Putting a Cap on Campaign Finance

Last November during Election day, you could almost hear the collective groan emanating from Washington. In one of the most quiet--yet closely watched--races from around the country, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.), who gave a speech at the ARCO Forum last night, defeated Republican Mark Neumann by a hair, 51 to 49 percent.

Why was this race so important? The main reason is one Washington insiders don't want you to know about: campaign finance reform.

Ah, reform. The bane of the Capital Hill establishment. Two years ago, Feingold, along with senior Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), introduced a remarkable piece of legislation, meant to effectively abolish the corrupt and undemocratic system of campaign finance. The McCain-Feingold Bill would limit Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions and ban "soft money," the unlimited contributions to political parties which are then diverted to individual campaigns. For the last two years, however, McCain-Feingold has been ignored by the United States Congress, left to languish in some subcommittee.

This is the complete opposite of what individual states have been doing. In the last several years, citizens in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon have all passed campaign-finance initiatives. Two more states, Arizona and Massachusetts, passed similar laws during the 1998 elections. These states run the ideological gamut, but their voters all understand one thing: The massive influx of money into the political process is dangerous to our 200-year-old ideal of democracy.

You would think that elected members of Congress, whose duty is to represent the American people, would get the point. Allegations of foreign tampering in U.S. elections and unbelievable fund-raising techniques by the Clinton administration should have been enough to outrage Republican diehards. The efforts of tobacco lobbyists to evade responsibility for lung cancer deaths by paying off representatives should have Democrats screaming bloody murder. Instead, there is only silence.

The resistance to reform shows the depths of money and influence in our government. Powerful interest groups--the media, labor groups, tobacco, the National Rifle Associations (NRA) and religious conservatives--use big bucks to back candidates for public office. As a result, elected representatives are responsible to them and not the citizens they are supposed to represent. These special interest groups are holding our Constitution hostage and will not give it back.

That is why last week's race so important. Feingold and McCain have tirelessly worked to spread the message, saying, "We can change the system, if you help us." And they have. Earlier last year two House members, Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin Meehan (D-Mass.), brought up their own campaign-finance reform bill. While many members of Congress dismissed the legislation, everyone was watching as the bill made its way to the House floor. It passed.

The Senate, however, was a different matter. The ultimate country-club, the Senate is dominated by those politicians who know who how to manipulate the system best. Many of them, rich from large campaign war-chests and PAC money, staunchly refuse to change it. Among these is hawkish Sen. Mitch McConnel (R-KY), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. As the dispenser of funds for Republican candidates across the country, the anti-reform McConnell took money away from Republicans who supported McCain-Feingold, like Washingtonian Linda Smith (who lost her Senate race), and gave them to candidates who could take down his political enemies. Private Enemy No. 1 for McConnell is--you guessed it--Russell Feingold. Neumann's campaign, funded by McConnell's committee and others, promptly used the money it received to run a series of vicious negative advertisements against Feingold.

These kind of advertisements, whether true or not (usually not), generally sway the voters. 95 percent of the candidates running for Congress this year who outspent their opponents won their seat. One of the few exceptions was Wisconsin, where the voters said, "Give us our government back."

It has been said Abraham Lincoln would have never been elected to the Senate today. Many of those who would have made otherwise made excellent Senators, Representatives or even presidents have been shoved aside by the big boys playing big-boy politics. The Founding Fathers' vision of a fair and representative political system has been lost in a haze of fund-raisers, White House coffees and backroom deals.

There are those who still believe, though, and they are making their voice heard. Again this week, before a new Congress, a campaign finance reform bill will be introduced on the floor. It is the duty of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-III.), a moderate who is known for building compromises, to try his darndest to pass the bill. Because the people are speaking, the wheels are turning, and soon the Democratic junior senator Washington insiders ignored for so long as an "upstart" may come back to haunt them. Way to go, Russell. Vasant M. Kamath '02, a Crimson editor, is a government concentrator living in Thayer Hall.