Free Speech Will Pay Heavy Price Under Campaign Finance Reform, Key Foe Says

Sen. Mitch McConnell is sore. And it has nothing to do with the recent extractions of four wisdom teeth.

Calling himself “the abominable no-man” as leader of those opposing campaign finance reform, McConnell says that he feels abandoned by his “friends” in the news media. The Republican senator from Kentucky says he’s “outnumbered, as I usually am” while defending the 1st Amendment against mob rule.

But, as his critics and many vanquished foes have learned, McConnell’s takes on some issues are subject to other interpretations. In arguing against restrictions on campaign spending as egregious violations of the free-speech doctrine, for instance, McConnell is far from alone.

Indeed, as it became obvious Friday, McConnell is backed not only by most members of Congress but by a staggering phalanx of special interests that spans the ideological spectrum--from abortion foes and gun owners to the National Education Assn. and the American Civil Liberties Union, two groups abhorred by many Republicans.

To combat the latest proposal for campaign finance reform--a perennial loser in Congress--McConnell trotted out his odd-bedfellows coalition at a Capitol Hill news conference to demonstrate what one aide called evidence of “grass-roots” opposition to campaign finance reform.

One by one, representatives of 10 such groups lambasted all talk of limits on campaign contributions--which the reform bill would impose--as an outrageous attempt to “suppress” free speech. They ardently defended their right to deluge political candidates with campaign cash.

“This debate always comes back to the 1st Amendment,” McConnell said. “And that’s where it’ll be waged.”

The current attempt to reform campaign financing is being led by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) and fanned by such citizens groups as Common Cause. Friday’s show of force--and McConnell’s recent attempt to portray himself as outgunned on the issue--confirmed what the senator’s critics have long conceded: He can turn perceptions upside-down when it serves his purposes--a tried-and-true strategy for the three-term senator known in Kentucky as Mr. Republican.

“He’s one of the keenest and shrewdest campaigners and pols you can find,” said Penny Miller, a University of Kentucky political science professor.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find a more effective senator on your side,” added Brian Lopina, the Christian Coalition’s legislative director. “He’s a bulldog. He sinks his teeth into something and just makes it happen.”

Admirers and detractors agree that behind McConnell’s low-key persona is a tenacious, disciplined man who keeps his eyes focused on his goals.

That single-mindedness is precisely what enabled McConnell to overcome childhood polio, a process that required years of outpatient rehabilitation at Warm Springs, Ga. He occasionally visited the spa at the same time as another polio victim: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Given McConnell’s fierce determination and tactical adroitness, it’s no surprise that he’s got his foes in the campaign finance debate arguing about such improbable issues as the ramifications of consumer spending on such things as yogurt.

“In the last [election] cycle,” McConnell said, “we spent a little less than what was spent advertising cosmetics in this country and a little more than what we spent on yogurt.”

That prompted McCain to fume: “There is no crisis of confidence in yogurt. . . . And if the yogurt industry spent all its money attacking ice cream and ice cream spent all its money attacking yogurt, we wouldn’t eat either one of them!”

To McConnell, the current move to limit how much candidates may spend is misguided--”driven by a premise that doesn’t make any sense: that we’re spending too much on politics.”

He equates campaign spending with free speech and, as such, contends that “we’re not spending too much. I don’t think there’s too much political discourse going on in this country.”

In fact, McConnell would like to see candidates spend even more money, and thus wage “a war of discussion.” Rather than limited spending, he prefers full public disclosure of contributions. That way, he says, “the voters are free to draw whatever conclusion they want to.”

For all his current obsession with defending the 1st Amendment, however, McConnell in 1990 voted to curtail free speech by backing a proposed constitutional amendment to protect the U.S. flag against desecration.

“I made a mistake,” McConnell says now. “I think I did not adequately focus on the implications of that for free speech.”

McConnell, now 55, was born in rural Alabama and spent his childhood there and in Georgia.

While his father was fighting in Europe during World War II, McConnell, then 2, contracted polio. For the next two years, his mother regularly drove him to Warm Springs, where he underwent physical therapy three times a day.

An early McConnell memory is of leaving Warm Springs after a final visit and stopping on the way home with his mother to buy “my first pair of low-top shoes.” He was 4.

In school, McConnell demonstrated an unerring flair for leadership, serving as student body president both in high school and at the University of Louisville. At the University of Kentucky Law School, he was president of the student bar association.

He was first elected to the Senate in 1984.

In his last reelection campaign in 1996, McConnell vividly demonstrated both his hard-nosed approach to politics and a willingness to make good use of the current campaign finance system.

He painted his foe, attorney Steve Beshear, as a candidate of special interests--even though McConnell himself had the backing of the tobacco and liquor industries and had raised some $5 million overall for the race.

“McConnell accused Beshear of being the candidate of the rich, of being the money person. But he was raising $3 to every $1 that Beshear raised,” said Miller of the University of Kentucky.

“He learned early that big money is the key to winning elections,” Beshear said. “And when you have enough money, you can make those kinds of charges on television. And if the other side doesn’t have that kind of money, it’s very difficult to set the record straight.”

McConnell was chosen recently by his GOP colleagues to head the National Republican Senatorial Committee, making him the chief fund-raiser for all GOP Senate candidates.

And what a perfect fit that is, considering his motto for success: “Start early, be adequately funded and run a very, very sharp campaign.”

That, along with unlimited contributions and expenditures, McConnell says, “is about as American as it gets.”