Starr Will Help Fight Finance Reform

Kenneth W. Starr, whose investigation of President Clinton led to his impeachment, will help manage the legal team named Thursday to challenge the campaign finance bill that President Bush has pledged to sign into law.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has said he will be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the measure, also announced that several other prominent lawyers have signed up for the fight.

Joining Starr as lead co-counsel will be Floyd Abrams, who as an expert on the 1st Amendment has represented many media companies before the Supreme Court, including the New York Times in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case. Another top lawyer signing on with McConnell was Kathleen M. Sullivan, dean of the Stanford University Law School.

All are offering their services pro bono, McConnell said.

His unveiling of the legal team, even before the campaign finance measure has become law, signals the next phase in a long-running battle over whether limiting political contributions and expenditures amounts to limiting political speech.

The bill, which cleared Congress on Wednesday, would abolish the unlimited donations to national political parties known as soft money. It also would restrict political advertisements funded by unions, corporations and interest groups, and take several other steps to overhaul the fund-raising system for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Other Challenges to Bill Expected

Proponents say the reforms would help restore public confidence in a government tarred by association with mega-contributors. But foes such as McConnell say the bill makes a mockery of the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and equal protection.

McConnell’s lawsuit will probably not be the only challenge to the coming law. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has said it will sue to block the bill. Labor groups are weighing their options. The American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday that it would be “compelled to go to court to defend the 1st Amendment.”

Ironically, Starr could face off with a strong supporter of his case against Clinton, Theodore B. Olson, in expected arguments over the bill before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Olson left his private law practice to join the Bush administration as U.S. solicitor, the executive branch’s main representative before the Supreme Court.

Backers of the campaign finance bill said they will be paying close attention to how Olson handles the case, in part because Bush himself has voiced ambivalence about the measure. The president declared it “flawed” and said parts of it raise constitutional questions, even as he announced he would sign it.

The bill’s best-known sponsor, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said he trusts Olson would do his job. “That’s his constitutional responsibility,” he said.

Others said Seth Waxman, a solicitor general during the Clinton administration, would also be defending the bill.

Starr became nationally known as the independent counsel heading what began as an investigation into the involvement of Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, into the failed Whitewater land development deal. The probe escalated, eventually leading to Clinton’s impeachment by the House on charges stemming from his affair with White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. The Senate acquitted Clinton of the charges in February 1999.

As the case against Clinton grew, Starr became a hero among conservatives and an object of scorn and ridicule to many Clinton allies.

A former federal appellate judge and U.S. solicitor general, Starr now is in private law practice in Washington with the firm Kirkland & Ellis.

Starr Criticizes Bill as ‘at Times Bizarre’

At a news conference with McConnell on Thursday, Starr said the campaign finance bill raises “grave” constitutional questions. These questions “have tended to be dismissed in the popular media, but it is now time for the courts to speak authoritatively,” he said.

He criticized the bill as a “90-page-plus” compendium of “complicated and at times bizarre regulations.”

Starr served as a clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger when the high court issued a landmark opinion on campaign finance in 1976 that struck down limits on campaign spending but upheld limits on contributions.

McConnell and his attorneys said the bill’s most vulnerable provision was a ban on certain forms of broadcast advertising by unions, corporations and interest groups one month before a primary election or two months before a general election.

But they argued that several other sections of the bill are open to challenge, including its centerpiece, the ban on soft money contributions.

Abrams derided the “speech-destructive, speech-suppressive tone of the whole” bill.

“From start to finish, the new law seems rooted in the notion that speech about elections is so dangerous that it must be rationed or quarantined,” he said. “No election law reform--none--is worth violating the 1st Amendment.”

Proponents maintain that the bill will withstand constitutional scrutiny. But as a safety valve, they wrote a “severability” clause into the bill. That provision allows the courts to strike down a portion of the law but leave others intact.

The case would be filed in federal District Court in Washington, and the legislation calls for appeals to be expedited to the Supreme Court. That means, assuming a rapid trial in the lower court, the high court could hear the case as early as its next term, which begins in October.

Referring to the prominent members of McConnell’s legal team, McCain said: “They’re going to need them, because we are very confident of the constitutionality of this legislation.”

Of Starr, McCain said: “I’m not worried about him or anyone else.”

Fred Wertheimer, a longtime Washington lobbyist for campaign finance reform, said simply: “We’ll see them in court.”