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Show Me the Money

Part 4: Covering Reforms

When we talk to reformers, whether political conservatives or liberals, there are a few bottom lines that will keep stories simple and clear. The first is this: all political reforms are about power shifts, taking power and influence from one group and giving it to another. So when we hear about proposal X dealing with union dues, or proposal Y to lift contribution caps, or proposal Z to institute public financing, the same bottom-line question is, “who wins and who loses political power?” Another way of putting this is, “whose participation gets enhanced and whose gets undermined?”

The other thing to remember about political reform is that, like talking to accountants at tax time, we will hear about all kinds of complicated formulas. But there are in reality only three basic choices. The first is that we could deregulate the current system that limits campaign contributions and simply provide for public disclosure (preferably on the Internet, not on paper). This is what most conservatives and defenders of corporate interests favor, as it tends to reinforce their current power. Disclosure alone will not really change the current money, power and influence equation.

The second option for reform is to impose regulation-heavy schemes, like the McCain-Feingold bill in Congress. But most political consultants will tell you that these types of reforms only result in candidates looking for, and exploiting, new loopholes. In fact, one of the more perverse twists is that by lowering contributions and imposing complex rules, regulation-heavy reforms make candidates spend more time raising money, not less. And they make them more reliant on consultants to lead them through the legal thicket. But when reporting on these types of proposals, look for who would participate and who wouldn’t if a proposal became law. I’ve generally observed that most people and groups who give more than $500 to candidates are either rich and the money doesn’t much matter, or they have an economic agenda. Most ordinary middle-class people don’t want to give much more to a candidate than what they’d spend on a newspaper subscription.

The third choice in the reform department is full public financing, which gives qualified candidates taxpayer dollars and supposedly insulates them from the private money chase. Most academics say this is, in theory, the best solution but one the voting public won’t support — which may not be entirely true. Polls do show the public supports this idea; they just don’t want to pay for it. But the point with full public financing, as with any reform proposal, is that we as reporters have to see how it would work, not how it’s advertised. And though a handful of states are looking at full public financing, it hasn’t taken effect yet.

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