Earlier this week CCP received a request from a student at Trinity University who is writing a research paper on campaign finance regulation. I thought I’d share with you one of her questions, and my response.
Q: What sort of campaign finance reforms would take into account individual rights to freedom of political expression while also protecting the general public from possible corruption?
A:There is no real "protection" from possible corruption available through campaign finance "reform," because there is very little corruption that goes through the campaign finance system. The $90,000 found in William Jefferson’s refrigerator and the "menu" of bribes that Randy "Duke" Cunningham created, just to mention two more recent and notorious examples of public corruption, had nothing to do with campaign contributions, and in fact suggest that campaign contributions aren’t sufficient to get Members of Congress to engage in unethical behavior (otherwise, they wouldn’t have had to have been bribed). The alternative would be to suggest that Jefferson and Cunningham are/were among the least corrupt Members of Congress, because their colleagues are corrupted by far less amounts of money that can only be used for a limited purpose, their campaigns. Few would agree with this latter explanation, I suspect.
The best reforms would acknowledge that money is vital to political speech (just as it is vital to the press and houses of worship, as we’d quickly see if we made it illegal to spend more than $2,300 in advertising with a single newspaper or to contribute more than $2,300 to a church), and recognize that campaign contributions don’t pose the threat of corruption that is popularly thought. Unlimited contributions, with disclosure for truly large donations to elected officials, would be the best way to go, along with a voting public that is vigilant and pays attention to what their elected officials are doing and how they are spending taxpayer dollars. Absent a public unwilling to put up with corruption, there is no reform, either along the "McCain-Feingold" lines or what we at CCP would prefer, that is going to address corruption in government.
