Money Looms as Larger Factor in ’98 Midterm Election Campaigns

The stench raised by campaign finance abuses in the 1996 presidential race caused many people to guess that political operatives would restrain themselves in the 1998 midterm elections. It appears they should guess again.

“If you didn’t like 1996, you’ll despise 1998,” said Anthony Corrado, a Colby College campaign finance specialist, pointing to widespread efforts underway to exploit legal loopholes and carve out new openings in the rickety federal legal structure designed to regulate political spending.

Emerging is the outline of the nation’s political process as it enters the 21st century, driven even more by dollars and special-interest agendas and less accountable than ever to voters.

One telltale sign of this new order is the accelerating use of “issue” ads by special interest groups under cover of the prevailing legal theory--viewed as a fiction by most political analysts--that these commercials are not designed to affect election results.

Group Mounts Aggressive Campaign

Among the most aggressive is Americans for Limited Terms, which is mounting a major effort to promote its cause in a southern Pennsylvania House district encompassing the historic Gettysburg battlefield.

Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), first elected in 1974, faces a stiff primary challenge from a foe who has signed a pledge accepting a three-term limit in office. With Goodling eschewing the pledge, the pro-term-limit group has been running television spots that label him a “career politician” and urge voters to tell the lawmaker to become “a true citizen legislator.”

The group’s vice president, Paul Farago, is careful to maintain his legal cover, insisting the aim of the ads is not to defeat anybody, only to promote the idea of term limits. Ideally, he said, the ads will spur Goodling to take the term-limit pledge.

But Farago is quick to mention that the group’s investment in Goodling’s district might exceed the $325,000 it spent four years ago in the Washington state district of then-House Speaker Thomas S. Foley. And Foley’s resistance to term limits contributed significantly to his defeat.

Spending Increase to Push Agenda

Farago estimates his group will spend $6 million to push its agenda in selected races this year--more than four times its outlay in 1994, when it got started.

“It’s like what Everett Dirksen used to say,” said Farago, referring to the late Republican Senate leader from Illinois, to explain his group’s goal. “ ‘When I feel the heat, I see the light.’ ”

Indeed, the intensifying heat generated by the new tactics used by interest groups has triggered legal challenges by both political parties to federal regulations that limit their own spending on issue ads. In separate lawsuits, both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic Party in Ohio in effect have asked the Federal Election Commission to unshackle them so they can compete against the interest groups.

Currently, the parties are required to pay for their issue ads, in part with so-called hard money, the term for contributions subject to the limits of campaign law. Instead, the parties ask that they--like the interest groups--be allowed to pay for such ads entirely with “soft money”--unregulated contributions from business, labor and individuals that were at the heart of the excesses of the 1996 campaign.

“Every special interest in America can use 100% soft money to sponsor issue ads,” said Charles Collins, an RNC spokesman. “And here we are, the two great political parties, and we are restricted on using soft money for issue ads.”

National Parties Face Restraints

The national parties are limited to using soft money to cover no more than 40% of the cost of such commercials, meaning that their ad campaigns confront financial constraints not faced by special interest groups.

Reformers view the legal challenges with alarm. “If the courts rule that issue ads run by political parties can be paid for 100% with soft money from any corporation in the country, what you have got is the effective end of the campaign finance law,” said Don Simon, executive vice president of Common Cause, the citizen lobby group that will file a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the suits.

Regardless of the outcome of the cases, the parties have made plain they intend to continue looking for creative ways to finesse the clear intent of campaign finance laws and find new avenues for pouring money into the political process.

“Both parties have taken 1996 as a model,” said Colby College’s Corrado. “And what we are seeing is a determined effort to expand ways of spending money outside the limits set by the law and the Federal Election Commission.”

A Common Cause analysis shows that the national Republican and Democratic committees raised a record $90 million in soft money--$55.7 million for the GOP and $34.3 million for the Democrats--in the first 15 months of the 1997-98 campaign cycle. That’s more than double what they raised during the comparable period before the 1994 vote.

Double-Barreled Threat, Critics Say

Some critics see the trend toward issue ads as a two-pronged threat. They contend it not only gives interest groups too much clout in the political system but also reduces the power of candidates--who operate under spending limits--to control the debate.

“One of the risks of the increased emphasis on this type of advertising is that you lose more and more of the candidates’ voices in the process,” said Corrado.

But interest group leaders scoff at such complaints. “Who the heck put [the candidates] in charge?” demanded David Carney, the former political director of the Bush White House who now heads Americans for Job Security.

This pro-business group, founded by a coalition of trade associations and big companies, expects to spend about $10 million on issue ads during this campaign. “We are getting the debate [focused] on what affects working people and away from what the candidates want to talk about--which is nothing,” Carney said.

The candidates, to be sure, have not been reduced to mere bystanders. Responding to a system increasingly dominated by cash, congressional candidates raised a combined total of $233 million in hard-money contributions last year, a $48-million increase over the same period in the last election cycle.

Not all of the political players are trying to outdo themselves in the money game.

The AFL-CIO spent $35 million in the 1996 campaign, most of it on issue ads designed to return the Democrats to control of Congress. This year, the union group plans a smaller budget, with its officials concentrating more on grass-roots organizing than on television ads. “What we learned in 1996 is that if we had more people in the field, more of our people would have gotten out to vote,” said AFL-CIO representative Deborah Dion.

Still, the more typical course is exemplified by the $1-million issue ad campaign launched last month by the Sierra Club in more than 20 House districts. By contrast, in 1996 the environmental group did not begin similar ads until after July 4.

“We are doing advertising earlier to help set the agenda,” said Daniel Weiss, the club’s political director. Such efforts were not necessary two years ago, Weiss said, because President Clinton’s reelection campaign had made environmental concerns part of the national debate.

Raised Hackles Among Sympathizers

In its thrust to promote its program, the club has raised hackles even among Democrats sympathetic to the green cause.

Sierra Club issue ads aimed at voters in Maryland suburbs north of Washington recently depicted incumbent GOP Rep. Constance A. Morella as a champion of clean air. Democratic challenger Ralph Neas cried foul, claiming the club had gone out of its way to find a Republican it could praise to back up its claim to nonpartisanship.

Weiss professed to be delighted at the controversy. “Look at what happened here,” he said. “Ralph Neas is now talking about the environment, Connie Morella is talking about the environment, and they weren’t two weeks ago, before the ad ran.”