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August 24, 2006
Campaign Finance Reform
I had the privilege of interviewing Republican strategist Dan Schnur yesterday for my weekly radio show, California: The Alpha State .
While we covered a number of issues: the November election, election reform, etc., at the end of the show, Dan brought up, unsolicited, the same issue that Assemblyman Keith Richman had brought up the previous week β campaign finance reform.
It is not as much of a surprise with Dan, since he worked for Senator John McCain who coauthored the nations highest profile campaign finance legislation, βThe Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001", known as "McCain-Feingold".
It was a bit more of a surprise with Richman, who entered the Assembly in 2000 believing that campaign finance reform was a first amendment infringement issue, but after six years, believes it is necessary to restore representative democracy to the state.
Dan used the example of a legislator walking across the street from the capital building, accepting a contribution and walking back to cast a related vote. He suggested a no-fly-zone, that checks cannot be exchanged within 5 mile radius of the capital, forcing legislators to at least drive a bit before accepting the contribution.
He also mentioned that the Schwarzenegger team is looking at banning contributions all together during the last month of each legislative session.
While neither Richman nor Schnur had what they considered the definitive answer, they both believe change is necessary and I (like Keith) have come to believe the same thing.
Your thoughts?
I've given this a lot of thought over the years. I understand the "freedom of speech" issue as applied to campaign contributions, and I understand that without donations to camaigns, only the rich can afford to run. At base, there are two big problems:
(1) When politicians depend on money to get reelected, they have an incentive to do the bidding of people who are willing to give them lots of money. This means that those with money get undue influence on the system.
(2) It costs lots of money to run a political campaign these days.
The solution, is seems to me, is to fix issue number 2, and then issue number 1 goes away. Often people who want to fix issue #2 call for public financing of campaigns. That might help some. But the better solution would be to ban all campaign ads. Seriously. Let the people learn about the candidates from the press, from the League of Women Voters, and other sources. Are some of these sources biased? Of course. But they're certainly no more biased than the campaigns themselves! Would it be harder for voters to get engaged? Perhaps. But voters who are "engaged" just because they saw some hit piece on tv aren't really prepared to vote. There's no substitute for doing your homework. Banning ads would just close off this invidious "shortcut" for "voters" who are too lazy to actually understand the issues.
Posted by: Steve at August 24, 2006 12:49 PM