How to make the people’s voice heard again

Rex Hughes

Sunday, March 18, 2012 | 2 a.m.

In 1791, James Madison warned that the greatest danger to liberty in our American republic would be if individual citizens ever became insignificant in their own eyes. For this citizen, that day has arrived.

I cover a sales territory in Las Vegas for a small West Coast carpet manufacturer. By 2008, the recession had decimated my sales, and I believed the outcome of that year’s elections would greatly influence any economic recovery. I wanted to do more than vote, so I made my very first campaign contribution to one of the candidates seeking his party’s presidential nomination. I remember swallowing hard before I dropped that $2,000 check in the mail.

Over the past few months, our fellow Las Vegan, billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson, and his family have donated more than $10 million to the super PAC supporting former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in his bid for this year’s GOP presidential nomination. Adelson has hinted he may eventually top off his support for Gingrich at $100 million.

My $2,000 no longer feels significant.

Our campaign finance laws have finally broken down. Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was the coup de grace. As a result, those who control corporations, independent political organizations, unions and concentrated personal wealth can now use super PACs to funnel unlimited amounts of cash into our political system for their own private purposes. And, thanks to Congress, they can do it anonymously by using 501(c)4 organizations as proxy donors.

This financial invasion of our electoral process represents an all-out assault on the political relevance of individual citizens. Before the innovation of super PACs, the legal maximum $2,500 campaign donation kept the financial influence of people like the Adelsons roughly on par with the rest of us. Now, even the candidates are complaining about the influence that super PACs exercise over their campaigns.

Is it any wonder that so many Americans feel politically irrelevant?

This is the very sentiment that inspired the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street — the fury of these two movements has not diminished, nor is it new. Will and Ariel Durant’s little 1968 book “The Lessons of History” describes how similar tensions have often played out throughout the ages:

“In progressive societies, the concentration (of wealth) may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”

Although our horizon remains free from the threat of revolution, increasing numbers of the politically disaffected are voicing support for some form of wealth redistribution. Such ideas are contrary to America’s sense of meritocracy. Instead, we must find a way to redistribute not wealth but the political influence of it.

The key to any remedy lies in applying the democratic principle of “one man, one vote” to campaign finance. But the constituted defenders of our liberty — our elected representatives and the judges they appoint — have colluded to undermine our political equality.

Their failure signals that it is once again appropriate to consider a constitutional amendment, one that reserves the right of financial political donation exclusively to living, breathing U.S. citizens.

Such an amendment should also require that political contributions be voluntary. It should level the potential influence of individuals by capping their annual donations at a value not to exceed the median taxable personal income. And, it should guarantee the security of its provisions through timely transparency.

Recent calls for related constitutional reform have been too broad to be effective, or too complex to avoid corruption. A proper amendment must protect liberty while striving for simplicity in its purpose and language. Crafted in this manner, it would restore relevance to the sovereign people, and strip their rivals of illegitimate influence.

Corporations would be barred from the process, their interests reflected only in the private political activity of the citizens who own or are employed by them.

Super PACs would not have to be outlawed; they would simply starve to death. And political parties would become more accountable to their citizen-paymasters, or face a similar fate.

Unions would also become more accountable. By engaging in any political activity, they would define themselves as political organizations, and redefine their dues as political contributions, thus forfeiting their power to enforce payroll deductions for them. Workers could then decide for themselves whether a politically active union is worth joining.

Finally, concentrated personal wealth would find itself on a level political playing field with the middle class. Should Congress decide to raise, or the courts to strike down, the $2,500 donation limit, the middle class could ramp up its own political spending in contests of particular importance to it; meanwhile, people like the Adelsons would find themselves on a campaign finance budget that reflects the average American income.

Constitutional reform of this sort would free elected officials to support policies that benefit their true constituents. In short, such an amendment would restore political significance to the average citizen. It would be a revolution in a paragraph.

Rex Hughes lives and works in Las Vegas.