‘96 Campaign Sees Reins on Spending Fall

The 1996 campaign is shaping up as a landmark in at least one respect: It is the election when the post-Watergate system of restrictions on campaign spending all but disappeared under an avalanche of big money and saturation advertising.

Emboldened by court rulings, the political parties and other groups are deluging voters with appeals in a campaign that may more than double the estimated $300 million spent in public and private contributions four years ago.

With each past election cycle, the laws designed to stem the flow of special-interest money into politics have weakened. But this year, the dam appears to have crumbled.

That’s been a boon to the major parties and the groups that support them, giving them a chance to try new tactics and reach new audiences. But it has caused despair among reformers who fret about what the politicians will owe their donors when the polls close.

“The final vestiges of the reforms of the ‘70s have now evaporated,” said Anthony Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College who has written several books on campaign finance. “We now have a system where any individual who wants to give large sums, and any politician who wants to take them, can now do it within the law.”

The post-Watergate reforms tried to limit spending and make what spending there was open to public scrutiny. They sought to ban corporate contributions, limit individual contributions to presidential candidates to $1,000 per person, require full disclosure of contributors and limit overall expenditures in presidential campaigns.

The rules included one big loophole: An exemption that allowed the political parties to accept unlimited amounts of “soft money,” which was to help each party build support and mount get-out-the-vote drives.

This year, one of the biggest new holes in the finance rules grew from the parties’ recognition that they could use this money to promote their presidential candidates in “issues advocacy” ads, which are supposed to advance a political idea rather than a person.

The Democratic National Committee began using this tool in the summer of 1995 to promote President Clinton. These ads gave Clinton a boost in the polls, White House aides have acknowledged. But since they were supposedly about the Democratic agenda and didn’t explicitly say “Reelect Bill Clinton,” the party was entitled, under recent federal court rulings, to spend what it wanted on them.

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Similarly, the Republican National Committee last April mounted an issue-advocacy campaign to promote nominee Bob Dole, who had nearly run out of money at that point. But again, since the ads didn’t say “Elect Bob Dole,” they technically qualified as issue commercials.

To pay for these ad campaigns, the parties sharply increased their effort to gather soft money.

Between January 1995 and June 30, 1996, such contributions to the Republicans totaled $83.9 million, a 142% rise from the corresponding period before the 1992 election. The Democratic take during the comparable period was $70.3 million, up 382% from the 1992 cycle.

The $34 million the Democrats spent on their issue ads and the Republicans’ $14-million campaign were singled out for criticism this week by the political watchdog group Common Cause as “massive illegal schemes to violate presidential primary spending limits.” The group asked the Justice Department to name an independent prosecutor to investigate.

The two party committees have insisted they have scrupulously followed the law. They also have said they can’t afford to slow their fund-raising--to unilaterally disarm, in their words--while their opponents are piling up dollars that could sway voters.

The Democrats’ chief weapon in their soft-money fund-raising has been Clinton himself, who has traveled tirelessly and often built campaign swings around his fund-raising schedule.

“What’s unique with Clinton is he’s never stopped. He started early in the season, even without a primary challenge, and he’s just kept going,” said Ellen Miller of the Center for Responsive Politics.

The parties have used other loopholes in the system too. For instance, corporations, special-interest groups and individuals were allowed to give money to offset the costs of the political conventions. The host committee for the GOP convention in San Diego collected $13 million in such contributions; the Democrats garnered $9 million for their gathering in Chicago. This money came on top of federal subsidies for the conventions.

There’s also been a huge increase in the amount spent by special-interest groups that indirectly support either presidential ticket, including from the AFL-CIO, the business group called The Coalition and the Sierra Club. Spending related to the presidential election by such groups may increase from $4.4 million in 1992 to $66 million this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Still, the size of such spending ultimately could pale in comparison with the increase that may result from a Supreme Court ruling in June. In a case concerning the Colorado Republican Party, the court found that because of the free speech rights of political parties, they are entitled to solicit more money, so long as those fund-raising and spending operations weren’t coordinated with the presidential campaigns.

Federal Election Commission officials have yet to interpret the ruling, but Corrado said it appears to mean that the parties can now “raise money in coordination with the campaign, can spend unlimited amounts on issue ads and can set up independent organizations to promote the ticket. So we’re essentially saying the parties can do whatever they wish . . .”

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The candidates, from Clinton and Dole on down, maintain that they want reform. And there is interest in reform percolating on the state level: Campaign finance reform initiatives are on the ballot in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Arkansas and Colorado.

Yet some analysts wonder whether a strong reform bill can get through Congress, unless a major scandal arouses the public ire.

“Only huge public pressure may be enough to get Congress to act,” Corrado said. “And while everybody talks about it, there’s not really much sign that this is on the top of the agenda at the moment.”