Alan Simpson (Former U.S. Senator, WY)

What do you make of the cynicism we’re hearing from so many average citizens we talk with about what they think about government and their elected representatives?

Well I think the average Joe, the guy on the barstool in Buffalo, Wyoming, he’s thinking they don’t listen to me, they’re not paying any attention, “I wrote my congressman, I wrote my senator, I got a canned letter back you know said all the best you know, we’re working on it.” An unresponsiveness. That is not really the case in this state, but here’s a state of 500,000 plus people running around on ninety eight thousand square miles and you don’t dare pull that kind of stuff off in this state whether you’re a democrat or republican. They expect answers, they expect you to hold town meetings, they expect you to be accessible, and if not they’ll find that you have a lot more time on your hands and they’ll take care of it. Cynicism is rampant in the world in every aspect of American life now. There’s cynicism about advertising, there’s cynicism about the internet, there’s cynicism about EBay, there’s cynicism about somebody’s ripping someone off, somebody’s peddling something, something is broken no guarantee, cynicism in a little league ballpark, cynicism in the county commissioner’s chamber or the city council. More frustration I think and a lack of civility than just being cynical.

I think you know. Then the Abramoff thing, and Ney has now stepped away. He didn’t even want to put himself into the fire even though he said I’ve done nothing wrong. DeLay saying I didn’t do anything wrong. Cunningham. Lot of Republicans mixed up in it, lot of Democrats will be or have been. And people read that in the morning coffee and they say there all like that.

And that’s really not the way it is. I knew I knew in eighteen years I knew a lot of wonderful people Democrat and Republican alike people that you do enjoy the rest of your life. They weren’t philanderers, or drunks, or you know, on the make or on the take, or corrupt but that’s you know. The imagery now today is perception and reality has escaped us. In fact reality has escaped television. Reality has escaped everything. You can’t hate politicians and love democracy, that’s a phony. So you say well I love democracy but I mean they got a bunch of crooks, adulterers, horny old farts, running around in circles, and you know I’m not going to get involved with them, they’re monsters.

It also seems that Congress is getting more adversarial between liberal and conservative…this lack of civility between the parties–especially around election time.

And so that’s the sad part of it because there’s only one way to restore that and that’s to try to leach leach out of the system the the tilting mechanisms that come from the right and the left where they suddenly just press the button and they’ve got the ad in the can and even the candidate might repudiate what’s being said but he he can’t stop it. It’s the free freedom of expression, First Amendment and that’s that case of Buckley versus Valejo. I wish somebody could get their meat fisted ham fist into that and change that because the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was not crafted so that some jerk could spend his own money into oblivion to stampede and crush out every guy every other guy with a bright idea or a good platform. It was put on the books to protect some little jerk in the basement in Philadelphia who was cranking out seditious literature against the government, to protect that guy. It wasn’t to help child pornographers or millionaires and it’s…distorted itself.

During your many years in office did it seem that fundraising became more and more of preoccupation with you and your colleagues?

Well yeah, you know it. In in my lifetime it began when when the AFL-CIO decided to get serious and began to form political action committees and man oh man they were effective and then the business community finally woke up as to what was happening there was COPE, c-o-p-e Committee on Political Education and then there was BYPAC, the business industry coalition. So they got cooking on raising the money from their members and and giving by vote of the members to that candidate and the AFL-CIO naturally mostly democrat, the other business industry to republicans that was the pitch. I never saw anything wrong with that at all because then the competition was in place, but then everybody was forming one. KIDPAC, SIXPAC, you know, MOSPAC, whatever it is. They’ve all got some interests…nothing wrong with that either, but but once they started to cover their bases where they would say “we better give to the chairman of the committee, that’s a democrat, but his challenger or her challenger might guy might win so let’s get some money over to them too.”

So you have these people who formed for ideological and philosophical reasons of unity which is good who suddenly then begin to give to both sides and there’s an ancient, ancient art form and that’s called whoring and it is disgusting to watch. And they do it and it means money. They want they want to be able to go to the staff of that senator or congressman.  There’s some guy in the staff who’s gone through the list of contributions and says, “you don’t want to see him, he gave fifty bucks in your first campaign and he hasn’t done a lick since.”  But then in comes Joe, you know, Heavyhitter and they say, “wait a minute this guy’s maxed out on you he maxed out in your first primary, your first general, your second primary. He and his wife and his children are all in the game.” You see them, you really do see them, or whatever political action committee has loaded up on you every time.

Were you personally aware of who was giving your campaign money?

The staff members make the selection as to who you see, unless it’s a personal friend then you see them. But in in Wyoming that’s not the case, you saw everybody that came in the door or else they’d throw you out the door. But it’s just a scorekeeping exercise, you see the people who gave you money and I love the testimony of that guy…I think it was the Clinton campaign and they asked him, “well why did you give three hundred thousand dollars?” and he said, “Well what the hell did you think? Access, that’s all. I didn’t give it just because I’m a sweet guy, I gave it so I could be assured I saw that person” and you’re gonna see a lot of people for three hundred grand, but money talks is not just a political phrase, money talks in every part of American capitalism.

Earlier on in your career, was the amount of campaign money you had to raise a lot less?

Well I first ran for the state legislature in Park County Wyoming 1964 in the the ill fated Goldwater year and I probably spent less than seven hundred bucks and that’s all on the secretary of state’s office…you know yard sign. I ran again for the legislature did that for thirteen years, but I don’t think I spent over a thousand bucks or fifteen hundred bucks for each of those six elections. But for the U.S. Senate race in 1978, then the money began to come…in other words PACs began to put money into me.

What interests did the PACs represent?

PACs connected with Wyoming, oil, gas, coal, I mean what you know environment. We’re the largest coal producing state in the nation, if we were a nation we’d be the biggest nation coal producer. We have natural gas, coal bed methane, petroleum, petrona non-fossil fuel, and agriculture, and alfalfa and beans and cattle and horses. So the money rolled in and it came a lot from out of state. Your biggest problem in Wyoming is doing television that will reach the whole state…there’s only one great big station in the middle of Wyoming K2 and then there’s some good one’s in northern Wyoming but you have to advertise in Billings, Montana, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Rapid City so that you can hit those fringe areas and that costs you bucks. I can’t imagine reaching a huge market like Philadelphia, New York, or Miami.

What is the day-to-day like when it comes to fundraising?

You’re on the phone or you had a campaign chairman I didn’t like doing it I don’t think any…well, some of them do.  I never did but you had a campaign finance chairman and that person was on the phone most of the day saying you know “Simpson’s running for the U.S. Senate, we need some bucks, and can you help?” And in Wyoming that guy will say yeah I’m going to do all I can, here’s fifty bucks. Well that won’t get you there that won’t get ya.

But it’s a wonderful tribute cause anytime a guy gives you money five bucks or ten he’s in the game he’s with you.  It’s the guy who says, “hey here’s twenty- five bucks and get get off your can and go to work!”  But then it became computers. When I got out my third campaign I had an opponent who couldn’t even raise five grand and I think I raised a million-one because I didn’t know who was going to run. They said Jerry Spence was gonna run against me, well he’s a pretty formidable guy he’s a lawyer and I’ve known him all my life practically, good egg, fun guy, but he would have been tough and again a guy who bankrolled his own campaign.

So you know looked pretty fascinating as I filed my report at one million one and my opponent filed hers at you know four thousand two hundred and forty two bucks. Sad in a way you felt like a monster out crushing people.

And then of course as the campaign gets going you become a tool in the process. You are just a joe booble because they’ll gather you together and there will be your media guy, and the campaign chairman, and the membership, and the volunteers and they’ll say, “Al we need another buy, we have to get one more buy to hit forty-two outlets, you know, and if we get that we’re sure going to win.”  And I can’t tell ya how many politicians have been trapped in that horror as they dip into their own money finally, because the consultants who get a cut of that are saying, “if we just had one more buy you’ll win.” It’s a vicious circle.

It just got more and more expensive, and of course the object is to get as much in your own kitty to terrify any opposition–that’s key. You just keep stockpiling–you start the minute you get elected, you get on the phone the next week and start raising money for the next six years away so that when time comes you say “I have decided to run once again,” and the media will always pick it up…they’ll sniff around and say “he’s got four million bucks in the kitty!” Well, the poor guy whose thinking…I was a county commissioner and I thought I’d run in that primary but I can’t.  It’s wrong because you’re denying America of ideas and good people, of good background, good good sense, who just can’t compete and…if we can can break this this unbelievable suction pump of money, leach it out of the system in some way, why, we’ll have better representation, better people, more people, spirited people who will say “I got a chance!”

As Whip did you have your hands full with fundraising compared to other members?

Oh yeah for me…I was very honored to be the assistant assistant majority leader of the U.S. Senate after my first year and I was elected from ‘78 and ‘84.  Four guys ran for assistant on the third ballot I won all the marbles and served for ten years as Bob Dole’s assistant. I would go anywhere, over the cliff or into combat with Bob Dole. He was one of the most wonderful men I ever worked with and the duty was to line up the votes, get people going.  The first couple, three years didn’t seem to be to hard, but then you began to notice, and Bob did too, notice it…you say “well we’re going to have to vote I think Wednesday night at eight o’clock on that issue,” well, then there could be a little line like kids going to the toilet in fourth grade you know come up to your desk say you know,  “Al I can’t do that I gotta be in Detroit for a fundraiser that night, I gotta be in L.A., I gotta be in Baltimore…” And finally I remember Bob said, “well I think we’re elected to legislate here be good if you could come and and vote so we have some votes.” So we ended up having to stack the votes on a night where everbody would come in and we’d line them up like cattle.

So fundraising interferes with governing?

Couldn’t get the debate always done cause a guy would say “I can’t be there could ya extend the period in the morning for open debate so I could come in and do that?”  Finally realized that, you know, the whole whole system is is twisted around people raisin’ bucks. And then you quickly noted that when you’d have your caucus on Tuesday it was usually simply about what are the pollsters saying about our party? And how do we help so and who’s going to have a tough race…so I want you guys all to kick in. We all had our own political action committees or some did, I never formed one like the Simpson political action but other leaders did, especially now so that they can raise the money from down in the big streets in Washington and then give it to some guy running so that they’re beholden to that leader…so that that leader then will get their vote…that’s all internal stuff and quite legal but it does get a little frothy.

Is the fundraising a daily telephone routine?

There was that aspect.  There was uh, “so and so needs it, so if you can call so and so tonight, here’s a list…” and if you would go off campus to the Democratic National Headquarters or the Republican, or some hole in the wall, off campus, not a government building, and go through the old quote rolodex in the old days. Now it’s just ring it up in the computer and spend a couple hours calling people you never heard of and never will see again saying, “this is Senator Allan Simpson asking you to support the President’s dinner.”

It’s ghastly it got so I refused to do it. They said “well wait you don’t mean that.” I said I’m not going to go and sit on my butt and and for two hours call people I’ve never seen before and ask them for money for the President’s dinner or the whatever.  “Well if everybody did that we wouldn’t have anything.”  I said well, yeah, then bring em in and I’ll speak to em’ at lunch, I’ll take time for their questions, talk about issues, I’ll be glad to talk about any issue you would like. Well that got the heat off me and I’d go to the lunch and speak, or I’d have an afternoon session with an assistant leader for asking any questions. I enjoyed that more and so did they. But some of them were told if they gave twenty five thousand they could visit with Bob Dole and if they gave fifty thousand… we’d have to figure a way to get the president depending on whose whose party has the presidency…doesn’t matter what party–Clinton, Bush, doesn’t matter. “We’ll get ya’ in to see the old prexi and if you really cough up money we’ll have a little lunch with him you know–you and your other sandbaggers.”

It was it was something to watch. And to me it just became cloying and and noxious and I just wouldn’t do it. Some do it and do it very well. And there’s nothing illegal about it…it’s just, it narrowed my crawl and I couldn’t do it. So I began to drop away and I voted for the first McCain-Feingold bill, but my revelations didn’t come in Washington, my revelations came in the Wyoming legislature when I tried to sponsor disclosure bills that said who were the people giving money and what did they do…well you can imagine how far that got in Wyoming. They said “Simpson, this is Wyoming we all know what we all do here, I mean everybody knows,” and I said no, I don’t think people realize that guy not only has an oil operation he’s got he’s into transportation, and trucking, and oil, and gas, and trona, and on and on in a multifaceted way and and there was no disclosure. But it would be good to know when you’re doing a bill on you know truck-ton-mile tax that the guy that’s furnishing all the gas to all the trucks in Wyoming is throwing a thousand bucks in your kitty. Just little things, it’s called openness, it’s called who are you, what do you do, and … transparency would be the present word, a dazzling word you know.

These calls or meetings with potential donors…it ate lots of your time?

Oh sure it was frustrating.  While you were doing that you’re also in the Senate working on major legislation. I was a legislator–you either want to be an administrator or a legislator. I couldn’t administer my way out of a paper sack, but I sure as hell knew how to legislate and I was involved in heavy stuff, nuclear high-level waste, Gary Hart and McClure, and Benet Johnson were involved in that.  It diverted me from those issues. I mean you had to go to hearings to get your bill moving and if you were the chair you conducted it so setting the hearings so they wouldn’t conflict with raising money, floor managing a bill, amending the bill in conference, going to conference committee. These are things that sound like inside baseball, but that’s how the system works and all the fundraising diverted you from the intensity of the legislative experience. Legislating if done properly is the driest form of work that’s ever been ever been concocted and it just diverted you all the time, either about money or the bills that were going to limit money.

Like the McCain Feingold Bill?

The McCain-Feingold that was controversial, “surely you’re not going to do this, if you do this we’ll never elect another republican for the next fifty years,” and the democrats are told the same thing, if they fall for this “gimmick” in this bill. And then it becomes personalities you know McConnel, the very bright guy, good egg, but boy when he’s on an issue then you know it was watch out and then Al Cranston, another good egg, democrat from California, assistant leader when I was if Al’s in this watch out. So you know it became it became so distorted, and is.

Why do you support the Fair Elections Now Act—this optional public campaign fund?

To give everyone, every guy a break to give every person in America a break who feels they could bring a gift of common sense, knowledge, agility of mind and spirit to the game. Who cannot do it now because they get crushed and if you do this we would have the formula set up, it would done be by a a group appointed by the Congress to determine you know how different Pennsylvania is from Wyoming on a single house district in Wyoming versus … how you allocate what the presidency should require, the vice presidency…

What was the last straw for you in thinking its time for this reform?

I think the big wake up call which is helping us is what happened with the earmarking in this last session where they earmarked ninety two billion dollars worth of projects and those are things that somewhere along the line popped up either in a committee hearing or something or mark up, they popped up and somebody said that ain’t going anywhere and so it dropped into the vat…but in the middle of the night some staffer never forgot they’d been hosed on that one and they were ready to come out of the woods and they just inserted it, just inserted it with a slip of paper, just a type written addendum in a bill that’s you know weighs ten pounds.

And that costs the taxpayers of American ninety two billion!  Public funding of elections would cost about one point eight billion, we figure that’s a pretty good return on the investment.  It’s called “the six bucks solution,” everybody would be taxed in that sense six bucks and end up leaching the power and access and the one thing that makes the average joe think it’s all corrupt. And I think Mondale Fritz had it right–he said it looks like hell and and it does and it will always look like hell to the average guy and so he’s just not even going to vote, he’s just going to say “stick it!” and then he won’t run. Won’t vote and he won’t run and finally you do enough of that and there’s an ancient thing called anarchy, where people just run around and bitch and finally decide to pick up a weapon instead of picking up an idea.

What do say to the point of view that public funding would somehow be a waste of tax dollars?

I just say whatever’s working pal, ain’t working! So if you want to just continue this unbelievable exercise which is totally now perceived as a nation on the take and on the make and that every congressperson is there only for one reason to get money out of some special interest group, which means they can’t function on the great national issues of the day anymore because their fragmented… they’ll say “you can’t vote that way,” “well I should,” “well you can’t.”  You can’t because these guys are gonna total up your voting record in the next election and here are the twelve, twenty votes of yours and you’re gonna be suckin’ canal water if you don’t vote to accommodate this group.

What do you think about the Supreme Court equating campaign money with freedom of speech or that corporations are persons?

Buckley vs. Valeo is the law of the land according to the United State’s Supreme Court. It is designed under the present law as a first amendment right to freedom of speech and I think that’s a tremendous distortion of the first amendment. But I always say look if I had spent my thirty one years in politics as a legislator if I could score up the times that someone was opposed to a bill and got on their hind legs and said look you pass this it will be declared unconstitutional by the Wyoming Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court…I never saw it happen once. So it’s always the great bait, the great ender of the debate…”this is unconstitutional” and they’re the same people who would like to load the court with their own views you know. So it’s curious business. But the unconstitutionality argument always has failed to impress me.

What do you think it’s going to take for Congress to adopt fundamental electoral reform like the public funding option?

Time and education, that’ll work and that’s what we’re here for. Everything in America now is a sense of immediacy, we want this, we want instant gratification, we want to see a result. Forget it, we’ll see a result but that’s gonna take maybe some years. Gonna take time, education, and watching the excesses, pointing them out–here’s where we are since we began to talk about this and here’s where we are now three years later and look at what’s happened since. It will just be like barnacles on a ship, it’ll continue to encrust and people will get a belly full of it. And the guy will come home to campaign and they’ll say “look you jerk you go do something about that or now I have a group out here in Pennsylvania or Wyoming that’s gonna eat your lunch unless you get off your can.”

You can take that big money out of the system because they’re a lot of good people who love government and they want to see it work but they know that it’s not working right now because of people who are captured by the interest who give tons of money.

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