Sturdevant: For the love of democracy: While dysfunction permeates Minnesota, hope blooms in Maine

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By my measure, the gloom that has settled this month into the psyches of a sizable share of Minnesota democracy lovers is uncommonly deep.

That’s not only because the White House is again occupied by a menace to some of the best features of American-style self-government, I’d say. (Think separation of powers, constitutional primacy, equal protection under the law – all of which were trampled by President Donald Trump in just his first days in office.)

It’s also because the Minnesota Legislature – the governing entity many Minnesotans thought might be able to shield them from federal blows – has fallen into alarming dysfunction. At this writing, it’s not clear when – or whether – the 2025 Minnesota House will become operational.

It’s enough to afflict more than a few among us with a sense of hopelessness. Is strong-man, big-money control inevitable in the United States? Can representative democracy as Americans know it ever be made to serve average people rather than oligarchs?

For the sake of those so troubled, permit a hopeful note. It comes courtesy of the good small-d democrats at Clean Elections Minnesota, who on Jan. 22 connected me (and a few hundred webinar viewers) to an effort in Maine that stands at least a chance of doing something many reformers thought impossible. It could staunch the flow of big money into American politics via “SuperPACs,” political action committees that are allegedly independent of candidates.

It could, if the federal courts agree with Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig. He’s the godfather of what became Question One on Maine’s Nov. 5 ballot: “Do you want to set a $5,000 limit for giving to political action committees that spend money independently to support or defeat candidates for office?”

That referendum question passed with a whopping 75% of the vote. It seems that at least in Maine, Republicans and Democrats alike think that big money has too much political sway. They aren’t happy with word that the top five individual donors to SuperPACS in 2024 sent those organizations more than $630 million to influence how Americans voted.

The bipartisan stamp on what happened in Maine was underscored in one other way: The legislator who joined Lessig at the Clean Elections webinar was 16-year Republican state Sen. Rick Bennett of Maine, a former state Senate president and a past chair of the Maine Republican Party.

Bennett is not a voice from the GOP’s margins. But he is as convinced as Lessig (a Democrat) that allowing billionaires and corporations to dump mega-millions into “independent” campaigns makes a mockery of America’s promise of government by the people.

Almost immediately after the November election, the Maine question was challenged in federal court. That was no surprise. In fact, it was Lessig’s aim from the start.

He wants to give the federal courts a chance to reverse a 2010 appellate court ruling that allowed for no limit on how much donors give to political action committees that operate separately from candidates.

That court claimed that SuperPAC donations could not have a corrupting sway over elected officials. It hasn’t worked out that way, Lessig argues. He cites the special-interest deal-making of disgraced former New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez as one example of how entwined SuperPAC donations and candidates have become.

The challenge to the Maine question resides in the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals now, but likely will land eventually at the U.S. Supreme Court. What makes Lessig and Bennett think Maine’s donation limit has a chance there? Two things:

One: The high court will not be asked to reverse its own prior decisions. The 2010 Citizens United case allowing unlimited political spending by corporations and labor unions need not be stricken for a SuperPAC donation limit to be permitted, Lessig said.

Two: The nine SCOTUS justices can’t help but see that allowing the big-money gusher to continue “is anathema to the future existence of a constitutional democracy in the United States,” Bennett said. “They’re human beings. They’re susceptible to embarrassment” over what has transpired in the last 15 years in American politics.

I hope the justices’ sentiment is stronger than embarrassment. I hope they’re scared of what the future holds when a large share of Americans – upwards of nine out of 10, in a recent New York Times poll – assess the nation’s electoral system as “broken.”

A belief that big money is in charge – and the voters are not – is at the heart of that disillusionment, I’d submit. Americans have seen time and again that politically generous special interests can stymie the will of the people on matters basic to modern life, such things as health care, housing, education, transportation, energy and the environment.

As a result, too many Americans are wallowing in what Lessig calls “the politics of resignation.” They’ve become convinced that nothing can be done about the corruption of big money in politics. That resignation fuels a vicious anti-democratic cycle.

Restricting the flow of special-interest money to SuperPACs won’t fully solve that problem, Lessig acknowledges, but it’s a legally opportune place to start. The Maine ballot question and the lawsuit it generated could produce a win that would ease the gloom of this moment and spark some much-needed hope.

Lori Sturdevant is a retired Star Tribune editorial writer and author of books about notable Minnesotans. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.