Chicago Reader | Our Town: Online fund-raising has proved startlingly successful for independent-minded Democrat Daniel Biss. By Harold Henderson

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Daniel Biss

Bruce Powell

Banking on the Netroots

Online fund-raising has proved startlingly successful for independent-minded Democrat Daniel Biss.

August 17, 2007

By Harold Henderson

Daniel Biss had his dream job, the only job he ever really wanted: teaching math at the University of Chicago and researching geometry and topology. But when he saw the photographs of American torture at Abu Ghraib (as he told ePluribus Media podcaster Kay Shepherd), “What used to be my dream job just didn’t feel that important anymore. I said, ‘This is not OK, this is not my country, this is not what my country does.’” He began studying politics and policy and working precincts and the Internet on behalf of the Kerry-Edwards campaign and Democratic congressional candidates.

Unlike many other Bush-minted activists, though, he soon went local. If cynicism and apathy toward politics helped make abuses like Abu Ghraib possible, he reasoned, the best way to fight them is to make state and local governments more transparent and accessible. Not only do they often deal with more tangible problems, but with the federal government abdicating many responsibilities, there’s room for significant achievements in statehouses. For instance, Biss thinks that if Illinois were to become the 11th state to adopt California’s tough vehicle emission standards, it might tip the balance and force auto manufacturers to clean up.

Biss, now 29, is running for the Democratic nomination for Illinois state representative from the 17th District, which includes all or parts of Evanston, Skokie, Wilmette, Glenview, Northfield, and Morton Grove. But he isn’t exactly seeking the blessing of party leaders. He told the Evanstonian that the current budget mess in Springfield shows a failure of leadership, which in Illinois means it’s the Democrats’ fault. He doesn’t support Governor Blagojevich’s proposed gross receipts tax, and notes that House Speaker Michael Madigan has been “a bit more reticent about what he supports, so I can’t say exactly how close we are on the issues.”

On his Web site Biss promises to fight a Blagojevich fiscal gimmick: the diversion of real estate transfer tax dollars from open space acquisition to general revenues. And although he says education, transit, and health care need more money, he won’t support a tax increase without first seriously tightening ethics laws to make sure the money goes where it’s supposed to, a proviso unlikely to endear him to regulars. Biss says he’s not looking to fight with other Democrats for the sake of fighting, but whether he could, if elected, stay this independent and still get anything done is an open question.

What’s certain is that—on the Internet at least—Biss is a hit. With more than five months to go before the February 5 primary, he’s one of the most popular candidates at the Democratic fund-raising site ActBlue.com. The three-year-old site enables donors at all levels to contribute to candidates they like in state or federal races in any of 23 states with the click of a mouse; it’s moved more than $25 million since 2004 and the median donation in July was $27.50. For several days this month Biss’s “hub” was the second busiest on the site, behind only John Edwards’s page. (At press time he’d dropped to third, behind Rick Noriega, who’s running for the U.S. Senate in Texas.) Among state-level candidates, he has the largest number of ActBlue contributions. As of the evening of Tuesday, August 14, he had raised a total of $32,950 from 477 contributors, a bit more than one-third of his total fund-raising to date.

That’s a significant chunk of change in a race for state rep. But he’ll need more. Biss’s prospective opponent in the general election is moderate Republican Elizabeth Coulson, a five-term incumbent who raised $439,000 in her 2004 campaign. She’s been elected and reelected in a district that voted 59 percent for John Kerry, and while she’s no topologist she’s been lauded for her “mastery of complex policy details.” Past contributors to her war chest have included the Illinois Pro-Choice/Personal PAC, the Illinois Education Association, and the Sierra Club. When asked, she said she couldn’t see any reason Biss was running against her other than that they’re in different parties. (But since they are, she took a shot that will sting many an Illinois Democrat in 2008: “What’s he going to do about his governor?”)

Biss himself acknowledged in an interview that “she’s not a cookie-cutter Illinois Republican,” but added, “I’m not a cookie-cutter Illinois Democrat.”

So why should it be a netroots priority to unseat a Republican who’s well to the left of Alan Keyes and Dennis Hastert? Political blogger (and former Reprise Records president) Howie Klein suggested, during an interview with Biss earlier this summer on the blog Firedoglake, that all Republicans are fair game because of the party’s “venal and destructive” agenda. When I asked Biss, though, he sidestepped the question and made the novel suggestion that people should vote for him rather than against his opponent: “I don’t think it’s enough to be just OK on a lot of issues,” he said. “Instead, we should be supporting candidates who pledge to fight constantly to advance our agenda. I’m not just going to vote the right way most of the time. I’m going to work as hard as I know how to fix our education funding crisis, to advance a bold energy and environmental policy, and to reform the corruption, cronyism, and opacity of our political system. In my humble opinion, that—rather than having a particularly odious opponent—is what should qualify a candidate for netroots support.”

What makes this state race more than a tempest in a suburban teapot? Biss thinks the netroots—the issue-motivated contributors of small amounts—can promote good government as well as good politics. “I don’t want to just get there and be independent,” he told Kay Shepherd, “but get there and be independent and prove to other legislators who want to be progressive that they can do it.” Translation: maybe Illinois Democrats no longer have to be beholden to Daley, Blagojevich, Madigan, or Jones. In an August 2 press conference at Yearly Kos, the annual convention built around his influential site Daily Kos where Biss—and Noriega, and almost all the Democratic presidential candidates—made the rounds, netroots pioneer Markos Moulitsas suggested that Chicago Democrats should elect a progressive Democratic majority in order to clean up the party.

The prospect of a netroots takeover doesn’t comfort Coulson, who wondered aloud where ActBlue money originates: “Is it local? Is it from one or two donors? I don’t know.”

She’s right that Biss’s campaign finance disclosure statements name only ActBlue. But as a political action committee, ActBlue Illinois files reports of contributions and disbursements with the Illinois State Board of Elections, which posts them online. ActBlue Illinois’ report for the first half of 2007 shows that of the Internet donations big enough to itemize (most of them), 20 out-of-staters gave Biss $7,850 and 15 Illinoisans gave $8,700.

In other words, if a secretive special interest wanted to reward a compliant legislator, sending frequent donations via ActBlue wouldn’t keep it secret.

The point of ActBlue, says Biss, is the convenience of contributing, not any loss of transparency. In the big picture, he thinks such netroots groups may enable the left to do what the right did after 1964—organize locally to change the culture of American politics from the bottom up. Illinois’ 17th House District would be a smart, issue-oriented race in any case; now it may also serve as a test of that larger ambition.