The Price of Campaign Reform: More Pestering

The campaign finance reform measure poised to pass the Senate today aims to curb something Americans often lament: the influence of big money in politics.

But it will almost certainly worsen an affliction they complain about even more: the proliferation of junk mail, dinner-time phone calls and e-mail spam from parties and candidates seeking donations.

At the core of the bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) is a ban on the unlimited “soft-money” contributions that parties collect from corporations, unions and other well-heeled donors. At the same time, the measure raises limits on direct contributions.

As a result, if the bill becomes law, every campaign and party official in the country is going to set his or her sights on the only source of funds left: the four- and five-figure checks to parties and candidates that individuals will still be able to write.

Virtually all of that money comes in response to mail or phone solicitations, meaning the most tangible consequence of campaign finance reform for millions of Americans is likely to be increased pestering.

“If people think they’re getting a lot of fund-raising letters now, they ain’t seen nothing,” said Richard Viguerie, who pioneered direct-mail fund-raising for the Republican party in the 1970s and ‘80s. “I think it will just go through the roof.”

The volume of mailings from party committees and federal candidates, already estimated at more than 300 million pieces a year, could double over the next decade, Viguerie and others said, as professional fund-raisers comb address lists and voter records to prospect for new donors.

For those who respond with a check, the reward is typically even more mail and calls from party and campaign workers hoping to coax donors up to the maximum contributions allowed.

Under McCain-Feingold, limits on direct contributions to candidates would double to $2,000 per election, while caps on contributions to parties would jump to $25,000 a year from the current limit of $20,000.

For many donors already overrun with solicitations, the prospect of getting more of them isn’t particularly welcome.

“Ugh! We get too much of that already,” said Judith Weinstein, a Beverly Hills resident who gives several thousand dollars to various Democratic causes each year. “I get so much I throw half of my mail away.”

Weinstein, 74, said that every month she gets about 30 mailings--and almost as many phone calls--from Democratic campaigns, party committees and a host of other progressive organizations.

“I don’t mind the mail as much as I mind the telephone calls at dinner time,” she said. “That just sends me screaming.”

Experts and officials from both major parties acknowledge that stepped-up direct marketing campaigns would test the public’s already thin patience but say the post-reform fund-raising landscape would give them little choice.

With the Senate poised to approve the bill today, campaign finance reform could begin changing the way political money is raised as soon as this summer if the measure clears the House and is signed by President Bush.

The legislation would deprive parties of a source of funding that has grown five-fold over the last decade. Soft-money contributions to both parties totaled $488 million in the 2000 election cycle, much of it raised in six-figure chunks from wealthy individuals.

“Hard-money” receipts were still higher, totaling $717 million in the 2000 cycle. But hard money, the limited contributions to candidates and parties used for direct electioneering, comes in much smaller increments, much of it trickling in $20 at a time from donors responding to carefully crafted bulk mail pleas such as a recent mailing from the Democratic National Senatorial Committee.

“In Washington, D.C., today, the Republicans are in the driver’s seat,” the letter begins. Signed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the letter spends three pages describing looming threats on abortion rights and other hot-button issues. It stresses the precarious political balance of the evenly divided Senate. Finally, it comes to the point: “Here’s what you can do. You can sit down right now and write the most generous check you can afford.”

GOP Has Better Record of Raising Hard Money

A.B. Data, a Milwaukee-based direct marketing firm, sent out more than 7 million such letters on behalf of the committee in the last election cycle, generating about $10 million in contributions, according to Charles Pruitt, chief executive of the company.

Pruitt said the volume of mailings by the committee has risen about 40% over the last four years, and could grow even faster if McCain-Feingold becomes law. “When you take soft money out of the system,” he said, “all the sources of hard money get a fresh look.”

The race for hard money is expected to favor Republicans, who raised $477 million of it in the 2000 election cycle--about 75% more than the Democrats’ $270 million.

One reason for the hard-money gap is that the Republican Party’s constituents tend to be wealthier and better able to afford writing checks for several thousand dollars each election cycle. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) noted last week that 100,000 donors gave the $1,000 maximum hard-money amount to the Bush presidential campaign, while only 40,000 donors maxed out to Democratic candidate Al Gore.

But experts say that Republicans also have been far more aggressive and conscientious in building their direct marketing operation. The GOP began assembling a national network of hard-money donors immediately after Watergate-era reforms banned large contributions.

The effort was propelled in the 1980s by the rise of televangelists such as Jerry Falwell, who pushed the conservative agenda and attracted millions of viewers who routinely mailed in checks. Their names were placed on donor lists that soon were being shared with the GOP.

Democrats were slower to embrace direct marketing techniques, experts said, partly because they controlled Congress for so long and had become somewhat complacent. But the party also had a more difficult task because there has traditionally been more competition for its constituents’ attention and money.

While conservative issues tend to center on lowering taxes and promoting “family values,” the liberal agenda “runs from civil liberties to civil rights to wildlife conservation,” said Roger Craver, architect of the Democrats’ direct marketing programs in the 1980s and ‘90s. All of those issues are represented by groups that do their own fund-raising.

“There’s a far greater singularity of purpose in the conservative movement,” said Craver, a fund-raising consultant for many progressive groups and causes. “That’s why there’s a pretty big gap” in hard money fund-raising.

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has said in recent months that his top priority is boosting the party’s direct marketing efforts.

But raising hard money tends to be much more costly and time-consuming than raising soft money. Mailings even to regular donors rarely produce better than a 15% response rate, experts said. The response rate often drops below 1% for mailings to new prospects.

Fund-Raising Costs Often Exceed Returns

In fact, the costs of “prospecting” drives often exceed collections. The payoff comes only over a period of years by getting newly identified donors to write more and larger checks. The parties use elaborate schemes to coax donors along, typically by rewarding them with “membership” in donor groups and generally making them feel important.

Republicans, for example, recently established what they call the Business Advisory Council. In exchange for donations, small-business owners are faxed surveys on business issues several times each year and invited to attend regional party events, said a GOP aide.

Officials at both parties said that the number of such programs is likely to proliferate, along with the mailings and phone calls that fuel them. All of which prompted one Democratic fund-raiser to predict that McCain-Feingold will “make politics less influenced by big money, but more irritating.”