For the past several months, Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown has been waging a campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination in the state. Others seeking the office include the incumbent, Republican Lincoln Chafee; Steve Laffey, the conservative Republican mayor of Cranston; and the former state Attorney General, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (with whom we are arranging an imminent interview).
On Monday morning, Brown and I spoke over the telephone about a range of topics related to his campaign. You can listen to the call here (warning: a 13.5 megabyte mp3), or read the rush transcript.
Matt Brown: It's an important part of our campaign and, more importantly, it's an important part of what I want to do after we win the election. I'll tell you a little bit about the experience we had here and how it will translate to Washington.
When I came into office, a scandal came to light. The chairman of the Health Senate Committee was getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the big healthcare companies to block healthcare reform from even coming to a vote. And meanwhile, Rhode Islanders, like people across the country, were paying skyrocketing rate increases every year for their healthcare. People were losing healthcare coverage.
I saw that the problem was that it was possible for these kind of payments to be made by lobbyists to elected officials because the lobbyists weren't disclosing the expenditures they were making, and that if they were forced to disclose those expenditures, of course they wouldn't get away with these kind of payoffs to elected officials for favors.
So we did two things. One is we closed the loopholes in the lobbying law and required that lobbyists disclose all of their expenditures, not just sum up the expenditures that had been previously itemized in the law. It required them to disclose all their expenditures.
We put those reports up online so the public could see them for the first time without having to come sift through files. But equally important to strengthening the law, we got much tougher than my predecessor had been on enforcing the law. We wrote them letters, we called them - the lobbyists, that is - to demand that they actually comply and fill out these forms that disclose this information. When they didn't, I personally called them and also went on to the floor of the House and the Senate and tracked these lobbyists down and told them they had to disclose this information.
We got most people to do it, just through perseverance and effort. But there were still some that did not disclose after that, so we, for the first time, posted the names of these delinquent lobbyists who failed to file their information on our website, so the public could see who was not complying with the regulations. And, of course, the press wrote about it, and now we have full disclosure in this state. Hopefully, that will prevent the kind of corruption that we had in the state in the past.
And we see, as I'm running now for Senate, the same kinds of problems that we had here in Rhode Island taking place in Washington, where lobbyists are not disclosing expenditures they're making, they're not disclosing which bills they're even working on, they're not disclosing their interactions with elected officials. Because of that, they're getting away with wielding undue influence over our elected officials, and I want to bring a stop to that.
Brown: The problem with lobbying in Washington is that the system is broken, and it's broken for two reasons. One is that there's very little enforcement - nearly no enforcement - of the current requirements for lobbyists to disclose their activities. And secondly, the regulations as they stand aren't strong enough.
So it's a similar problem to what we had in Rhode Island when I came into office, and it requires a similar fix. We need to strengthen the laws and require more disclosure by lobbyists, full disclosure. One of the things that I called for in my proposal is that the lobbyists file disclosure reports monthly. Now they only file them twice a year. You file only twice a year, you could have already influenced legislation, gotten it passed, before the public even has a chance to hold you accountable for your activities and interactions with elected officials. So we require monthly disclosure to provide much more oversight of the lobbyists activities.
We call for real enforcement. Right now, it's the fox guarding the henhouse. You have entities that work for the Senate and the House overseeing the regulation lobbying activities with Senators and Congresspeople. So we call for granting the Justice Department the authority to enforce the lobbying regulations, as they do currently with foreign lobbyists. The Justice Department has the teeth and the muscle to actually hold these lobbyists accountable for their wrongdoing.
The third thing we do is extend the window, from one year to two years, in which elected officials and senior staff can waltz through that revolving door and become high-paying lobbyists. And the reason, of course, is that we want to prevent what we see now in Washington, which is members of Congress making decisions not for the good of the public but in the hope that when they get out of office they may be rewarded with a high-paid lobbying job.
[Cross-chatter over microphone level]
Singer: In your role as Secretary of State, you've worked hard to ensure that everyone votes and that every vote is counted. As Senator, what will you do to continue this?
Brown: We need to strengthen the Help America Vote Act and we need to make sure the federal government does what it was supposed to do over a year ago as a part of the Help America Vote Act, which is to set national standards for the improvement and conduct of elections in this country.
The Help America Vote Act was a response to the disasters of the Florida election. What happened with the Florida elections that it exposed, not just a problem in Florida, but a problem in states and counties and towns across the country, which is that our elections were deeply flawed, our election systems were deeply flawed. Machines not working, registrations not being counted properly, votes not being counted properly, people not being told the right place to vote - all kinds of problems in the model democracy for the world.
So the Help America Vote Act was passed to provide some funds to help solve those problems, but also to set standards for the kind of voting machines we need to have, the way to count ballots, all sorts of areas that require clear standards. The people in Washington failed to set those standards.
Here in my state, I went ahead and set very high standards for us here in Rhode Island and implemented the Act, and actually have created one of the first state-of-the-art central voter registry systems in the country, which is really the cornerstone of the strong and accurate election system - to have an accurate, computerized, updated, fraud-proof voter list. And I ran a program called R.I. Vote to increase voter turnout, including making it easier for men and women serving abroad to register to vote.
So we went ahead here and did a lot of things to improve the conduct of elections, but there are places around the country, I know, where those improvements have not been made. And it's really a failure of the leadership in Washington to set the standards of elections.
[Cross-chatter over time remaining]
Singer: Let's move directly to the primary campaign, some specific questions there. Your opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, has been endorsed by the state's two Democratic Congressmen and has more cash-on-hand than you, almost by a 2:1 margin. Can you win the Democratic nomination?
Brown: Absolutely. I've got a great family, I have a new baby. I wouldn't be doing this unless I believed that we were going to win this race. There are a lot of other things in life that I enjoy doing. I'm not going to run a campaign unless I am confident that we're going to win it.
And we're going to win it similar to how we won my race last time. I challenged the entire political establishment in my state against a corrupt local political machine. They threw everything they had at us. And I beat the incumbent in a primary with 58 percent of the vote and won the general election with 68 percent of the vote. Now that, as you know, was the same primary in which my current primary opponent ran for governor with the full backing of the establishment and lost the primary with 38 percent of the vote.
What wins these elections in the end is earning the confidence of the voters. We have over 1,000 people signed on to my campaign committee, people from all across this state of all different backgrounds. And the reason why people are getting involved in my race and the reason we're going to win this is that people know that the crowd that we've had in office for all these years hasn't gotten the job done. That's why people can't find a decent school for their kids, they can't afford their healthcare, they can't afford to heat their homes.
So they know that we need a very different kind of leadership. They know the fact that I spent most of my adult life working directly in communities, in neighborhoods with people is a good, an important kind of experience to bring to the United States Senate, because I understand what's going on in people's lives.
They know the fact that, as Secretary of State, I have fought some of the most powerful interest groups - not just in the state, but in the country, including the Bush administration, to make it possible for Rhode Islanders to buy their prescription drugs from Canada; including the lobbyists; including the healthcare companies, to get an Insurance Commissioner in our state and oversee the rising healthcare costs.
And they know that this is the kind of leadership that we need in Washington, leadership that does not wait for permission from the establishment or from the interest groups to do things, but leadership that does what is right no matter how tough the pressure. And they know from my record that's what I'll do, and that's why we're going to win this race.
Singer: Do we have time for one more quick question?
[Cross-chatter over time remaining]
Brown: What's your last question?
Singer: I just wanted to know if you had anything specific to the blogosphere about the campaign.
Brown: I'd say get involved, pay attention to it. It's not early anymore. This is a major race. This has been identified as one of best chances we have in the country to win a Senate seat back.
Don't wait. This really begins now. Really, the beginning of the year is when this campaign gets into high gear. This is a seat we should win, we need to win - this is a 4:1 Democrat state - and we need people all around the country to get involved, speak out, help us, come out here, feet on the street.
I know that there's a lot of talent and a lot of energy, a lot of commitment and conviction out there in the blogosphere, and we want all of it involved in our race.
Singer: Terrific. Well thank you so much and good luck.
Brown: OK. Take care.
For more on Brown, check out his MyDD diary.
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