Hang Tough on McCain-Feingold

The current federal campaign finance system has given the wealthiest political contributors immense political clout and stained everyone in Congress, guilty or not, with the perception of corruption. Those now fighting in the Senate to kill substantial reforms should realize the cost of any short-term victory.

A senator in a populous state may need to raise $50,000 or more each week of the six-year term; some legislators now spend most of their time raising reelection money. They don’t like it, and potential donors, bombarded by solicitations, don’t like it either. The McCain-Feingold campaign reform bill that has finally reached the Senate would ban the so-called soft-money contributions that are at the root of this treadmill. Both of California’s senators, ground down by continuous fund-raising, support the measure.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the leading opponent of the reforms sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), is a poster boy for the power of money in political campaigns. A prodigious fund-raiser, McConnell rose from the obscurity of a state legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1984, largely by clobbering his Democratic opponent, Walter D. Huddleston, with a barrage of TV ads that Huddleston couldn’t match. In the Senate Monday he declared that voters were as concerned about “static cling” as campaign finance. What an insult.

Companies, rich individuals, special-interest groups and even lobbyists show signs of “donor fatigue” from the never-ending beg-a-thon. One tired Hollywood mogul described today’s campaign fund-raising like this: “It is nonstop, it is year-round every year. It is a system run amok.”

The centerpiece of the McCain-Feingold measure is a ban on unlimited and unregulated contributions to parties--the “soft money” that has poured through loopholes to promote individual candidates’ campaigns. A deceptive alternative measure, sponsored by Sens. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), would not limit soft money funneled through state party organizations. Opponents will also try to kill McCain-Feingold with amendments.

The amount of soft money has doubled in each of the last four election cycles, reaching nearly $500 million in 2000. As the influence of money increases, participation by ordinary citizens in government plummets. McCain-Feingold does not address all the issues--the limits on individual contributions to candidates would have to be raised, for example--but it is an essential step in curbing money-driven politics.