and Hillary supporters can close their eyes to accusations of Hillary "scandals", in part because her accusers are so partisan.   But one thing is evident and undeniable:  Hillary is part of the system.   And people find the system generally corrupting and they resent the extra influence of people richer than themselves.  It feels dishonest and un-American.

I know that feeling is out there, in front of me on the patio.  

Trump could win this election.