ByEdward Zuckerman
Nobody asked, but it’s time for me to throw my two-cents into the campaign finance reform debate. For more than 25 years, I was the editor and publisher of PACs & Lobbies, a newsletter that focused entirely on campaign finance and lobbying, especially court decisions and government regulations having an impact on the First Amendment rights (and ultimate collision) of free speech, assembly and redress of grievances.
The current state of campaign finance law in this country is a misshapen collection of court rulings (most recently the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision where a tailormade set of circumstances resulted in a catastrophic clash of conflicting First Amendment principles with predictable results from a conservative court) and pro-party, pro-incumbent regulations (as evidenced by the FEC’s partisan implementation of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the so-called McCain-Feingold law).
Both the court’s rulings and the FEC’s regulations have created a campaign finance system that bears little or no resemblance to the one that Congress envisioned when it enacted the 1971, 1974, 1976 and 1979 Federal Election Campaign Acts. It’s time to revert to the original vision and enact a law that places a premium on fairness and transparency. Neither Congress nor any reformers ever imagined that a candidate would someday collect $1 billion for a presidential campaign; yet, that’s what self-styled reformer President Barack Obama is expected to raise for his 2012 re-election.
The present law and regulations establish limits for contributions that are made to federal candidates, and a long ago candidate-friendly ruling by the FEC effectively doubled the limits by treating primary and general elections as separate events each with their own separate contribution limits. The law and regulations set different limits for ordinary persons, for political action committees (PACs), and for political parties. The rules are extraordinarily pro-incumbent, especially because they allow candidates to forward unspent campaign funds from one election to the next (challengers don’t have the luxury of starting an election with a few million dollars that were raised for elections held six, eight or 10 years ago!). And they are pro-incumbent because it is the lawmakers in Congress—not their challengers back home—who engage in non-stop year-round fundraising among the 35,000-strong Washington corps of special pleading lobbyists and lawyers.
So I propose a flat-out repeal of those sections of the law and regulations that deal with contribution limits and would replace them with these simple declarations:
“The limit on the amount of money that a person may contribute directly to a candidate for federal office is $100, except that a person may directly contribute up to $25,000 to a candidate for whom they are eligible to cast a ballot. A candidate is a person who currently meets a local election agency’s requirements to have their name appear on an election ballot. Funds not spent to advance a candidate’s election must be refunded in whole or in part within 14 days after an election is completed.”
That’s it, pure and simple. Where’s the reform?
First, only persons are allowed to contribute to the campaign of a candidate for federal office. This means that PACs will no longer be a vehicle for delivering corporate, trade association, and labor union money to candidates. What? You may say they merely collect voluntary contributions from donors and ask what’s wrong with that? The government’s fundraising restrictions (mostly drawn from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1956 U.S. v. UAW decision) notwithstanding, voluntary PAC contributions merely replace fungible corporate, trade association and labor union funds which are spent in copious amounts to support and administer the PACs. Under the FEC’s past favorable rulings, a corporation, trade association or labor union may even provide flat screen tvs and free travel in exchange for “voluntary” PAC contributions, or even make a contribution to a legitimate charity in exchange for a donor’s contribution to a PAC.
Requiring voting eligibility for donors who may give up to $25,000 to a candidate in their congressional district (for House candidates) or homestate (for Senate candidates) will nullify a loophole that wealthy supporters use to increase their financial aid to their favored candidates; namely, the use of their minor children to make contributions. The FEC grappled mightily with this practice years ago, and decided that an infant child could contribute from his or her own bank checking account. Furthermore, the requirement that contributions must be given “directly” to a candidate eliminates intermediaries (so-called “bundlers”) who collect individual contributions and delivery them to a candidate to achieve maximum impact for a special interest.
Rather than creating a special loophole for millionaires, as the McCain-Feingold law does, this reform proposal specifically includes candidates in the definition of a “person” who may contribute up to $25,000 to a candidate’s own election. The days of self-financed candidates, most of whom lose their elections anyway, will be over.
Also, the definition of “candidate” presupposes a cascade of very substantial reforms. Because a candidate is someone who has met all the requirements of having their name appear on an election ballot, it effectively bans fundraising until a candidate has filed and completed all local registration requirements. Most election agencies set dates for the start and end of a candidate registration period. Not only would a candidate be required to wait until their registration has been filed, but they would not be permitted to raise their first dime until their ballot berth has been certified.
Under this same definition, general election fundraising could not start until a candidate wins his or her party nomination in a primary election or at a party nominating convention. This will compress the fundraising season to a few months, rather than maintaining the year-round activity which robs incumbents of the time they need (and often complain about) for meeting their legislating responsibilities.
The $100 per election limit would greatly reduce the value of contributions from people (particularly lobbyists) who cannot cast votes in the re-elections of the incumbents they support. The $25,000 per election limit for individual donors who live in the candidate’s congressional district or homestate will not impede (and might even enhance) an incumbent’s efforts to raise money to feed an insatiable appetite for cash. But it also provides challengers with an unprecedented opportunity to raise a sufficient amount of funds to wage a competitive campaign.
Incumbents raise a lot of money for their re-elections, and they waste a lot of money, too. They raise their money from local constituents, but also from a national network of special interests who give money to show their appreciation for past legislative support and to secure future legislative support. Challengers, on the other hand, do not have to match incumbent spending on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Instead, they merely have to raise enough money to amplify their message loud enough to be heard by voters. They have always raised their money from local constituents—and rarely from any outside sources. Making it possible for them to raise $25,000 contributions from local constituents will increase their chances for waging a competitive campaign and possibly winning election to Congress.
Edward Zuckerman is the retired editor and publisher of PACs & Lobbies newsletter which covered campaign finance and lobbying issues from 1980 to 2005. He is now the executive director of the newly created Institute for Public Policy Reporting and lives in Hedgesville, W.Va.
