Campaign finance woes - Justice Dept. to investigate Democratic Party's campaign fund practices during 1996 presidential campaign - Editorial

Progressive, The, Oct, 1998

After rejecting calls to appoint an independent counsel to look into campaign finance violations by the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, Attorney General Janet Reno has changed her mind. Reno reopened the issue based on a Federal Elections Commission report that questions the legality of a multimillion-dollar television ad campaign closely supervised by President Clinton. Reno has also opened a second preliminary investigation on campaign finance issues involving the Vice President. Both investigations could lead to the appointment of a special counsel.

This is especially bad news for candidate Gore. In December, Reno dismissed allegations that Gore had violated campaign finance law by soliciting hard money (funds that went directly into the Clinton-Gore campaign) during phone calls he made from the White House. She accepted the Vice President's claim that he believed his solicitations from White House grounds had raised only soft money--unregulated funds that go toward building the Democratic Party. "While his understanding of how the media campaign was funded was not correct, nothing developed in the course of the preliminary investigation contradicts that this was his understanding," she concluded.

But new evidence suggests Gore may have lied when he said he did not understand how his campaign was being financed. A memo handwritten by one of Gore's top aides appears to indicate that a discussion of the percentage of hard and soft funds the media campaign would draw on took place during a meeting Gore attended.

It would be a good thing if our Attorney General finally comes down hard on campaign finance violations in the Clinton Administration. Both the President and the Vice President of the United States should be held to the law. But the problem of campaign finance abuse permeates our government--from the top down. And Bob Dole and the Republicans were also skirting the edges of the same law that may ensnare Clinton and Gore.

Meanwhile, the money game has not abated. According to Roll Call, as of June 30, Federal Elections Commission filings for the upcoming election indicate that 1,509 House and Senate candidates have taken in $484 million in funds. That figure is 8 percent more than the amount candidates raised during the same number of months in the last election.

"The bigger scandal is that so much of the money changing hands over the last two years has been completely legal," says Public Campaign, a watchdog group based in Washington.

According to Ellen Miller, executive director of Public Campaign, a tiny and unrepresentative group of Americans has a tremendous amount of influence on our elections and our laws. "Just over 600,000 Americans--or one-quarter of 1 percent of the population--make such contributions," writes Miller in The Hill. She cites a survey of donors funded by the Joyce Foundation. The study determined that 95 percent of campaign contributors in 1996 were white, 80 percent were men, 80 percent were older than forty-five, and 81 percent had annual incomes larger than $100,000.

The issue of campaign finance has spawned two bills--McCain-Feingold and Shays-Meehan--that would curb soft money expenditures. Though their efforts have been given little chance of passage, they are still alive, thanks to popular support.

But even if they pass, these bills will not do nearly enough. Corporations and the wealthy would still have an enormous advantage.

Public Campaign advocates a clean money system: Candidates who agree to take no private money (including their own) would receive money from a public fund. Such a procedure is already law in Maine and Vermont, and two more states will vote on public financing in the November elections.

Only organized public pressure can fix the problem of money in politics. That's why the statewide efforts are so encouraging.