Massachusetts Congressmen Could Profit From Proposed Changes to Federal Campaign Finance Law
By Kelly Field
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25–Massachusetts Congressmen could profit from proposed changes to federal campaign finance law, according to experts on the Shays-Meehan bill.
“This is only going to improve their situation,” predicted Patrick Basham, a senior fellow at the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.
Ray LaRaja, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said that incumbents of both parties would benefit from the bill’s increase in individual contribution limits because they typically have broader fundraising bases and better name recognition than challengers. Shays-Meehan, if passed, would raise the limit on individual contributions to House, Senate and presidential campaigns from $1,000 to $2,000 per election cycle.
“Incumbents have bigger Rolodexes, and can rely more on individuals,” LaRaja said. “Challengers don’t have that luck.”
In the past, soft-money spending by national party committees has supported challengers in the form of advertising that indirectly advocates their election without saying so directly. This form of assistance has been considered necessary because wealthy individuals and interest groups generally prefer to give money to incumbents, who may have clout on congressional committees. Shays-Meehan would ban donations of unregulated soft money to the national parties in an effort to restrict the ability of wealthy donors to “buy” access and favorable treatment from members of Congress.
With the new limits, Congressmen are likely to ask large donors to double their giving. Asked whether he would encourage previous $1,000 donors to give more, Will Keyser, senior adviser to Congressman Marty Meehan, D-Lowell, said, “Some contributors who gave the maximum will give the new maximumá.But the law won’t change our focus” on low-budget annual fundraisers.)
Since the last election, Meehan has received $1,000 or more from 54 donors, while Congressman John F. Tierney, D-Salem, has received that amount from 46. Meehan has the fourth-most cash on hand of any member of the House –$2,154,223–much of it left over from when he was considering a run for governor, Keyser said.
The contribution limit increase would also allow challengers to raise more money, and could help them reach the $250,000 to $300,000 necessary to “even get into play,” said Anthony Corrado, a political science professor at Colby College and author of a text on campaign finance reform. Both incumbents and challengers raise approximately 20 percent of their money from $1,000 donors, Corrado said.
But “the incumbents didn’t entirely forget about themselves” in writing the bill, he said, citing the so-called “millionaires amendment.” The amendment would triple individual contribution limits for candidates whose opponents spend more than $350,000 of their own money, thereby shielding incumbents from wealthy self-financed challengers.
Daniel Manatt, associate director of the Campaign Finance Institute, said that the provision “really empowers candidates in facing a millionaire opponent.”
At the same time, the amendment could place John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and other potential presidential challengers in the difficult position of having to decide whether to accept public financing. Bush, who raised more than $100 million in regulated hard money for the 2000 primary, is expected to refuse taxpayer subsidies in 2004 and could raise twice as much hard money under the new limits.
“Kerry has always been a supporter of the public financing program. The problem he’ll now face is that he may be facing competitors who decide not to take public funding,” Corrado said.
Kerry has raised more than $4 million in the 2002 election cycle, placing him third among Senate incumbents. He has also spent the most of all Senate incumbents-$1,594,793, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
If Kerry chose to accept the federal funding, he could reach the spending limit before the federal funds for the general elections came through and be left with no soft money for advertising while Bush had plenty of money for television ads.
When the assets of Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz are included, it makes Kerry the Senate’s wealthiest member. Douglas Weber, a researcher for the Center for Responsive Politics, said Kerry might be inclined to reject public subsidies and avoid the spending restrictions.
“He has also got quite a bit of personal wealth,” Weber said, adding, “though we’re talking a couple hundred million,” that Bush will be able to raise.
As for the state parties, they will probably not be adversely affected by the removal of soft money at the national level. Soft money transfers from national to state parties were banned under the Massachusetts election reform law passed four years ago, said Ken White, executive director of Massachusetts Common Cause. So while New Hampshire state parties have received $256,550 in soft-money transfers so far in the 2002 election cycle, Massachusetts has received nothing, the Center for Responsive Politics reports.
The pending bill, if it becomes law, “will have less of an effect [in Massachusetts] because we closed that soft-money loophole four years ago,” White said.
The state and local parties could even benefit if the wealthy donors and PACs who now give to the national parties decide to shift their focus to state and local campaign committees and interest groups. Massachusetts residents and PACs gave $2,159,589 to the national parties last year, the 12th highest amount in the nation.
“Look for big donors to try to shift some of their giving to political committees at the state level,” writes Larry Makinson in “Life After Soft Money,” a Center for Responsive Politics report.
A provision of the Shays-Meehan bill would allow soft-money donations to state parties of $10,000 per donor, provided the funds are used for get-out-the-vote drives and not candidate advocacy. The bill would ban state and local parties from spending soft money on activities that directly influence Federal elections, but allow them to spend a 50/50 mixture of soft and hard money on get-out-the-vote and voter registration activities. Hard money transferred from the
Published in The Eagle-Tribune, in Lawrence, Mass.
