The Constitutional limits on Campaign Finance Reform: Now what?

The concern over corporate influence of over electoral politics is not new. In fact, the public outcry against the excesses of political money in the 1968 and 1970 election cycles was so great that Congress finally decided to try and regulate campaign financing by passing the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).

The FECA revolutionized campaigning financing in four fundamental ways. First, it required candidates and politicians to file periodic reports of all contributions and expenditures, which would then be made available to the public. Second, it limited the amount of money a candidate could contribute to their campaign. Third, it set contribution limits on the amount individuals and PACs could contribute to a candidate. Finally, the act limited the amount of money candidates could pay for media purposes.

Unfortunately, the final version of the act that passed in 1974 contained a provision, written by Conservative New York senator James L. Buckley, that gave private citizens the right to challenge the constitutionally of the law in court. On the first business day after the final version of the act was passed a broad based coalition of plaintiffs including Buckley, Senator Eugene McCarthy, liberal philanthropist Stewart Mott and tax-cut crusader Rep. William Steiger, raced to the federal courthouse to file what would become know as Buckley v. Valeo.

While the Supreme Court upheld contribution limits and reporting requirements, it struck down limits on spending and the amount candidates could contribute to their own campaigns. The court justified their decision on the grounds that campaign speech requires the spending of money and therefore the spending of money is a form of free speech and entitled to First Amendment protection.

The Buckley decision made the playing field worse for ordinary candidates by restricting their ability to raise money, while allowing affluent candidates to contribute without limits to their campaign and removing all caps on spending.

The Buckley v. Valeo decision set the groundwork for the big-money funding schemes that dominates our political system today. Those peddling influence have found a number of schemes to get around contribution limits, including the formation of PACs, the bundling of contributions (the coordinated giving of several individual contributions from the same corporation), and the spread of soft money advertising.

Reforms to keep corrupt money out of politics are rare and usually fail because they are full of loopholes. For example, the ban on soft money on corporations and unions passed by Congress in 2002 has simply resulted in the diversion of this money to permissible independent committees (e.g. 527 groups).

With no limitations on political expenditures and rising media cost, corporate contributions and political favoritism has become a way a life for elected officials. The big losers of course are middle class and working families, as tax dollars are routinely wasted on over priced no-bid contracts, and legislation is passed that increasingly favors the rich.

Voluntary Public Financing of Elections

In a study of sixty democratic countries, researchers found the 70 percent of then have some form of public financing of elections; nearly half have spending limits and offer tax incentives for contributions, and one-third provide free or subsidize printing or postage for campaign mailers. The few that do not include Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States

Given that the Buckley decision is not likely to be challenged anytime soon, catching up with the rest of the democratic world will not be easy. Our best hope for moving to a system of public financed elections is through "voluntary" Clean Money legislation. Under this program qualified candidates receive a sum of money from the state that is calculated to finance the entire campaign. In exchange the candidate must forgo accepting any further private contributions.

Four states - Maine, Arizona, Vermont and North Carolina already offer the "clean money" option to candidates. The California Nurses Association is hoping to start a similar program in California through an initiative they put on the November 7th ballot entitled Proposition 89.

Clean Money legislation is already having a positive impact. For instance studies conducted in 2002 on the affects of the Arizona Clean Money Act found that:

• Clean Elections candidates won seven out of nine statewide offices: Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Treasurer, Corporation Commissioner (2-year seat), Corporation Commissioner (4-year seat), Mine Inspector.



• 41% of all elected state offices (statewide and legislative) ran Clean Elections free of ties to special interests and big money donors.



• The number of donations to political campaigns more than tripled from 30,000 private donations in 1998 to more than 90,000 $5 Clean Elections qualifying contributions in 2002.



• Turnout increased by 25% in the primary and 22% in the general elections compared to 1998.



• Only 2% of all races were affected by differences in funding, compared to 79% in 1998.



• There was a 64% increase in number of candidates for statewide office in 2002, with a substantial increase in the number of minority candidates.

Since the Arizona initiative passed, voter turnout has gone up -- setting a record in 2002 for a non-presidential election. Public approval for the Arizona Legislature's performance has gone up 12 percent (KAET poll, June 2002). More women, minorities and people of modest means have stepped forward to run for office.

It is clear that we must get serious about removing the corrupting influence of money in politics if we want to have a government by and for the people. When political interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. Meanwhile ordinary citizens pay the price of these political favors by doling out more cash for a broad range of social services (e.g. health care, education, transportation) and paying a disproportionate share of America's tax bill.

If we are to build a true democratic society in America, in which ideas not money rules, we must curtail the excess and political favoritism built into our political funding laws.