Money and Politics

Editor’s Preface

Editor’s Preface Although there is no biblical injunction declaring, “Ye shall have campaign finance reform with you forever,” this issue, much like the poor, appears to be perennial and refuses to go away. As the authors in this volume show, campaign finance reform and the larger problem of money and politics are not new issues that emerged in the late twentieth century, but are problems that date to the early Republic and the emergence of mass democratic politics. Indeed, a strong case can be made that the issue of special interests , privilege, and politics—and the calls for reform—lays at the core of the American Revolution. Accusations of undue moneyed influence were heard time and again as the American nation took shape. Most notably was the controversy over the chartering of the United States Second Bank in 1816 (the first having been established in 1791 with great contention) that led to charges by the bank’s detractors of powerful financial forces at work in promoting the bank. When the bank came up for rechartering in 1832, Jackson vetoed legislation to renew the bank’s charter, declaring, “The rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” He suggested that those members of Congress who had voted for the rechartering of the Second Bank had been unduly influenced by “our rich men [and British bankers]” who “have not been content with equal protections and benefits.” While the essays in this volume clearly reveal the long history and varying contexts that the general issue of money and politics, and the subordinate problem of campaign finance reform, has played in American politics, the exact influence of financial contributions to candidates and incumbents on public policy remains, as Professor Baker observes, considerably more ambiguous. Money (unless it is an outright bribe) does not buy votes. On the other hand, large contributors contribute money to candidates—often two rival candidates —in order to buy access. Yet in a democracy, even the appearance of wealthy contributors gaining greater access to politicians has stirred protest and has led Congress to enact numerous regulations to limit influence. As a consequence, Congress in the twentieth century has undertaken many attempts at campaign reform. In 1925, the Corrupt Practices Act consolidated federal law to address the issue of campaign finance by requiring campaign treasurers to report all contributions of $100 or more and placing limits on candidate expenditures. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 returned to the issue of federal campaign finances, establishing parameters on cam- paign spending and barring direct contributions from corporations and unions. FECA was amended in 1974 to further define campaign finance reform and to create the Federal Election Commission to administer and oversee campaign law. A series of constitutional decisions, Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Communication Workers of America v. Beck (1988), and Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Committee (1998), further clarified the 1974 legislation. In the 1990s, campaign finance reform once again came into prominence. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) proposed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 1997, only to find a Senate filibuster barring the bill from coming to a vote. The bill was reintroduced in 1999, passed the House, but again failed to reach a Senate vote. Senator McCain placed campaign reform as a centerpiece in his campaign for the Republican party presidential nomination. Although McCain failed to get the Republican nomination, campaign finance reform was far from dead. The average amount of money raised in Senate, House, and Presidential campaigns in 2000 reached the astronomical figure of $2.2 billion. Encouraged by public sentiment against the cost of elections, Senators McCain and Feingold and Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) submitted the same Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Bill to Congress in June 2001. Nine months later the bill passed the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Congress . President George W. Bush signed it into law on March 27, 2002. That same day, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed separate suits challenging the law’s prohibition of soft-money contributions from independent organizations for political advertising three months before an election. In this volume, Professor Baker has assembled a distinguished group of scholars to place money and politics in a broad historical context. These essays show how the concerns of policymakers have changed over time, but moreover, these essays reveal how integral money has been to the rise of...