Chenoweth: Don’t Limit Contributions But Idaho Congressman Advocates More Stringent Disclosure Requirements
Doing away with all limits on campaign contributions but requiring more reporting is the answer to American’s campaign finance problems, U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth said Wednesday.
“That sounds shocking, doesn’t it?” Chenoweth said during a talk to the Boise City Club. “The fact is that politicians are kept in line by disclosure.”
Chenoweth was one of 12 original co-sponsors of California Rep. John Doolittle’s bill to do away with campaign fund-raising limits. The bill, introduced last March, hasn’t seen any action in Congress, but it still was picking up co-sponsors this month.
Among those who have signed on: Idaho GOP Rep. Mike Crapo, Spokane GOP Rep. George Nethercutt and much of the House Republican leadership, including Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Karen White, executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party, called the idea “crazy.”
“We don’t need more money in the system,” White said. “What we need is reform.”
Chenoweth told the Boise audience, “In the last governor’s race, we had a Hollywood movie star give one of our candidates $30,000.”
Actually, according to state records, actor Dustin Hoffman gave Democrat Larry EchoHawk a total of $60,000 that year, $50,000 of it on May 7 and another $10,000 on Oct. 26.
“When Idaho people found out about it, polls began to shift,” Chenoweth said.
Spokesman-Review polls that year showed EchoHawk with an 18-point lead in February, dropping to 13 points in mid-May and then rising to 15 points in September. By early November, EchoHawk’s lead had dropped to only six points.
Gov. Phil Batt’s victory over EchoHawk, despite EchoHawk’s widespread name recognition and national press attention given to the prospect of Idaho electing its first Native American governor, was part of a Republican rout in Idaho in 1994.
At that time, Idaho had no limits on campaign contributions.
Limiting contributions - which federal law has done for years and which Idaho started doing on July 1 - crimps people’s free speech, Chenoweth said. She noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that political contributions are a form of expression.
“It’s not restricting free speech that’s important - it’s giving Idaho people all the data,” the 1st Congressional District Republican said. “We need full disclosure.”
Chenoweth said Idahoans would choose not to vote for candidates if they accept large amounts of money from questionable sources.
On the federal level, “We’ve had limits for years, and it hasn’t worked,” she said.
Doolittle’s bill, HR965, would eliminate contribution limits starting in 1998.
It also would end $1 donations to presidential campaigns that some people make by checking a box on their federal income tax forms and would end federal matching funds for presidential campaigns.
The bill also calls for all so-called “soft money” donations and expenditures to be reported. That campaign money used by political parties or independent groups sometimes falls outside reporting requirements.
The legislation also calls for campaign contributions to be reported electronically, and it requires the Federal Elections Commission to make them available to the public over the Internet within 24 hours.
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