The Gaggers and Gag-making: Hypocrisy among the campaign-finance reformers

National Review, March 11, 2002 by Bradley A. Smith

Then too, Shays-Meehan was supported down the homestretch by a television "issue advertising" campaign funded by the Campaign for America (CFA), a creation of Jerome Kohlberg. These ads ran in the congressional districts of wavering congressmen. In addition, CFA operated phone banks in 30 congressional districts. This campaign was paid for with unregulated soft money. In a classic example of "free speech for me but not for thee," most of that spending would remain legal under Shays-Meehan.

However, the heart of the operation to pass Shays-Meehan was not grassroots lobbying, but old-fashioned Washington lobbying. Though supporters had been pushing the bill since the 107th Congress first met in January 2001, and though the sponsors had been gathering signatures on a discharge petition to force the bill to the floor since July, they still spent the evening before the opening of the House debate, and part of the day on which the bill was being debated, redrafting the legislation. According to press reports, pro-reform lobbyists, including former McCain 2000 counsel Trevor Potter, Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer, and Don Simon of Common Cause, drafted key portions of the bill, at times working out of offices in the Capitol. The final version of the complex, 86-page bill was unveiled a few minutes before midnight.

The bill, as it emerged from this redraft, included a highly technical provision allowing parties to pay off hard-money debts incurred before the 2002 elections (hard money being limited contributions from individuals and PACs, which may be used for any purpose) with soft money (unlimited contributions from corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals, which normally cannot be used to expressly advocate the election or defeat of specific candidates). The provision favored Democrats, who have plenty of soft money but are short on hard money. Republican operatives cried foul and charged that the provision was an intentional effort to benefit the Democrats. The more likely explanation is that it was simply an error caused by the haste of last- minute drafting. But imagine the outcry these same "reform" groups would have raised had lobbyists for any other interest helped draft a bill, and accidentally included a technical error beneficial to the bill's primary supporters in Congress. Would the reformers have given the drafters the benefit of a doubt? Never. The error briefly jeopardized the bill and drew a veto threat from the White House, before supporters used a parliamentary maneuver to change the language before the final vote.

Assuming it becomes law, the bill will not end the influence of money in politics, but instead will drive such influence further underground. A glimpse of the future may have occurred at a dinner last October that raised $800,000 for the Brennan Center, a pro-reform group. Co-chaired by pro-reform senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, and featuring Sen. John McCain, the dinner was underwritten by corporate donors, who were solicited to attend. Sponsors included over two dozen large law firms with Washington lobbying practices, plus such corporations as Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, and, naturally, Enron. If money is truly corrupting, corporations hoping to curry favor with officeholders might decide that support for such groups is a wise idea, or officeholders might "suggest" that corporations with business before their committees make donations to such groups. Shays-Meehan limits the right of federal officeholders to solicit money for political parties and other groups, but specifically allows lawmakers to continue to solicit funds for entities such as the Brennan Center.