Thursday, September 22, 2005
Do I Hear $20 Million for the Oval Office?
Running for Political office requires two things: money and name recognition. At least that is what every Political Science class I’ve taken has informed me. Almost every study shows a dramatic correlation between funds spent on a campaign, number of people who can identify the candidate, and the politician who celebrates on election night. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I don’t think politicians should be able to buy their seats in state assemblies or the Congress of the United States. Certainly America should not hand over the oval office to the highest bidder.
The FEC agrees so it tries to regulate campaign spending to keep the playing field relatively level. Still dozens of companies run rampant throughout this country flinging money at campaigns and parties and attack adds in unabashed violation of FEC guidelines. Finally the FEC is taking action. They have filed suit against the Club for Growth, a pro-Republican organization that has been among the most shameless violators.
In the 2004 Election cycle, they donated over $4 million on political campaigns from private donors who exceeded the $5,000 limit. Worse, of that total $4 million, $3 million came from just 14 donors. The FEC’s suit accused the Club for Growth of violations dating back to the year 2000. After all this, though, the Club for Growth has the audacity to complain. They claim that the FEC is acting in a partisan way since they haven’t yet filed suit against similar liberal-leaning corporations. In effect, the Club for Growth has publicly pouted and whined, “but they started it.”
To the best of my knowledge moveon.org didn’t accept $3 million from just 14 donors. Their contributions have been mostly in the grassroots advocacy rather than direct campaign contributions and they conform to the intent of 527 groups -- namely to spend money creating issue adds rather than finding loopholes to donate indirectly to campaigns. The whole concept of soft money and hard money is absurd. Thank you FEC for finally cracking down. Maybe now America will listen to issues rather than the ringing of the cash register.
