Many political analysts predicted a raucous ride this mid-term election, but who knew it would be this raucous: Rick Santorum’s saintly daughter bawling her wee little eyes out; George Allen’s coded racial taunts; Joe Lieberman winning re-election as an independent; the black Jesse Helms – Vernon Robinson, running for North Carolina’s 5th district seat – stating in a television ad that his opponent used tax money to study the masturbation habits of elderly men. It was a wonderfully entertaining campaign season. And all it cost was approximately $2.8 billion.
Once the ballots are counted, so is the money. It’s always some astronomical amount. I suspect I could make up a number, any number – $23.6 billion dollars, for example – and people wouldn’t even bat an eye. They’d simply scrunch their eyebrows, massage their temples, and make that soft tsk-tsk noise before vocalizing, with the air of utter profundity, this trite conventional wisdom: “What we need is some real campaign finance reform.”
In Oregon, this is a major issue; it has traditionally been one of five states with no limits on campaign contributions. During the midterm election, Oregonians had the opportunity to change that. Measures 46 and 47 were intended to limit political campaign donations. Oregon has one of the strongest free speech constitutional clauses in the nation, and measure 46 would have weakened it by limiting campaign donations and expenditures. This measure was defeated. Measure 47, which passed, limits corporate and union donations and expenditures.
At this point, I’m doing my own tsk-tsking, and it is with an air of arrant profundity that I offer my own unconventional wisdom: the nation must stop looking at campaign finance reform as a political silver bullet. Integral to any argument favoring the notion of finance reform are two faulty assumptions: First, money automatically ensures victory and this leads to entrenched incumbent power. Second, lawmakers become the mindless automatons of their special interest slavemasters.
Money does not guarantee victory. Hillary Clinton may have outspent her opponent by a seven-to-one margin, but it was her name recognition and popularity that gave her the victory, with over $14 million left over for her inevitable Presidential run. During the midterm election, top spenders in contested races in the House won 88 percent of the time, while top spenders in the Senate won only 25 percent of the time. In many cases, the losers spent twice as much as the winners: For example, in Missouri’s Senate race, Claire McCaskill unseated incumbent James Talent, despite spending $8,475,845 versus Talent’s $19,408,892. Bob Casey defeated Pennsylvania’s Windsor-knotted, sodomite slayer Rick Santorum, despite spending $13,666,117 versus Santorum’s $24,101,782. Traditionally, the gerrymandering of districts, not money, has ensured incumbent rule in the House. The Senate also benefits from unyielding incumbency, but finance reform will not make an equitable change to the system.
In 2003, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act became active. Sponsored by John McCain and Russ Feingold, the Act was supposed to curb the proliferation of issue ads and soft money. Although considered “bipartisan,” the Act was not without its detractors. Former Senator Mitch McConnell challenged the law in the Supreme Court, debating its constitutionality.
Like the protagonist in the W.W. Jacobs short story the “Monkey’s Paw”, whose three wishes come at an ironic price, proponents of campaign finance reform lacked the prescience or legislative savoir faire to see that their actions were creating unintended consequences. As the director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, John Samples, pointed out in the National Review, limits on party contributions to campaigns make races less competitive. Why? Because hard money goes overwhelmingly to incumbents. In 2004, issue ads from 527 tax-exempt groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn.org were omnipresent, a direct result of finance reform. Now there is discussion of turning 527 organizations into political committees, which would require them to adhere to campaign expenditure limits. When will this madness end?
Lawmakers are indeed beholden to the interests of their supporters, but the way this is framed is misleading. Both the Republicans and the Democrats use the term “special interest” pejoratively. In 1946, in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote, “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” The same is true for “special interest.” Teachers, loggers, environmentalists and developers don’t consider their interests to be “special,” nor do their supporters.
Oregon does not need to change its finance laws. Citizens have a right to align themselves socially or financially with any group – whether it is the NRA, Planned Parenthood, the Christian Coalition, or PFLAG – and expect that group to be politically active. The same can be said for corporations, which have interests of their own. Proponents of campaign finance reform would like you to believe that the system is broken. It isn’t. But if we keep passing wrongheaded finance laws, which often act as nothing more than partisan ballast, the system will break. It will break into 23.6 billion pieces.
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