Comments from California State Senator Steve Glazer

We're very used to having elections where candidates are asked questions and their answers are public. It's common in our democracy to have public forums and public debates, and it’s also common to have questions published in the newspaper with the answers from all the candidates that are running for office. That’s a healthy, good part of our democracy, and it’s certainly very transparent for all to see.

But things have changed over the last few decades, where a lot of the questions that are being asked aren’t being answered for everybody to see and hear. They’re being put out by interest groups, who want candidates to answer very specific questions, and to do so in a private forum in a private setting.

These candidate questionnaires are from groups that you are very familiar with: the National Organization for Women; the California Teachers Association; the California League of Conservation Voters; the Pro-Life Council; Planned Parenthood; the California League of Cities; the National Rifle Association; Service Employees International Union; the Sierra Club; even the Nurses Association. There are few interest groups in California that don’t use these candidate questionnaires.

And here's the deal: Groups have the right to ask candidates anything they want—there's nothing wrong with that, although I would say that the more specific the questions get, the more challenging it is for any candidate to answer them honestly. If there are broad questions, asking, for example, “What would you do to make our economy work better and create jobs?” those are safe places for candidates to give their best thoughts about what they can do in office to promote their point of view. But the narrower the questions get, the more they enter into some dangerous territory because candidates don’t know the exact circumstances in which they’re going to cast a vote on a legislative matter. They don’t know what the state of the economy will be or what the state of the budget will be. It’s risky to put forward a position—a very specific position—when they really don't know all the details and they haven’t had the benefit of a public hearing and public input.

Groups still have the right to ask those questions, and candidates should be expected to give their thoughts about those issues as best they can— that's a healthy part of our democracy. But the problem with these candidate questionnaires is the issue of transparency. Most of these question and answer instruments are kept secret. Nobody knows the questions or answers except for the interest groups involved.

I refer to these secret questionnaires as the new smoke-filled “back room” of politics because many of these groups are asking for commitments, and they don't want anyone really to know about them.

Our elected officials are essentially making secret pledges to protect the status quo before they are even sworn into office. Questionnaires are not just pursuing position insights. As noted by San Francisco Chronicle reporter, John Diaz, they are, “demanding to know, before a politician enters office: ‘Who’s your daddy?’ Voters deserve to know the answer.”

When you go through these questionnaires, there's no doubt about the answers that the interest group wants to hear from you.

Most of the questions require yes or no answers. Some of them have more than 70 questions. One is more than 13 pages long. If you don’t fill out these questionnaires, you're not going to get an interview by the group, you’re not going to get an endorsement, and you're not going to get any kind of campaign contribution. So these questionnaires are the entry point for this very insidious relationship between interests and candidates.

In my most recent election for office, I didn't fill out any of them, and I took the consequences of that. I said that if I had a position on a public issue, I posted it on my webpage for everybody to see. I challenged my opponent to do the same, to disclose: If you felt it was important to fill these questionnaires out, then let everybody know the answer.

In so many elections that we’re seeing today, candidates preach their independence from interest groups: “I’m going to stand up for the people.” Requiring them to disclose any answers to questionnaires is holding them accountable for those claims: Well did you make promises? Who did you make them to? What did you say? If you’re going to say you're independent, this is your chance to prove it. As the editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee wrote, “Questions posed by interest groups and the answers given should be public. Voters should make that a litmus test. I certainly will.”