Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:00:53 -0400 From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) Subject: Campaign-finance orthodoxy takes a hit To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
The Columbus Dispatch EDITORIAL
MONEY TROUBLES Campaign-finance orthodoxy takes a hit
Sunday, July 15, 2001 EDITORIAL & COMMENT 02D
Illustration: Photo
If government passed laws limiting how much money believers could contribute to their places of worship or how much religious institutions could spend on social and missionary work, the threat to the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom would be obvious and the outcry deafening.
Yet, many cheer, rather than protest, when government, in the name of campaign- finance "reform,'' imposes precisely these kinds of restrictions on another First Amendment guarantee, freedom of speech.
This is just one of dozens of telling points contained in Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform, by Bradley A. Smith, Capital University law professor, constitutional scholar and now a member of the Federal Election Commission, the agency that polices federal elections.
The book's call for a re-examination of the underlying assumptions of the campaign- finance-reform movement is particularly timely. On Thursday, an acrimonious parliamentary struggle in the U.S. House over the Shays-Meehan campaign-finance bill appears to have torpedoed a new wave of regulation that began to build in April with Senate passage of the complementary McCain-Feingold bill.
The bills propose sweeping restrictions on political contributions to parties and would have prohibited some groups from engaging in political speech in the crucial final weeks of election campaigns.
In his book, Smith urged all sides in the campaign-finance debate to stop and consider the damage current campaign-finance laws have done and to re-examine the premises of these laws.
As in his previous writings, Smith argued that the nation's attempt to improve democracy by restricting campaign cash has had the opposite effect. By limiting how much citizens can give to campaigns, these laws have made it so difficult to raise money that candidates have become more obsessed with fund raising, rather than less.
The resulting difficulty in raising money is particularly devastating for political outsiders and grass-roots candidates. They simply cannot raise enough cash to mount serious challenges to incumbents, who enjoy the advantages of name recognition, the bully pulit and free media access provided by public office.
Instead of diversifying politics, these restrictive laws have caused incumbent re- election rates to soar and have ensured that only those who can afford to finance their own campaigns, candidates such as Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, are able to mount serious challenges to the status quo.
Because individuals face such unrealistically low giving limits for candidates, they donate instead to independent advocacy organizations, which are unregulated nd run political ad campaigns outside the control even of the candidate and party they support. One consequence is the deluge of negative ads that now attend each election.
Finally, these laws have, if anything, led to more campaign-finance scandals, rather than fewer, as candidates and parties dodge, bend and simply break the rules.
One might expect these demonstrable failures to provoke a rethinking of the entire rationale for such laws. But instead, advocates demand more of the same.
Smith challenged the fundamental article of faith of campaign-finance "reform'' advocates: that political contributions corrupt the democratic process. Among the assumptions Smith rejected is the idea that too much money is spent on politics.
In fact, considering the number of voters that candidates must reach, the amounts are quite modest, he argues. In the two years leading up to the general election in 1998, congressional candidates nationwide spent a total of $740 million, noted Smith, or about $4 per eligible voter.
Adding local and state campaign spending for the same period gives a total estimate of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, which ranges from $7.50 to $10 per eligible voter for all elections to all offices over those two years. This hardly seems like too much to pay for democracy.
Smith also rejected the allegation that legislators are for sale to the highest bidder.
This charge is based on little but anecdotal evidence and statistical tricks employed by campaign-finance activists, he said.
Activists seize on statements by a handful of politicians -- or former politicians -- claiming that money buys votes in Congress. But for every legislator who will attest that legislators can be bought, there is another who denies that this is a routine occurrence.
And there are reasons that some people want to exaggerate the influence of money.
What is telling, Smith said, is that when someone wins on some issue before Congress, he never attributes the victory to the campaign contributions he made to sway congressional votes; the win occurred because his ideas were better, he was on the side of the angels, etc.
But when someone loses on an issue before Congress, typically the defeat is blamed on the campaign contributions made by the opposition, which corrupted legislators and caused them to vote against the public good.
"There is a human tendency to blame defeat on 'unfair' factors, such as corruption, rather than to admit that our ideas were not strong enough, our allies not numerous enough o our side not organized enough to gain legislative victory,'' Smith said.
Special-interest groups, among them professed public-interest watchdog organizations, now routinely "prove'' corruption by citing campaign-contribution reports.
As an example, Smith cited a Common Cause report that in 1999 suggested the National Rifle Association's influence in Congress was the result of giving a total of $8.4 million to congressional campaigns from 1989 to 1998.
That sounds impressive until one considers that this money was divvied up over 10 years, in five different election cycles, to a variety of candidates.
During that period, total spending by candidates and parties was $4 billion. So the NRA's contribution, Smith said, amounted to "less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the total. In this light, contributions hardly seem to be a realistic explanation for the NRA's alleged power.''
The more obvious explanation of the NRA's clout is that, with more than 3 million members, the organization commands abloc of votes that most special interests envy and few can match. In many congressional districts, Smith said, NRA members are capable of shifting vote totals by as much as 5 percentage points: "Groups that advocate gun control often complain that the NRA outspends them but rarely mention that the NRA also outvotes them.''
He also pointed out that those who claim widespread corruption of legislators seem unable to point to many specific examples. In fact, said Smith, actual corruption is rare, which is why it is still so shocking when it occurs.
It also is ironic that one of the relatively few current legislators who has been accused of corruption is none other than Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, co- author of the McCain-Feingold bill and darling of the campaign-finance reformers.
McCain was one of the "Keating Five'' senators accused of improperly pressuring federal regulators to go easy on Charles Keating and his troubled savings and loan a decade ago. All five senators had received large campaign contributions and personal favors from Keating.
Following an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, no action was taken against McCain, though the panel cited him for poor judgment.
The relative rarity of true influence-buying is backed up by academic studies of legislative voting behavior. These studies find that "the influence of contributions is dwarfed by that of party agenda, personal ideology and constitutent desires,'' Smith said.
This observation makes sense. Were legislators easy to buy, one should be able to point to numerous instances in which lawmakers voted against their own political beliefs and party. But examples of such mercenary treason are rare.
If such sellouts were occurring on any significant scale, why is it that the most frequent complaint about Congress is that it is paralyzed by partisan gridlock, with members adhering so loyally to party and ideology that they will not compromise even for the good of the nation? Where are all the turncoats who have been bought off?
The corruption rationale just doesn't hold up theoretically or in reality, Smith argued in his book. But on the basis of such faulty reasoning, campaign-finance restrictions are seriously eroding the right of citizens to participate in democracy through campaign giving.
Worse, each time a new restriction is placed on campaign giving, someone finds a way around it, legally or illegally. As restrictions are tightened, more and more campaign cash is going to go underground, increasing corruption rather than eliminating it.
As does The Dispatch, Smith believes that the way to maximize free speech and minimize political corruption is simply to allow citizens to give what they like to candidates and parties but to require full and timely disclosure of those contributions.
The voters can be trusted to take it from there.
Caption: On one hand or the other, cash will find its way into political campaigns.
All content herein is 2001 The Columbus Dispatch and may not be republished without permission.
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