Recently in Campaign Financing Category

In an important test case of Arizona's Clean Elections public campaign finance law, a state commission has voted to remove State Representative David Burnell Smith (R) from office because he broke the law and spent well beyond the campaign limit.

Clean Elections is a vital reform. One that is beginning to spread across the nation. For the system to work, however, there has to be severe penalties for breaking the rules.

Smith broke the rules. So it is necessary that he pay the penalty.

As the Washington Post's Thomas B. Edsall reports, the College Republicans really explored their understanding of family values in the 2004 election campaign:

The College Republican National Committee is under fire for using front organizations to collect millions of dollars in contributions, including money from elderly people with dementia.

Taegan Goddard selected the following as his quote of the day:

"Pay no attention to those voices. They are special interests. Special interests don't like me in Sacramento because I'm always kicking their butt."

-- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), quoted by the San Jose Mercury News.

Of course we can believe that none of that haul came from any special interests.

Remember all of that conservative whining about 527 groups a month or two ago?

Now we know why we are not hearing those same whines today. The Washington Post's Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Thomas B. Edsall report:

In the final three weeks of the campaign, independent "527" groups backing President Bush bought nearly $30 million worth of television and radio ads, three times what their Democratic counterparts spent, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.

Using a different methodology, Public Opinion Strategies found that voters in six battleground states were most deeply influenced by three sets of commercials, all either pro-Bush or anti-Kerry: the Swift boat ads, the "Ashley" commercials and "Wolves," an ad produced by the Bush campaign using film of a wolf pack to suggest the threat of terrorism. (emphasis added)

On last week's NOW program on PBS, analyst Kevin Phillips told David Brancaccio the following during a conversation about big money's influence on our political process:

Well, the reason why the two Americas thing is interesting is because you also have two Americas in terms of campaign contribution. You have the Democrats who take from the people with the money and the Republicans who take from the people with the money. And they're two Americas that are taking from the same slice of upper bracket America.

And the Democrats don't want to articulate a lot of these things. Okay, you can talk about them loosely but big contributors won't blame you too much. But here you've got a Pat Buchanan talking.

And I've written books about this. Ross Perot attacked on this issue. John McCain, we all come from Republican backgrounds. Where were the Democrats who were willing to buck the people the fund roll all these fat cat parties? Because I can name Republicans who are. Where are the big name Democrats who are going to tell the American people what's being done to them candidly. (emphasis added)

Why are Democrats not leading the charge for real campaign finance reforms -- like public campaign financing? Why are Democrats accepting the status quo?

Investigators are looking at the fundraising practices used by one of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committees. The question: did the PAC illegally use corporate donations (including money from Enron) to finance DeLay's successful (and contemptible) mid-decade Texas redistricting effort?

Update: Over at TAPPED, Nick Confessore asks an excellent question about this story:

It does beg the question of where, exactly, the vaunted investigative reporters of the New York Times are on this story. Apparently, when a president had lost money decades ago on a land deal in Arkansas, it was worth an enterprise team. But when the most powerful man in Congress allegedly breaks the law to funnel millions of dollars of corporate money into a plan to maintain control of the House, nobody gets on the case. What gives?

Yale Law School Professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres write another article advocating for their Patriot Dollar public campaign financing idea.

While the Supreme Court has ruled that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law is constitutional, the problems caused by money in politics will not end.

Money always finds a way around the rules. But parties are in the process of exploiting the loopholes in McCain-Feingold.

As readers of this space know, I support public campaign financing. The Clean Elections idea, a voluntary public campaign financing program used today in Maine and Arizona, is something I endorse.

Matt Miller today writes about another interesting idea: Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman's "Patriot Dollars." Miller explains:

Ackerman's idea is simple: Give every registered voter a $50 voucher that he or she can spend to support candidates or political organizations in federal elections. Ackerman would issue voters a special "Patriot" ATM card. Each election cycle the government would automatically credit their Patriot accounts with $50 each.

Candidates and organizations that met some minimal threshold of legitimacy would be eligible to solicit and compete for the funds. Citizens would "vote" their dollars from any ATM machine, where new software will have facilitated this use.

You can see instantly the beauty of this idea. Instead of limiting political "speech" (which most plans to cap private money do, perhaps unconstitutionally), it increases it. Instead of having some central bureaucracy manage public funds, it lets individuals make their own choices.

There are details to work out, and Miller outlines some of them. But discussing a big idea now and then is a good idea -- especially when the need for reform is so great.

E.J. Dionne endorses some sensible reforms that would update the public financing system for presidential campaigns.

These reforms would make the system of partial public campaign financing relevant again, and make it less likely that candidates would opt-out of it. But, as he notes:

Here's betting that congressional leaders won't even let this sensible bill come to a vote. Opponents of reform know that if the system stays outmoded, it will wither away.

The Center for Governmental Studies has released its latest study of a public campaign finance system. This report focuses on Tucson, Ariz., and finds that its system:

is a major success and can serve as a model for small- and medium-sized cites throughout the United States. Tucson's law, the oldest local government public financing law currently administered in the nation, serves as strong evidence that, given sufficient time, public financing can become an integral part of a jurisdiction's political culture.

This news from Political Money Line may surprise you:

From the start of the campaigns through September 30, 2003, the nine top Democratic Presidential candidates equaled and slightly exceeded President Bush’s primary fundraising receipts from itemized individual donors.

Matthew Miller, in another of his typically great columns, focuses on what the California recall campaign tells us about our flawed campaign finance system and the need to take another look at the Supreme Court's Buckley v. Valeo decision.

If you can look beyond the hoopla, California's recall madness makes the strongest case yet for revisiting the Supreme Court's constitutional equation of money with "speech" - the logic that's warped our campaign finance rules since the famous 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo.

Start with the obvious question: Why should a wealthy mischief-maker like Republican congressman Darrell Issa have been allowed to spend the million or so on paid signature-gatherers needed to put a recall on the ballot and plunge the state into chaos?

In this respect, of course, the recall is merely the apotheosis of the Initiative Industrial Complex that has taken over California in the last 20 years. Everyone here knows that for a million bucks you can get pretty much anything on the ballot - that's the ante for hiring the firms that canvass the malls to qualify whatever measure you'd like put before voters.

If your first instinct is to ask, "Hey - why is it legal to use paid signature gatherers, if the whole idea of ballot measures is to let ideas with broad grassroots support come forward?" you're a true democrat with a small d - but you're not a constitutional scholar.

Look at what Buckley v. Valeo has wrought. Paid signature gatherers. Candidates who claim that we should vote for them because they are rich and therefore do not have to be bought. The fact that both parties recruit affluent candidates because they can work outside our pathetic campaign finance system.

Miller explains that changes are needed. Another is public campaign financing, which would take special interest money out of candidate fundraising and help ensure we do not reach the point when only the affluent will have the resources to run for office.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow Jim Gogek examines the alcohol lobby's efforts to keep our nation from embracing an anti-underage-drinking campaign. He writes:

By all accounts, alcohol is the most dangerous drug to young people. Far more than any illegal drug, alcohol is linked to the three main causes of teen deaths: accidents, murder and suicide. It kills 61/2 times as many American youths as all illegal drugs combined. So why do we have a national youth anti-drug campaign and not a national anti-underage-drinking campaign?

Simple: Alcohol has a better lobby.

Federal Election Commissioner Scott E. Thomas makes an excellent suggestion that would improve the public financing system presidential candidates can use.

Well, those candidates except for a certain Republican. One who is going to opt-out of the system since he is positioned to reap the campaign donation bounty from those plutocrats overjoyed with the results from his irresponsible tax cut policies.

The Daily Kos has come up with an excellent idea: working with the Democratic National Committee to set up a system by which bloggers can make contributions to the party and get credit for it. Reading that post is worthwhile to see how the idea came to him and was implemented.

You can contribute to the ePatriot effort here. Kos is essentially Beta-testing this program and his initial success should lead to its spread throughout left-leaning bloggers.

The full power of the internet to organize and fundraise for campaigns has yet to be harnessed. Kos' ePatriots idea and campaigns' use of Meetup.com are small indications of what is possible.

Given the Repubicans' current fundraising advantage, Democrats need to take advantage of what the internet can offer. Markos deserves much credit for making this happen.

Update: As you can see from the link and graphic to the right, I have signed up for the ePatriots program. I hope you will consider making a donation to the Democratic National Committee and participating in this new internet-based effort!