Campaign Finance Reform: The Issue
If Politics makes strage bedfellowes, Campaign Finance Reform has seemed to put together some strange ones on paper. Scroll down this page until you hit the table in the "The Money" section. I find it interesting that in terms of soft money, the democrats have been behind, but not too far. $13.5 million in '92, 18.9 in 96 and 1.3 in '00. Certainly in this last election cycle, the dems kept pace. However, look at the Hard Money row in each. In all three of the cycles, the dems got their clocks cleaned. $110.8, 197.5, 177.5 from 92-00 respectively. On paper, one would expect the republicans to be harping on campaign reform since they enjoy almost a $200 million fundraising advantage. Of course, there are more stringent laws regarding hard money uses. Since soft money is largely anonymous and used for such things as "issue ads" (you know, the hate-filled campaign that Bush waged in South Carolina to pigeon-hole McCain?), it can be assumed that republicans see this as being essential to their success in politics going forward. Finally, it looks like the hard money limits are going to be raised, perhaps more than double. In that case, the democrats need to seriously adjust their hard money fundraising techniques for the upcoming cycle in order to adequately finance the opposition needed to take back the houses of congress.
- posted by levinson @ 3/28/2001 09:49:00 AM