Thursday, June 09, 2005
A little campaign finance blogging
I’ve wanted to blog for a while on campaign finance issues, but have felt constrained due to my employment at campaign finance policy institute. Well, as of today that is no longer an issue, so here’s a look at the subject.
Everyone knows about McCain – Feingold, or as we say in the trade, BCRA (the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act. On a completely side note, what is it about “bipartisanship” that gets people so wet? More than three people in each party agree on something and we celebrate like it’s 1999 or something. Usually bipartisanship simply means “Republicans sell out,” and this was no exception.) I opposed BCRA on both policy and constitutional grounds, and nothing that has occurred in the past three years makes me believe that my opposition was misguided.
On the plus side it can be said that it did not have nearly the deleterious consequences for the parties many feared. The Democrats in particular thought they would have been hardest hit thanks in large part to their over-reliance on soft money. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when it comes to campaign finance the Democrats have been the party of the rich and Republicans the party of the middle (actually that’s also the case when it comes to voting, but I’d hate to spoil the Democratic mythology of them being the party of the little guy). And at first the Republicans easily fared better than the Democrats. In the first 6 months of the 2003-2004 election cycle the RNC raised 55.6 million dollars as compared to 18.8 million for the Democrats, and still had a 2:1 advantage by the end of calendar year 2003. Overall, the three party committees on the Republican side – the RNC, NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) and NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) raised more than double ($206.8 million as compared to $95.2 million) than the three corresponding Democratic committees. More importantly, Republicans were able to raise almost as much in hard money alone in 2003 as they had in hard and soft combined in 2001. The Democrats, meanwhile, were not quite as successful.
But the Democrats managed to erase most of the deficit in calendar 2004. A little Bush hatred went a long way. In fact by the end of the 2003-2004 election cycle the DNC wound up raising nearly $10 million more than the RNC, and the overall fiscal edge was very narrow for the Republican committees. All in all the six party committees managed to raise roughly 1.2 billion dollars in 2003-2004, more than the amount that they had raised in hard and soft combined in previous election cycles.
But the soft money did not disappear, at least not completely. The emergence of so-called 527 groups was one of the big stories of the 2004 election. And it is here where the Democrats held a severe advantage. Most of the primary groups and donors were left-leaning. Led by moguls such as George Soros and Steven Bing, the left funded a full throttle assault on the president in 2004 through groups like Move On and other left-wing organizations. Of course it wasn’t until the right funded one of their own – Swift Boats Veterans – that anyone noticed the “problem” that these 527 groups posed. So of course the guardian of our republic – John McCain – is paving the way for more legislation that will further erode free speech in this country.
This of course comes as a shock to approximately zero of BCRA’s critics. Anyone with a hint of common sense understood that one cannot remove money from politics. BCRA’s defenders now claim that they never intended to remove money from politics, but instead desired to remove the corrupting influences of said money.
But how is the present situation any better? Instead of all of the money being streamlined to the parties, a cacophony of interest groups has emerged to claim influence upon the electoral system. Had John Kerry been elected last year (shudder), would he have owed any less to George Soros than had Soros given his millions directly to Kerry’s campaign or to the party? Soros could easily have laid claim to being chiefly responsible for Kerry’s election, and who knows how beholden Kerry would have been beholden to appeasing Soros’ ideological interests.
No matter how you cut it, this is a repudiation of BCRA. Let’s say that the money that Soros raised is not a “corrupting” influence. No matter how many millions one raises for a candidate or in the interest of a candidate, the candidate will primarily be beholden to his or her constituents. Then why did we need BCRA? On the other hand, if money is as corrupting an influence as reformers say it is, it’s clear that BCRA failed in its aim to remove the corrupting influence of money. And no matter what reform comes next, the money will find a way into the system. The only real effects of reform are to make the system more complicated and to stifle freedom of political speech – in other words the very type of speech the Framers of the Bill of Rights intended to protect.
Everyone knows about McCain – Feingold, or as we say in the trade, BCRA (the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act. On a completely side note, what is it about “bipartisanship” that gets people so wet? More than three people in each party agree on something and we celebrate like it’s 1999 or something. Usually bipartisanship simply means “Republicans sell out,” and this was no exception.) I opposed BCRA on both policy and constitutional grounds, and nothing that has occurred in the past three years makes me believe that my opposition was misguided.
On the plus side it can be said that it did not have nearly the deleterious consequences for the parties many feared. The Democrats in particular thought they would have been hardest hit thanks in large part to their over-reliance on soft money. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when it comes to campaign finance the Democrats have been the party of the rich and Republicans the party of the middle (actually that’s also the case when it comes to voting, but I’d hate to spoil the Democratic mythology of them being the party of the little guy). And at first the Republicans easily fared better than the Democrats. In the first 6 months of the 2003-2004 election cycle the RNC raised 55.6 million dollars as compared to 18.8 million for the Democrats, and still had a 2:1 advantage by the end of calendar year 2003. Overall, the three party committees on the Republican side – the RNC, NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) and NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) raised more than double ($206.8 million as compared to $95.2 million) than the three corresponding Democratic committees. More importantly, Republicans were able to raise almost as much in hard money alone in 2003 as they had in hard and soft combined in 2001. The Democrats, meanwhile, were not quite as successful.
But the Democrats managed to erase most of the deficit in calendar 2004. A little Bush hatred went a long way. In fact by the end of the 2003-2004 election cycle the DNC wound up raising nearly $10 million more than the RNC, and the overall fiscal edge was very narrow for the Republican committees. All in all the six party committees managed to raise roughly 1.2 billion dollars in 2003-2004, more than the amount that they had raised in hard and soft combined in previous election cycles.
But the soft money did not disappear, at least not completely. The emergence of so-called 527 groups was one of the big stories of the 2004 election. And it is here where the Democrats held a severe advantage. Most of the primary groups and donors were left-leaning. Led by moguls such as George Soros and Steven Bing, the left funded a full throttle assault on the president in 2004 through groups like Move On and other left-wing organizations. Of course it wasn’t until the right funded one of their own – Swift Boats Veterans – that anyone noticed the “problem” that these 527 groups posed. So of course the guardian of our republic – John McCain – is paving the way for more legislation that will further erode free speech in this country.
This of course comes as a shock to approximately zero of BCRA’s critics. Anyone with a hint of common sense understood that one cannot remove money from politics. BCRA’s defenders now claim that they never intended to remove money from politics, but instead desired to remove the corrupting influences of said money.
But how is the present situation any better? Instead of all of the money being streamlined to the parties, a cacophony of interest groups has emerged to claim influence upon the electoral system. Had John Kerry been elected last year (shudder), would he have owed any less to George Soros than had Soros given his millions directly to Kerry’s campaign or to the party? Soros could easily have laid claim to being chiefly responsible for Kerry’s election, and who knows how beholden Kerry would have been beholden to appeasing Soros’ ideological interests.
No matter how you cut it, this is a repudiation of BCRA. Let’s say that the money that Soros raised is not a “corrupting” influence. No matter how many millions one raises for a candidate or in the interest of a candidate, the candidate will primarily be beholden to his or her constituents. Then why did we need BCRA? On the other hand, if money is as corrupting an influence as reformers say it is, it’s clear that BCRA failed in its aim to remove the corrupting influence of money. And no matter what reform comes next, the money will find a way into the system. The only real effects of reform are to make the system more complicated and to stifle freedom of political speech – in other words the very type of speech the Framers of the Bill of Rights intended to protect.
# posted by Paul Zummo : 11:03 AM
