/ATT EDTITORS: The following item may be related to

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Nov 4 1998 (IPS) - Campaign finance reform may not have been as hot a topic as the Monica Lewinsky scandal during campaigning for the U.S. mid-term elections but it proved just as decisive in mobilising voters of all political stripes.

Ballot measures favouring campaign finance reforms, and that would crack down on unregulated “soft money” contributions to political candidates, won easily in Tuesday’s voting in the states of Arizona and Massachusetts.

Perhaps more significantly, Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who risked his seat by refusing “soft” money – financing from the national party to a local candidate – won a narrow victory over heavily-financed challenger Mark Neumann.

Feingold won 50 percent of the statewide vote to Neumann’s 49 percent, even though the Republican received millions of dollars of soft money from his party in recent weeks to fund television advertisements criticising the Democrat.

For critics of the current system, from both the right and left, the election results were a heartening sign of a consensus behind reforming the expensive, corporate-funded election process. Even Arianna Huffington, a conservative colunist – whose millionaire former husband Michael financed his own failed Senate run in California four years ago – cheered Feingold’s victory.

“I really thought he would go down, but he demonstrated you can put your principles above your survival,” she told Salon, an Internet publication. “That should be a lesson for the Republicans.”

In the closing days of the Feingold campaign, the incumbent, who took office in 1992 in a pro-Democratic wave that also saw the election of President Bill Clinton, had conceded he might lose by refusing millions of dollars from the Democratic Party’s soft- money coffers. But he insisted, “This is the right fight,” and added that he would prefer to lose than to perpetuate the current system.

Feingold, together with Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, authored campaign-finance legislation which Congress repeatedly dropped. He was targeted for political doom by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, a Republican and ardent reform foe who pushed his party to fund Neumann. But, although the campaign money helped bring Neumann nearly even with Feingold, it was not enough to unseat the Democrat.

The system Feingold opposes is one in which candidates are limited on amounts of money that they can directly receive from corporate sponsors – but face little oversight on money that the Democratic and Republican parties raise from the same corporations.

In New York’s expensive Senatorial race this year, for example, winning Democrat Charles Schumer raised 14 million dollars, and losing Republican Alfonse D’Amato scored 20 million dollars – much of it in soft money.

Campaign finance reformers have argued such sums, often lavished on television ads, narrow the range of choices for voters and compel most candidates to lobby for corporate dollars – as Clinton was criticised for doing in his own 1996 re-election, which Republicans hit for using soft-money donations from several Asian-American businessmen.

As a result, the victories Tuesday of two finance-reform ballot initiatives in Massachusetts and Arizona, coming just two years after similar measures passed in Vermont and Maine, sends a strong signal about the popularity of publically-financed elections.

“This sends a message nationwide – there’s no doubt about it,” said Kaia Lenhart, political director of Arizonans for Clean Elections, about the initiatives’ success.

The Arizona initiative would give the state’s public money – acquired from a 10 percent surcharge on civil and criminal penalties, an increase in fees on political lobbyists and voluntary money – to candidates who agree to limit their campaign spending.

To receive the public funds, candidates for state repesenative would also be required to raise five-dollar contributions from 200 people, and those for governor would have to earn 4,000 such five- dollar donations.

“This is a comprehensive model of public campaign financing which is voluntary,” Lenhart said. “If a candidate agrees, there’s an absolute cap on spending; to receive money from the clean elections fund, the candidates have to demonstrate broad public support by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people.”

Similar principles are reflected in the Massachusetts measure, which won the support of two-thirds of state voters. Under that plan, if candidates agree to limit contributions to no more than 100 dollars per donator and to limit campaign spending, they would receive public funds.

The initiative is expected to go into force by 2002, if state legislators can find the money – an estimated 14 million dollars each election year – to pay for it.

“We exceeded our expectations. I think it will have a dramatic impact,” said David Donnelly, campaign manager for Massachusetts Voters for Clean Elections.

Still, the political elite made it clear that there was a heavy price to pay for pushing for changes in the current system, which requires so much money to run a campaign that it often leaves incumbents secure.

Feingold was just one example of a politician who faced a funding shortfall, and a near-loss, because he wouldn’t touch soft money. On the Republican side, Linda Smith – an anti-abortion, anti-affirmative action conservative who opposed incumbent Washington Senator Patty Murray – loudly called for campaign finance reform, and was low on funds for most of her failed election bid.

“Linda Smith was everything the Republicans wanted, on abortion, on (opposition to) taxes, on welfare, but she said there should be finance reform,” one Republican analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. “So what did (the Republican Party) do? They didn’t give her any money until late in the race, and she lost.”

In addition, another factor may keep election costs spiralling upwards, no matter how many battles reformers win. By the year 2000, presidential primary elections will be held in dozens of states – accounting for nearly 80 percent of all voters – within a month of the first primary in New Hampshire.

Such a compressed race for presidential nominations will likely require prospective candidates to raise tens of millions of dollars by early 2000 – a sign that the reform tide has yet to affect the presidency.