Campaign-finance reform is one of those issues that once aroused passions and now evokes yawns. So much has been written and said about the subject and so little done, at least recently that even the most zealous reformers have moved on to other causes: childproof handguns, global warming, abolishing the Electoral College.
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Part of the problem is that substantial reform of the way campaigns are financed actually took place almost three decades ago. After the Watergate break-in, and subsequent revelations about the way money was raised and spent by the Nixon re-election committee in 1972, there was a major movement to overhaul campaign-finance laws at both the federal and state levels.
And the movement achieved many of its goals. Gone were anonymous donations; virtually every dollar contributed to candidates had to be reported. Gone were excessive contributions; in most elections, limits were placed on the amount an individual or group could contribute to a campaign. Gone were unlimited expenditures; candidates for president (and in many states, including New Jersey, candidates for governor) were now eligible to receive public financing for their campaigns and, in exchange, agreed to accept limits on expenditures.
The cornerstone of these reforms was disclosure. Even in campaigns where contributions and expenditures were not capped, every contribution and expenditure still had to be reported to a state or federal commission, which made these reports available to the press and the public. Thus, it was possible to track the flow of money from a particular individual or interest group to a particular candidate, and identify quite clearly those instances in which the money coming into a public official’s campaign and the policies coming out of that same official’s office might be more than coincidental.
That system worked pretty well until two things happened. First, campaigns for office at all levels started getting very expensive. Then, the special interests wised up to the fact that if they gave generously to all the candidates, they could get what they wanted regardless of who was elected.
Now the money flowed freely again and disclosure no longer functioned as the deterrent it once was.
Which brings us to the current state of affairs in New Jersey, where a bipartisan group Citizens for the Public Good has come up with a whole new approach to campaign-finance reform. Instead of tinkering with campaign-finance laws in an effort to muzzle the voice of the special interests, this group wants to change the way the laws are made as a means of amplifying the voice of the people.
The group proposes to allow citizens to petition the Legislature to change laws that fall into four specific categories: campaign finance, government ethics, the influence of special interests and the conduct of elections. The Legislature would have six months to adopt the changes requested by the citizens. If the Legislature fails to act, the proposed change would be put on the ballot and voters would decide the issue directly.
It’s a very limited form of initiative and referendum and, because it is so limited, it’s less threatening (and therefore, in our view, more worthy of serious consideration) than full-scale, consequences-be-damned, California-style I&R.
Our major objection to I&R is that it inappropriately, and often unwisely, takes the representative out of representative democracy. In this instance, however, the specific areas targeted campaign finance, elections, ethics and lobbying are precisely the areas that our representatives themselves are least likely to set about reforming, since their incumbency gives them a powerful, vested interest in perpetuating the status quo.
And that is one option that the rest of us ought not to consider acceptable.
