Pollster Says Campaign Reform Laws Put Incumbents and Celebrities Ahead

A political pollster said last night that the campaign reform laws passed this year will defeat many of their original purposes by giving incumbents and celebrities running for office a significant advantage over other challengers.

Speaking at Lowell House, John Gorman, founder of Cambridge Survey Research, a political and business polling firm, said that the new limits on campaign spending will "put an emphasis on name-recognition" but that candidates will have to find a way other than spending money to get it.

He said the laws will be "good for sons of famous men, athletes, T.V. announcers and astronauts" who already have name-recognition. "That seems to be a lot less wise from a public-policy point of view than letting Ruth Farkas buy an ambassadorship to Luxembourg," he said.

Gorman said a significant effect of the new laws will be to "restrict information and reduce communication" from candidates, especially challengers. Incumbent congressmen are allowed two free annual occupant mailings to their districts, but Gorman said, "if you're a challenger" the postage alone for that much mailing would "take a healthy chunk out of your $90,000."

Further restricting challenger effectiveness are the 'spending proportional to population' guidelines for Senate races, Gorman said. While fixed costs of candidacy--phones, secretary, speech-writers--remain fairly constant from state to state, in Delaware for example the new laws will make simply opening an office almost impossible for a Senatorial candidate, he said.

Gorman predicted that political machines will become more powerful as a result of the new laws, since they can guarantee name-recognition without too much cash expense.

He said the laws should have provided for free radio and television time for all candidates, but that that would have "given the advantage back to challengers."

Instead of attacking problems of "presidential power, spying, wiretapping, and jury-tampering" which he said had originally inspired the laws, Gorman said the laws merely made the question of how to get the money to run for office at all the "biggest dilemma of 1976."