Mike Capuano (U.S. Representative, MA)

For you, personally, how’s fundraising been?

I can do it. I mean, I just ran for a Senate seat that I raised close to 3 or 4 million dollars in a couple months. I can do it, but I hate it. It takes too much time, it’s not really why I want to run for office. And it is very difficult, it’s very uncomfortable for anybody who’s ever done it?

Can you give me some day-to-day examples of what’s involved?

Quite simply, I mean, we have to raise a lot of money in a short period of time. You have to get on the phones, and that requires you to sit and make phone call after phone call after phone call, and you run out of your close friends very quickly. Most of them don’t have any money anyway. And, then you run out of your associates relatively quickly, and you quickly get into people you’ve never met or have seldom met. And, you have to go through a dance for each one of them, and I understand that. I don’t, if I was on the receiving end, it’s like, “Who are you and why should I give you any money?” But it is not the way to reach the masses, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not a way to educate voters.

To do it, we have to have the money to do that in today’s world, but that’s not the best way to do it. It’s, unfortunately, a necessary evil under the current rules.

How about in terms of it taking away time that you would devote otherwise to policymaking?

Well, as an incumbent, I mean, again, if you’re in the middle of a campaign, you’re not doing too much policy anyway, you’re visiting other, you know, folks in the campaign. Some policy try to be honest about it, but in the normal course of events, I mean, in the house, especially, it’s a never-ending campaign to raise money, either to be prepared so you can run a race, or to not have in a race, if you can have enough money in the bank, or to raise money for the DCCC, or for your colleagues who might need it for a thousand different reasons, and I’ve actually spent as much time doing that as anything else, because I’m fortunate enough to come from a district that’s not “in jeopardy”, for the most part.

At the same time, every minute that we spend doing that I could be doing something else. I guess technically I could be sleeping, but I’m probably not going to be sleeping at ten o’clock in the morning, you can’t make your best phone calls then. But I could be either educating myself on an issue, or meeting constituents, or even if I was just relaxing, at least it gives me time to clear my head. I don’t do much of that, but whatever it is, I actually think if I could prioritize, if this wasn’t a necessary part of the job, I don’t think you’d find too many people actually raising money for the fun of it. Most of us really don’t like it. A few people do use it as a measurement of their manhood, or whatever it might be, but that’s really the exception, it is not the rule. Most of us really don’t like doing it.

Do you have to walk over to the DCCC?

I do that some, I don’t do it much as I have, again, because I come from a different situation. Up until this recent election, I have a professional fundraiser’s office that I do it from. Or I do it from my office up in Massachusetts. We all do it differently, but the answer’s yes.

So, public funding would make it for people who weren’t wealthy or had access to run?

It makes it more possible. When I ran for this, the first time in 1998, I was told unequivocally that I needed 2 to $5 million dollars for the so-called political wunderkind. And I laughed at them. I had never come close, the most I had raised before for a mayor’s race was $100,000. And then for the campaign, I ended up raising close to about 500,000, and another 100,000 came in from people I never met during the last week, when it was pretty clear I was going to win. But, but 500,000 is what I really raised, and it was way above anything I’d ever done. But it was because a lot of good people, I had very few people who maxed out, no matter how you measure the term, at the time.

Most of the money I raised was from people, $200, $300, and working people who just dug deep. And it put a real serious barrier in front of anybody like me, and I want to make a real clear distinction. I do think that there should be certain barriers from just anybody running, because that clutters the ballot, and it’s not good for voters. There should be some standards, there are other ways to do it, signatures or stealth qualifications. And, I really think that it doesn’t take too long to be able to figure out different ways or no given way, there’s a hundred ways to do it, to make sure that there aren’t 100 people on the ballot. That doesn’t help either.

But at the same time, if you have somebody who’s qualified, who’s thoughtful, who’s serious, who can get 2,000 signatures or whatever it might be I don’t think they should be denied the opportunity to have an opportunity, a serious opportunity to run for office because they can only raise 2 or $300,000, well, pick the number. And I guess it’s gotten worse. I mean, to run for a typical House seat now, for an open seat, I’m not sure, but I would guess probably in the absolute minimum range of $3 million depending which market you’re in.

On the average it’s 1.3.

Well, it depends. 1.3 doesn’t get you on cable TV in Boston.

What do you think of the Supreme Court decision?

It’s another step in the wrong direction, but at the same time, it’s also a result of some of my own friends, who like the concept of reform, having been misdirected. I really think that we made several mistakes, I voted for the last campaign finance reform bill because it was better than nothing. But, it had a lot of mistakes in it, that the least of which was raising the limit. I think that’s insane, to have raised the limit. Right now, the limit is $4,800 for an individual, when you come right down to it. I don’t know many people who can write me a $4,800 check, and I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it feels to ask anybody for that. I don’t. But, those who do, it’s very uncomfortable.

That’s a lot of money, almost by any income level. So we made a lot of mistakes, this was part of it. Again, it was a back doorway to try to get to the same general place, which is to allow voters the opportunity to make up their own mind. And again, I supported it, it was fine, but it was never the direct way to do it. The direct way to do it is to fund people who are serious candidates for tax, to the, through the tax rolls. Simply put, it is a societal issue. Society should be willing to pay for it. I think it’s the price of democracy.

And, so you’re referring to the Citizens United decision?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s, that’s the latest crisis, and the truth is, what I’m trying to do now is some shareholder issues, shareholder empowerment, but it really still is a Band-Aid. It is not a fix. The fix is public financing. Because it, I have accepted the fact, and I don’t necessarily like it, but I do accept the fact that individual wealthy people can still put $100 million of their own money in, and that’s fine. And, I also know the statistics that not, that more wealthy people who get into who, campaigns lose than win, a lot more. But, I will tell you, having been on the other end of it, where I just came out of running against another person who put almost $10 million of his own money in.

It is, it is a seriously daunting thing to say, oh my God, I don’t know if I can raise $1 million, and now I have to run against somebody who can just write a check for 10? I don’t have to like it, but I’ve come to accept it. It’s pretty standard law. And, now corporations? Honestly, I hope that some of the things we do, I want voters to be well-informed. If Exxon Corporation is going to run an ad against Mike Capuano, fine, let the voters know that it’s Exxon Corporation. The problem comes is when Exxon Corporation writes a check to the Better Government Group that runs an ad saying, “We’re the Better Government Group, and Mike Capuano stinks.”

All I want is transparency and honesty, and let the voters make their own decision. I think they’re quite capable of doing it.

What do you say to the naysayers, that say publicly financed elections are a waste of taxpayers’ money?

I don’t know that it will save or cost, I mean, let’s be serious, taxpayers pay for it one way or the other. Do you really think when a corporation spends $10 million to defeat me, or to elect me, I don’t think that’ll happen, but they’ll try to elect others, do you really think it’ll pay for it in higher prices for your groceries, or whatever it, or the, your gasoline, or whatever it is? Of course you do. So, I know you don’t feel it, and it doesn’t, it’s not as obvious, but of course you pay for it. You really think that Exxon Corporation or whoever is going to take it off their bottom line? They’re just going to raise that price of gasoline another penny a gallon, and you are going to pay for it without any say in the matter.

So I don’t, but I want to be serious. I don’t think it’s going to save any money. It’s the price of democracy. Having a strong army is not going to save you money. It is the price of democracy, protecting what we have. And the democratic principle, I think, is at the heart of everything that we have.

Why do a lot of incumbents have a hesitation about it?

It’s a new system. I am an incumbent, and, you know, I’ve been fortunate enough not to have any real serious opposition in the time I’ve been here, and I’m not gung-ho about encouraging anyone to run against me. My job, in many ways, is to get re-elected. That is the measure of success. When my people say, hey, good job, Mike, you deserve another term, why would I want to encourage it? But, at the same time, I’m not worried about that. My answer is, look, anybody can run, I come from a district that has a lot of wealthy, activist types of people.

Any one of them could run at any moment, with or without any public financing. If somebody wants to run against me, I have no fear of the debate of, of public ideas. We’ll have that debate. It’s not necessarily in my self-interest, in my short-term, narrow-minded self interest. But, if that were the case, I would have practiced law or made a lot of money and not done this. My self-interests, I’ve already given up on that a long time ago.

The intensity of partisanship that has gotten things in a bit of gridlock, do you think that’s fueled in any respect by the need to raise campaign funds?

Not really, no. I think, you know, like anything else, everything is intertwined at some level. I don’t think this is any more so or any less so than anything else. I mean, the truth is, you know, the concept of open elections, free and honest elections, really should be non-partisan. Everybody should want them, Democrats, Republicans, independents, Green Party, everybody should want them. And, partisanship will play some role in it, but I don’t, I think you’ll find it more along incumbency versus non-incumbency lines than you will partisan lines. You’ll find some of the partisan lines.

I don’t see how anybody would think that allowing someone to run against me is partisan. That’s about as non-partisan as you can get. There’s nothing there that says Republicans couldn’t do it. In theory, in my district, no Republican, other than a self-funder, could raise enough money to run against me in any serious way. Yet here I am, advocating for them to be able to get the amount of money that they need to run against me, because I’m not afraid of putting our ideas on the table, and I feel very comfortable that my constituents will side with the general views I have versus the general views that anyone from the Republican party can put up.

Do you think that we the people, is the change going to come from the top down, or is it coming from the bottom up?

Change never, or seldom, comes from the top down. And, and I don’t think you want it that way. That’s called a king. I think you want it from the bottom up in general. I mean, obviously, there’s always exceptions to every rule. Change does come from people, that’s the way it should be. That’s, hopefully, again, there’s no perfect system, but the democratic system is intended for that. That’s why we’re up every two years instead of every 10. I hope that it does. This is an issue, though, that I don’t know that that’ll be it, I just don’t know. I mean, like anything else, I mean, there, issues go in cycles. This may be the good time for it.

I just don’t know. But, my argument is, look, I don’t get to pick the timing. I get to push for what I think is right, and once in a while you get lucky and you’re in the right place at the right time. I hope that’s the case here. We’ll find out soon enough.

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