Brendan Boyle Takes on Challenge to Reform Our Broken Political System

January. 09, 2017

He's not direct from central casting, that's for sure. A few weeks ago, moving his office from Capitol Hill'southward Cannon to Longworth buildings, the cherubic 39-year-old Congressman Brendan Boyle institute himself dealing with someone with the championship of "Congressional Motion Coordinator" who causeless she was talking to the Congressman's staffer.

"How is the Congressman to work for?"

"Oh, he'southward terrific," Boyle replied, playing along. "He actually cares. He's a bully boss and a great guy."

Information technology was only the latest in a cord of examples that have seen Brendan Boyle defying expectations. That'due south what he did when he start got elected to correspond the Far Northeast in the Country House in 2008, running a grassroots campaign without Democratic party support. (His brother, Kevin Boyle, did likewise, defeating former Speaker of the Firm John Perzel in 2010). That's what he did in the Congressional election of 2014, when, despite the fact that Ed Rendell and the Clintons were for Clinton in-law and former congresswoman Marjorie Margolies, Boyle toppled the establishment in a race that presaged many of the themes that would animate the 2022 presidential election, including income inequality and a rejection among white working class voters of politics as usual.

And that's what he's trying to do in Congress, where he'due south about to take on the mother of all legislative challenges: Reforming our cleaved political organisation. Terminal calendar month, Boyle closed out his first ii-twelvemonth term (he was reelected in November with no opposition) having filed The Clean Money Human activity, a beak that would rethink the style we fund elections.

"We demand Trump voters demanding change, as well as populist conservatives and progressives," says Brendan Boyle. "That's the marriage that gets this done. And if we tin can alter the fashion we become elected, we can modify a whole lot."

The genesis of the nib came in the leap, when it dawned on Boyle that he was hearing the same thing from Sanders and Trump supporters. "I heard time and again in my commune, people who were voting for Trump saying, 'Yes, but at least I know he's not bought and paid for,'" Boyle told me over a recent Centre City luncheon. "Trump and Sanders supporters both strongly felt that all of us, this whole system, is corrupt."

So he took to the floor of Congress to speak out in favor of one of the campaign finance bills winding its fashion through the system.

But as time went on, Boyle returned to his wonky public policy chops, honed at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and began devising his own neb, The Clean Money Act. "My whole theory, and I believed this even before I started knocking on doors and running for office, is that ever since the start campaign finance reforms passed after Watergate, we've had all these efforts to limit the supply of money in politics and yet almost no effort to go subsequently the need," he says. "In other words, why exercise we need all this money? The good news is that, different in previous eras, information technology's not similar elected officials are keeping the coin they raise. Eighty pct of it is going to pay for Tv ads and a high percent of the residual goes to direct mail. So instead of continually coming up with contribution limits, which will always be gotten around because of the Kickoff Amendment—the Citizens United ruling makes limits essentially meaningless—why don't nosotros merely get after the need side?"

Boyle's plan would do that through a publicly-financed system that would provide campaigns with tax credit vouchers they can redeem with Television set stations. Rather than pay cash for air time, candidates could utilise a voucher, provided by the federal government, which would remove the cost of TV advertizing from their campaign. "It'south an opt-in system, you can't strength candidates to accept public financing," Boyle says. "But nigh candidates would opt in. Someone like me? You hateful I wouldn't have to fundraise anymore and I would basically be able to become my message out? And I'll be able to brag that I'm in the clean money organisation? Information technology's a no-brainer. I'm not naive. This won't solve 100 percent of the trouble, but it volition assist solve the vast majority of it."

Of course, one of those post-Watergate reforms was public financing of presidential elections; taxpayers could cheque a contribution box on their tax returns, and, from 1976 until 2004, that money financed the ballot. Just that organisation didn't keep pace with inflation or the explosion in ad and political consultant costs. Candidate Obama was the start to opt out of public financing in 2008, and now nobody is in information technology. Boyle points to the 1984 campaign—when Ronald Reagan held all of 8 fundraisers, compared to Obama's 300 in 2012—equally proof that public financing worked for many years.

His reform, however, would do away with the tax return check box tradition. "I remember it should be part of the federal upkeep," he says. "We're talking virtually 0.001 percent of the discretionary function of the upkeep. I want to ship the message this is of import. Information technology'south about the integrity of our democracy and it should be paid for with guaranteed public funds. We pay for the voting machines, we pay for the people who work the polls, we pay for the ballots. Well, why don't we pay for the biggest toll of modern campaigns, the cost of getting your bulletin out?"

There are other similar bills floating effectually Congress, like Maryland Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes' Regime By The People Act and North Carolina Democratic Rep. David Price's We The People Act , and Boyle is a co-sponsor of both. But his bill is the first to so exclusively focus on the need side of the campaign reform equation. He'll be reintroducing information technology in the coming weeks and anticipates roughly 20 co-sponsors. "I'1000 reaching out to the newer members who were merely elected as office of the Trump moving ridge to see if this is something they tin can champion," he says. "It'southward a very anti-establishment bill."

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Mostly, a congressman in the minority party who is but starting his second term in an institution based on seniority wouldn't stand much of a chance of shepherding such an ambitious thought into law. Only Boyle is right that there is something of an opening hither. Donald Trump got elected, in role, thanks to his promise to "drain the swamp." Judging past his appointments—nary a populist amongst them—he'll need to show his voters he'south doing just that.

Who would oppose campaign finance reform that attacks the demand side? Well, given that broadcast and cable networks make out like bandits during campaign flavour, it'due south probable they'd vestibule against any departure from the current system. And what about Boyle'southward colleagues in Congress? "The vast bulk of them hate call time and bowwow about the current system," Boyle says. "Yet there is an inertia about changing the organisation because a lot of people are afraid that under a new system they'd be empowering someone to beat them. No i has said that, but that'southward my logical deduction."

Which gets us to the nexus of campaign finance and congressional reform. Last Apr, Boyle was watching every bit 60 Minutes aired a report about Republican Congressman David Jolly, who says that, the 24-hour interval after he was elected, his political party's leadership told him his job was to raise $18,000 a day on the phone in secretive congressional phone call banks. For congressmen like Jolly, who, different Boyle, institute himself representing a district that would always be electorally in play, it is expected that they spend four hours a day dialing for dollars. Jolly proposed The Terminate Act, a nib that would prohibit members of Congress from asking for money—period. Their staffers still could, but at least our elected representatives could spend their time legislating. Of class, Jolly only got six co-sponsors, the nib went nowhere, his party felt betrayed and didn't assistance in his reelection bid, and—lo and behold—Jolly was voted out of office in November. Now Boyle plans on reintroducing Jolly'southward bill in the coming weeks.

"Y'all hateful I wouldn't have to fundraise anymore and I would basically be able to get my message out? And I'll be able to brag that I'k in the make clean coin system? It'southward a no-brainer," Boyle says.

"I didn't know about The Terminate Human action until I saw 60 Minutes and I want to brand sure that, at present that he'south left Congress, the neb doesn't die," Boyle says. "It'southward a really interesting idea. Understandably, we always look at whether a politician is conflicted because he received $2,500 from Ten and then votes the way X wants. Just no one stops and says, 'Wait a minute. Nosotros're paying 435 people to legislate, does information technology really make sense to have them all in a phone call room spending a high percentage of their time not studying policy but being a telemarketer?' That's why I really like Jolly's arroyo."

Despite Boyle'due south Harvard pedigree, he's no cultural elitist, and his party would exist smart to divine some policy prescriptions not only from his thinking on money and politics but also from how he'south put together a diverse coalition around economic justice bug. He grew up in Olney, the son of Irish gaelic immigrants. His male parent was a SEPTA maintenance worker and his mother a crossing guard. For a good part of Boyle'southward upbringing, Olney was racially mixed. By the fourth dimension he ran for Congress, his sometime neighborhood was almost entirely African-American. He knocked on every door of his commune, and his best operation in the hotly contested 2022 primary came in the African-American ward, where he received 81 per centum of the vote. "This is especially relevant after November 8," he says. "People say, if you go after white blueish neckband voters that means you're ignoring African-Americans. Well, not at all."

So if he could advise his party, still reeling from its widespread rejection at the polls, what would he say? "Look, I don't pretend to have all the answers," he says. "Simply one place where you can immediately showtime is to realize information technology's really hard to become people's votes when you're condescending to them by saying, 'Nosotros're really good for you, and y'all simply don't understand that.' Look, a guy named Barack Hussein Obama won Pennsylvania twice. It'south not like people who voted for him twice suddenly became KKK members. It's really unfair, and it's kind of delusional and self-comforting, for people on the left to say, 'Oh, it's just white rednecks who voted against Hillary.' You're only saying that to make yourself feel better. And then my advice would be to recognize that people can experience if they're existence caricatured by the Hollywood or Manhattan crowd. So I would say, yous know, first do no harm."

And demonstrate that you're on their side—which "draining the swamp" of politics simply might do. Entrada finance reform is an abstruse issue; voters don't feel it viscerally. But, for the commencement time, Boyle thinks voters are seeing the way nosotros fund campaigns as directly linked to an insider system that has had its way for far too long. Our tiffin concluded, this Congressman who looks like an intern and who has merged an interesting coalition of disparate groups into a governing majority says that that's what it volition accept now, on a much broader calibration.

"We need Trump voters enervating alter, too as populist conservatives and progressives," says Brendan Boyle. "That'southward the marriage that gets this done. And if we can modify the way we get elected, we tin can change a whole lot."

Header photo: Congressman Boyle Boyle questions FBI Manager James Comey in Oversight hearing in July 2016

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/brendan-boyle-the-cleaner/

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