AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
CRACKING
THE CODE
after 40 years of Democratic rule
in the House. Holding just a small
majority in the House through the
1990s and early 2000s, Republican leaders put heavy pressure on
their members to raise larger and
larger sums of money in order to
protect incumbents and go after
vulnerable Democratic seats.
Republican leaders also placed
term limits on committee chairmanships and chose leaders based
on how much money they could
raise for the party. Democrats,
while not adopting the term limits, responded by increasing pressure on their safe incumbents to
raise money for their party.
“If you were trying to become
a ranking member or, if you’re
in the majority, the committee
chair, if you don’t raise tons of
money for the party you’ve got no
chance,” said Rep. John Yarmuth
(D-Ky.), another campaign finance
reform leader in Congress. “No
matter how loyal you may be, no
matter how much work you do,
no matter how smart you may be,
you’ve got very little chance of
getting one of those positions.”
“It’s implied,” said Rep. Beto
O’Rourke, a freshman Democrat
from Texas who supports the
Sarbanes bill. “If you do not par-
HUFFINGTON
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ticipate in this [fundraising], you
diminish your ability to be influential. Whether it’s gaining a committee assignment, whether it’s
getting the help that you need on
legislation that you want to carry,
whatever it is, you’re just seen as
not a team player.”
The current system of fundraising basically requires members of
Congress to devote huge amounts
of time to calling and meeting
with donors able to provide maximum contributions. On Nov. 16,
2012, little more than a week after
the election, House Democratic
leadership gathered freshman
members together for an introduction to life in Washington.
This included a PowerPoint pre-
Sen Chris
Murphy
(D-Conn.)
describes the
experience
of calling
donors to ask
for campaign
contributions
“soulcrushing.”