Reforms Buried Under Cash

American politics are awash in money, from the presidential campaign to contests for city council seats. It’s a $5 billion flood that comes mainly from a small bucket of the electorate.

As campaign spending escalates, reformers warn us that we should worry about what this money does and where it comes from.

But we don’t really care that much.

We might complain about the obvious signs of higher campaign spending. We wear the buttons off the remote control in search of television channels unfettered by political commercials. We grouse about the wood-staked campaign signs.

But do we punish the candidates with histories of flouting campaign spending laws, or unite behind those who champion reform? If we did, John McCain would be challenging Bill Bradley for the White House.

George W. Bush, Al Gore and their parties, plus a host of other presidential candidates, had already spent $313 million before the conventions started.

The total spent on elections at all levels will reach about $5 billion this year, nearly twice what it was just 12 years ago, said Craig Holman, project director for the National Resource Center for State and Local Campaign Finance Reform.

That estimate includes money spent by national, state and local candidates; by groups supporting or opposing ballot measures; by political parties hoping to build their numbers through “soft money” expenditures; and by groups who independently and anonymously try to help or hurt a candidate or cause.

It’s about the cost of one Hubble Space Telescope, 11 new Seattle Seahawks football stadiums, or 170 new high schools in Spokane.

If each of America’s 185 million adults who are eligible to vote gave equally, that would only be about $27 apiece. But less than one person in 25 gives any money to candidates or causes that go on our ballots. More than half of the money is raised by people who give $200 or more - sometimes hundreds of times more. Only one-third of 1 percent of the voting public makes the big donations that pay for the majority of our candidates’ activities.

“Public opinion polls show that people do care about large amounts spent, but they don’t tend to punish candidates for it,” said Kathleen Rutherford, assistant director for the National Civic League’s New Politics Program.

For many voters, money equals corruption, Rutherford said. But today’s politics are actually less corrupt, she believes, at least in the traditional sense of quid pro quo, briefcases full of money traded for a favorable vote on a zoning change, a new tax loophole or a defense contract.

The problem is more subtle, she said. Money buys access to a politician’s busy schedule that a nongiver may not have. As campaigns become more expensive, incumbents spend more time raising money and less time among their constituents.

Federal campaign rules have created an increasingly Byzantine system of giving and spending that is legal, but untraceable, said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics.

“There are a lot of people out there who are willing to give if they can remain under the radar - not just wealthy individuals who are getting pounded by the media, but some companies, too,” Krumholz said.

Political parties can receive unlimited amounts of money for “party-building” activity that is often used for thinly disguised candidate advertising. State and national political parties thwart disclosure by moving money between themselves and candidates. Nonprofit organizations can pay for issue ads that help elect or defeat candidates by shaping the campaign issues, without revealing the source of their money.

`Save the Snake’

Consider a commercial that filled television screens this summer in Spokane.

As a camera flew over Snake River vistas of dams, barges, ports and farms, an announcer extolled the waterway as magnificent and environmentally friendly.

The Clinton administration, the announcer warned, may breach the dams and “damage this pristine environment.”

“Preserve the Columbia River Basin. Support Sen. Gorton and his fight to save the Snake,” urged the announcer as the screen flashed the phone number for Slade Gorton’s Spokane senatorial office.

This wasn’t an ad from the Gorton re-election campaign, even though the state’s senior senator talks against dam breaching at almost every appearance. It wasn’t from the Republican Party, either.

The ad’s sponsor, shown during the first five seconds of this 30-second commercial, was Americans for Job Security.

Viewers who noticed the small type near the bottom of the screen may have wondered about the innocuous-sounding company. The Alexandria, Va.-based group that paid some $162,000 for the commercials was a newcomer to one of the region’s most contentious political and environmental battles.

The Sierra Club quickly denounced the ads as misleading fear-mongering.

“Far from pristine, the Snake was designated by American Rivers as one of the 13 most endangered rivers in the United States,” said Bill Arthur, the group’s Northwest office director.

The Sierra Club contended that Americans for Job Security produced the ads for Gorton, but the senator and his staff said they had no connection to the group, which also denies a connection.

Americans for Job Security calls itself a trade association, although it doesn’t represent a particular trade or industry. President Michael Dubke likens it to the Chamber of Commerce: pro-business and favoring reforms in taxes, civil lawsuits, government regulations and education.

None of that seems related to the question of whether Snake River dams should be removed to save dwindling supplies of fish.

But removing the dams would cause the region to build more roads to handle increased truck traffic and power plants to replace the dams’ electricity, Dubke said. That means more government spending and higher taxes, two things the group opposes.

A study by the Center for Public Integrity, in Washington, D.C., says Americans for Job Security has an agenda that “allows them to hit who they want with limited rhyme or reason - and zero accountability.”

It raised and spent some $5 million in the 1998 elections and plans to spend as much as $7 million this year. Donors are kept “strictly confidential,” Dubke said, and the law requires no disclosure.

The Snake River ads are not campaign ads under federal law because they don’t urge viewers to vote for or against a candidate. But Dubke acknowledged they are timed to coincide with the campaign.

Americans for Job Security is only one of several groups running issue ads this summer in Washington state. First Americans Education Project, which is funded by American Indian tribes, is currently criticizing Gorton’s efforts on behalf of a gold mine in central Washington, and the AFL-CIO is criticizing Republican Rep. George Nethercutt’s vote on a health insurance bill.

Trickle down

While much of the attention on campaign fund-raising is devoted to the presidential and congressional races, state and local campaigns have also seen a huge jump in the amounts raised and spent.

“A kind of arms race phenomenon occurs,” said Ken Meyer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin. “Candidates might prefer not to spend more, but they feel they have to. They begin advertising on television, hiring media people and pollsters.”

Businesses, unions and other people or groups that support or oppose a particular local policy form political action committees or independent expenditure organizations with innocent-sounding names, then pump money into the candidates’ campaigns or their own “issue” ads.

“It just kind of explodes. Once it goes up, it tends to stay up,” Meyer said.

The money flowing into local politics can be more troubling, reform advocates say, because the contribution limits are looser or - as in the case of Spokane city and county races - nonexistent.

“One trend we see is in communities with an incredible development boom, people with a financial interest in development are giving higher levels to candidates,” said the Civic League’s Rutherford.

Although Spokane’s economy hasn’t “boomed’ in recent years, campaign spending has. In 1997, the owner of NorthTown Mall squared off against downtown business interests over the renovation of downtown’s River Park Square, setting records for spending in the mayor’s race. Last year, the trend continued as the Spokane City Council races saw an explosion of political action committees and independent expenditure groups, raising the cost of winning one hotly contested council seat to $90,000.

Businessman Bernard Daines, who gave some $24,000 to candidates and committees that helped establish the new council majority, said he and other donors wanted nothing more than change. City Councilman Rob Higgins, who now finds himself in the council minority, accused Daines and other businessmen of buying the election.

Mayoral candidate John Powers has already raised more than $100,000 for his run - more than either winning challenger John Talbott or losing incumbent Jack Geraghty spent in 1997.

What’s a voter to do?

The real conflict in campaign spending may be unresolvable. The freedom to express a political view butts up against an equal chance for access to the voters.

“Should people be able to spend money as they wish? Yes,” argues Rutherford. “Should they be able to spend it to the exclusion of others? No.”

But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled campaign spending, even independent issue ads that shadowy groups insist are not part of the campaign, is free speech.

Public financing of campaigns would allow the government to place restrictions on candidate spending, some reform groups contend. But elected officials opposed to those restrictions are quick to remind voters that public financing is the same as “your tax dollars.”

Some argue that so much money sneaks into campaigns because the limits are too low. Raise the limits and require candidates to disclose their donors immediately, they say.

“We are loathe to raise the limits when there is so much money gushing through the loopholes,” said Krumholz.

Martin Schramm, an author of books on the political process, has one suggestion that could be implemented without passing a new law or overturning court precedents.

Early this year in Manchester, N.H., Schramm took part in a panel discussion on campaigning while the first presidential primary and all its spending excesses swept through the state.

At least change the word used to describe all this money that goes to candidates or PACs, he said. Stop calling it a contribution.

Contributions, he said, are given to a charity, without any thought of receiving something in return. Businesses, unions, trade organizations and environmental groups all expect something for their political capital.

“We should call them what they are,” Schramm said. “Investments.”