Elected officials are expected to represent the interests of their constituency regardless of its members’ economic status. Even the appearance that wealthy contributors might have greater influence and access to politicians could undermine the public’s confidence in their representative government. Consequently, Congress has enacted numerous regulations limiting types and kinds of campaign contributions. In 1925 the Corrupt Practices Act became the first consolidated federal law to address the issue of election campaign finance ethics. It required campaign treasurers to report all contributions of $100 or more; placed limits on candidate expenditures; and prohibited solicitation of funds from employees of government and government-related industries. The act was rarely enforced, and could be easily sidestepped.
The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 reconsidered the question of federal campaign finances, establishing strict parameters on election spending for primaries, runoffs, general elections, and even party conventions. All candidates were required to provide full and timely disclosure reports, and specific limits were established on media advertising, and personal and individual contributions. Corporations and unions were barred from direct contributions, but were permitted to solicit funds from members, employees, and stockholders. Such donations could be used to pay for the overhead costs of political action committees (PACs), which in turn pay campaign expenses. The FECA was further amended in 1974 to include an option of public matching funds for presidential primaries and nominating conventions; spending limits for all federal elections; individual contribution caps of $1,000 per candidate; and an aggregate cap of $25,000 per year. In addition, PACs were permitted to contribute $5,000 per candidate, per election, and all limits on media advertising were removed. Congress created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to administer and oversee campaign law.
In 1976 the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the main provisions of the FECA in Buckley v. Valeo, including individual contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and matching public funds. The Court further held that limits on individual candidate expenditures from their personal funds amounted to violations of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. In 1988, the Court concluded in Communication Workers of America v. Beck that unions could not contribute funds to political candidates over the objections of dues-paying nonmember employees. The clash between free speech and campaign finance reform intensified in 1998, when the Court ruled in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Committee that contributions to political parties were independent of individual candidates’ expenditures, and thus were not covered by legislative spending caps; this ruling legitimized a dramatic increase in these indirect, “soft” money contributions between 1992 and 1996 (222 percent) and again between 1996 and 2000 (71 percent). Even relative to total contributions, soft money increased from 18 percent in 1992 to 28 percent in 1996, and 40 percent in 2000.
Though individual congressmen proposed campaign finance reform bills during every session since 1974, the issue gained prominence in the 1984 and 1998 elections and became a subject of Ronald W. Reagan’s farewell address in 1988. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.), working in conjunction with Representatives Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), proposed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 1997, which would have barred all soft money contributions. This time, reform forces got a boost from the media attention given to accusations of fund-raising improprieties leveled against President William J. Clinton, as well as the exorbitant costs of running political campaigns, which often favored incumbent officeholders who usually found it easier to raise money than their challengers did.
Specifically, the McCain-Feingold bill forbade national parties, federal officeholders, and candidates from soliciting, receiving, or spending any funds that were not directly subject to federal election laws. It reiterated the prohibition on the use of federal buildings for fund-raising. Additionally, it included federal election year campaign activities that had previously not been under FEC jurisdiction, including voter registration drives, and get-out-the-vote efforts. A filibuster by Senate Republicans barred the bill from coming to a vote. It was reintroduced in 1999 and managed to pass the House of Representatives, but was again blocked by Senate Republicans.
Senator McCain concentrated heavily on the issue of campaign finance during his primary bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Many in the media saw his successes at the start of the campaign as a popular mandate for campaign finance reform. The issue received prominent attention through the rest of the election, even after McCain suffered a defeat to Texas governor George W. Bush, who explicitly opposed the McCain-Feingold bill. Despite the attention paid by media and politicians alike, the average amount of money raised in the Senate, House, and presidential campaigns for 2000 broke all previous records, totaling more than $2.2 billion. The public response was mixed. Polls consistently indicate that three-quarters of respondents want some form of campaign finance reform. Yet, from a field of 28 important political issues, campaign finance consistently ranked 24th throughout the 2000 election year. Nevertheless, Senator McCain and Congressman Shays submitted the same Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform bill to the 107th Congress in June 2001. Nine months later it passed by a vote of 240-189 in the Republican-controlled House and by 60-40 in the Democratic-controlled Senate. President Bush signed it into law on March 27, 2002. On the same day, the National Rifle Association and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed separate suits challenging, as a violation of the First Amendment, the “soft money” provision that prohibited independent organizations from advertising their interests during a campaign.
In December 2003 the Supreme Court upheld most of the provisions of the McCain-Feingold Act in McConnell v. FEC. Then in May 2004 the Federal Election Commission voted not to write new rules concerning the activities of independent organizations, known as 527s, essentially allowing these organizations to raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on issue advocacy and voter mobilization through the 2004 election cycle. These 527s were financed in large part by labor unions, businesses, and wealthy individuals. In the 2004 election cycle, Republicans complained of campaign spending by organizations such as MoveOn. org. This and similar organizations received support ranging in the millions of dollars from George Soros, a Hungarian-born financier who had not been a major donor to U. S. political causes until the 2004 election campaign.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Soros donated more than $23 million to various 527 groups working, ultimately unsuccessfully, to defeat President Bush’s reelection bid. Democrats, too, had their complaints about 527 groups, such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and its alleged impact on the result of the 2004 presidential election, which many Democrats blamed for Senator John Kerry’s defeat.
In the fall of 2004, the Federal Election Commission adopted new rules requiring 527s participating in federal campaigns to use at least 50 percent “hard money” (contributions that were regulated by the Federal Election Campaign Act) and allowing the FEC to examine the representations these groups made to donors, as well as the actual expenditures of funds, to determine whether an organization qualified as an independent organization under the law. The line between issue advocacy and candidate advocacy was not clear and was the subject of many complaints by members of both parties, and the new rules gave the FEC authority to more closely monitor the activities of these groups.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama as a U. S. Senator had supported campaign finance reform legislation and pledged to fund his 2008 presidential campaign through federal funds, but after he won the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, he eschewed public funding. Instead, he relied largely on Internet campaign fund-raising that raised $651 million of his total $741.7 million campaign fund. This huge amount set a new record for presidential fund-raising and made his Republican rival Senator John McCain’s $346.6 million campaign fund pale in comparison.
See also elections; political parties.
Further reading: Center for Responsive Politics. Available online. URL: Http://opensecrets. org. Accessed December 29, 2008; Federal Elections Commission. Available online. URL: Http://www. fec. gov. Accessed December 29, 2008.
—Aharon W. Zorea and Stephen E. Randoll
World History
