Should Democrats stop doing fundraisers? Seriously.

The wine and cheese fundraiser may be dangerous for Democrats. The Bernie Sanders wing of the progressive left is skeptical of them.

Golden

A fundraiser is a signal that the Democrat is comfortable with the financially comfortable. 

Does it suggest the candidate is not really progressive enough?

A goal of this blog is to notice the things that are so obvious they are un-noticed.  We have taken the wine and cheese fundraiser for granted as a source of good, clean money. The best money. 

Now it is being noticed, and not everyone on the left likes them.

There has been a division between clean money and unclean money.  Unclean money comes from people or groups with an obvious self-interest in policy. We understand that a group, say the Oregon Gasoline Dealers Association, might have an agenda of reversing rules monitoring gasoline spill runoff. They give money to politicians based on who agrees and disagrees with penalties on spills into nearby waterways.  People consider this distasteful, but legal campaign financing. Dirty money.

Then there is clean money. Call up people who generally share your party and point of view and ask them for money for your campaign. There is no implied policy commitment, just general agreement. Candidates call people with capacity to give, perhaps inviting them to an event where a certain amount of social affirmation takes place.  There it is: the wine and cheese fundraiser.

Click.

In the local State Senate race between Democrat Jeff Golden and Republican Jessica Gomez, the distinction between these two forms of campaign financing is shaping up to be a major issue. Gomez is receiving money from PACs. For example, the Oregon Business and Industry PAC just gave her $25,000. That PAC itself aggregates money from businesses around the state. Oregon has an excellent, easy to navigate system for looking at contributions and expenditures. Try it yourself. Go to Oregon Secretary of State's Orestar system.  Here is a link to the 
"Transaction Search" screen: 
https://secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/gotoPublicTransactionSearch.do

Just Click on the Link for PAC. It shows who donates to them.

On the second line, for "Filer" 
type in either "Jessica Gomez" or "Jeff Golden." Then click "Search." Bingo!  Up comes the transactions for expenditures and contributions. 

If the contribution comes from a PAC you can click on the PAC name and get a detail of who gives to them, like this one from the Oregon Business and Industry Candidate PAC.

A point that is instantly apparent when one compares the two candidates is the simple fact that Gomez gets lots and lots of business and industry PAC money, and Golden does not. Golden has money from familiar local names who have made contributions of $250, $500, and $1,000, plus some out of state people (marked in red). Don't trust my observation. Look for yourself.

"Clean money" and "dirty money."  Voters can decide for themselves if the distinction between the sources of money is important. Many will not. Still, the difference is transparent thanks to the reporting system Here is the main link to Orestar. Click: Main Page. Look on the left for "Transactions"  

I think voters notice the content of the ad not the source of the money. If the source is to move up to voters' consciousness, it will be because media in its various forms bring it to light. 

That includes this blog.

The source of money is important because it reflects what kind of people and political interests support the candidate. It reveals who the candidate really is.  Gomez gets money from business PACs.  Golden gets money from prosperous politically involved people.  Gomez also gets contributions from prosperous politically involved people, but the overwhelming majority comes from PACs. Look for yourself.

So, is this a big winner for Golden. Maybe not. For one thing, lots of people want a pro-business candidate.

Getting so-called "clean money" from individual donors has become controversial within 
progressive Democratic circles. Bernie Sanders just sent out a fundraising appeal titled "A Tale of Two Different Meetings." He spoke of his own well attended rally in Kansas City, that headlined both him and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He contrasted and condemned a Democratic event elsewhere. "There was quite a different event in Columbus, Ohio. Two hundred and fifty wealthy invited Democratic donors" attended a event. Sanders' enemy? Democratic "Party members and fundraisers."

Click: Esquire

People writing in Facebook's various progressive sites had condemned Kate Brown's event in Medford last week, one I helped host. How dare she hobnob with the donor class? Sellout.

Charles Pierce, writing in Esquire, says that Democrats need to be bolder, more progressive, and to choose between the "millionaires and billionaires"--i.e. the comfortable people who have succeeded in the current economic structure--and the working people who have been squeezed by the system. The people who show up at wine and cheese fundraisers for people like Jeff Golden are people who are financially comfortable enough to write a campaign check. 

Bernie Sanders' way to raise money.

Bernie Sanders has a different fundraising technique: emails to a national audience that likes and supports him. People click a donate button and send $10, $25, $40. It is nice clean money--donations from people with a general amorphous agenda of support. It works for him. It won't work for everyone, and certainly not new local candidates.

The distinction between two ways of raising money by Democrats relates both to potential policy direction--incremental change vs. big change now--and to the tribes within the Democratic Party, Hillary vs. Bernie. Wine and cheese fundraisers imply moderation. The people who write $250 checks are not struggling working people waiting for payday to buy groceries. Bernie Sanders says the future of the Democratic Party is to abandon those people and to embrace a real, large, motivated constituency of working people who understand that those comfortable physicians and lawyers and business people at the wine and cheese fundraisers are part of the problem.

Both Jessica Gomez and Jeff Golden have campaign finance problems they will need to negotiate. Gomez's is that she is inundated by money from business and industry PACs and will need to explain it. How can she be independent of them? She has plenty of money but it will look "dirty" to some people who look closely at it. Who will she represent?

Golden's is that the only plausible way for him to compete is to get lots of local money from individual contributions, money sufficient to get his own message out. He will need money from some version of the wine and cheese fundraiser, and the people who can attend those and write checks are the "donor class”.  In the current environment some people on Golden's left will wonder what is wrong with him, that so many prosperous Medford and Ashland liberals seem to like him.