Soft Money

WASHINGTON -- At the heart of American self-perception is the faith that one man can make a difference. Like those faces carved into Mount Rushmore, our history is more often than not told as stories of individual heroes.Paul Revere. George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee. Thomas Edison. Douglas MacArthur. There are exceptions, of course, including Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright. And now there is John McCain and Bill Bradley.The Republican and the Democratic underdog presidential candidates have made a show of opposing the "soft" money that is suffocating American politics.

Two court decisions Friday are likely to help set the ground rules for 2010 election fundraising. The Republican Party lost its bid to raise unlimited contributions, while a conservative group won approval to raise big donations for ads but must regularly disclose its givers. The two rulings are the first major campaign finance decisions since the Supreme Court said earlier this year that corporations, unions and groups of individuals can spend unlimited sums supporting or opposing candidates - as long as they do it independently of campaigns.

WASHINGTON -- Raising campaign funds today is done with religious fervor, as politicians shake down everyone from corporate CEOs and movie moguls to Christian PACs and Buddhist monks. But congressional leaders recently set a whole new standard: Now they are shaking down their fellow House members. Republican House leaders announced recently that they are hinging the reward of leadership positions and chairmanships of powerful committees to those incumbents who raise the most money for the party.

WASHINGTON - The amount of cash bankrolling the two presidential campaigns this year is approaching and might well exceed $1 billion - an eye-popping number that has shattered any hope that recent campaign finance reform would put a brake on spending. Alone, President Bush and Democrat John Kerry will, by this summer, have raised at least $565 million, according to new figures released by the government and the campaigns yesterday. That includes $230 million for Bush (a record in the history of presidential campaigns)

WASHINGTON - Traditionally, the public battle over soft money in American politics has revolved around the issue of buying and selling government influence. Campaign finance reform advocates believe these unlimited campaign contributions are corrupting our democracy while defenders of soft money argue that it represents constitutionally protected free speech. What has been mostly lost in this debate, however, is the dramatic extent to which the soft money system has turned into a political extortion racket.

HOUSE DEMOCRATIC Caucus Chairman Martin Frost of Texas observed the following about the effects of proposed campaign finance reform legislation: "The political parties would be neutered, and third-party groups would run the show." The McCain-Feingold bill banning soft money, which has passed the Senate, would have deprived the Democratic Party of half of its funds and the Republican Party of one-third of its funds in the last election cycle. In campaign finance jargon, "soft money" is evil money, or so we are told.

WASHINGTON -- It is becoming increasingly clear that Hillary Rodham Clinton is getting a lot of help from high places in her campaign to become a senator from New York. It is also becoming clear that she needs whatever help she can get.The decision by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to finance TV commercials promoting her candidacy is obviously indefensible on several counts.Mrs. Clinton is being given the kind of special treatment that other Democrats running for the Senate have every reason to resent.

WASHINGTON -- There was a certain irony in the fact that Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt was cleared by a special prosecutor while the Senate was debating whether to outlaw "soft money" in political campaigns.If soft money, meaning totally unregulated contributions to political parties, had not been part of the process, Mr. Babbitt would not have been the subject of the special investigation in the first place.The issue in the Babbitt case was whether the Interior secretary rejected a plan to operate a casino put forward by Indian tribes in Wisconsin because other tribes running competing casinos contributed $230,000 in soft money to the Democratic Party.

THE diminutive candidate with the tall principles stood on a chair to greet the faithful gathered last Thursday at the Rams Head Tavern in Savage. They had come to help with the quadrennial laying in of funds for a political campaign that will cost between $30,000 and $40,000 -- hard money for hard requirements: lawn signs, bumper stickers, phone calling and headquarters rental. Here, in a small corner of the democracy, money equals speech in ways the U.S. Supreme Court had in mind when it declined to reform the process by outlawing political action committees and the like.

WASHINGTON -- Now that the initial euphoria has passed over the enactment of the first modest campaign finance reform in 21 years, the key question is whether it's the first step toward more significant advances, or an excuse for ignoring further reform. Congress' agreement to require certain tax-exempt groups under Section 527 of the tax code to disclose political expenditures made, and the hitherto-secret names of individuals who provide the money for them, is being hailed as a breakthrough.

WASHINGTON - In a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Bush campaign and the Republican Party charge that Sen. John F. Kerry is benefiting from "the largest illegal infusion of soft money from wealthy individuals, unions, corporations and other special interests" since Watergate. "They're making a mockery of what the rules are," President Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said yesterday in unveiling the complaint. Republicans alleged that Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is part of an "unprecedented illegal conspiracy" to coordinate advertising with well-funded liberal groups in violation of campaign finance laws - a claim that the Kerry campaign and the groups and their donors adamantly deny.

WASHINGTON - Reforming use of money in political campaigns is like trying to reform drug abuse in professional sports. In both, it seems that whenever a remedy is found, a new way to counter it is found. In monitoring today's pro athletes, no sooner is a performance-enhancing drug detected and outlawed than another one likely will come into play. In monitoring the flow of campaign money, every new effort to put a lid on it is overcome by another way to keep the dollar spigot turned on. The passage of the McCain-Feingold legislation - cutting off unregulated, or "soft," money to federal candidates and parties - has been met this year with a proliferation of independent groups rushing to fill the void in the 2004 presidential election.

TWO YEARS AGO, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. pilloried Democrats for fostering a "culture of corruption" in Annapolis. As a candidate for governor, he spoke of the importance of ethics in the State House. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order binding executive branch employees to the "highest standards of integrity." Yet, here we are 13 months into office and Mr. Ehrlich's supporters have already tried to shake down lobbyists for as much as $50,000 a pop to play golf with the governor.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Election Commission said yesterday that advocacy groups that were established to get around fund-raising restrictions in the new campaign finance law may continue to spend unlimited donations for television commercials and other communications, though they must do so under far more restrictive rules. The commission's ruling on so-called "527 committees" could have profound effects on the 2004 election by helping the Democratic Party, which has been much more aggressive than Republicans in creating these committees to help the party compete with the Republicans' overall 2-1 fund-raising advantage.

State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli said yesterday that he is closing a six-month investigation of Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller's fund-raising practices because he found no evidence of any violations of Maryland election laws. The decision lifts a cloud hanging over the Prince George's County Democrat as the General Assembly prepares to start the 2004 legislative session tomorrow. However, federal authorities are continuing a separate inquiry into Miller. "I don't think that he should have this hanging over him because I don't have any evidence of any criminal conduct on his part regarding violations of state election law," Montanarelli said.

WASHINGTON - In a landmark ruling yesterday with implications for the 2004 elections and beyond, a narrowly divided Supreme Court upheld the heart of a sweeping campaign finance law that bans large, unregulated donations to political parties. The law, hailed by its supporters as a way to dampen the influence of big money on elections, bars parties and candidates from collecting contributions known as "soft money" that in the past 15 years have become a central element in the way campaigns are financed.

WASHINGTON -- The Republicans are certainly correct that President Clinton is playing politics in planning to petition the Federal Election Commission to bar unrestricted ''soft money'' contributions to political campaigns.Still, it's about time. Soft money -- funds given without limit to political parties under the guise of helping party-building rather than specific candidates -- has made a joke of legal limits on who can contribute to individual office-seekers and how much.The Republicans don't want to see soft money prohibited without other reforms as well.

Maryland individual and corporate donors gave $4.8 million in the past three years to a type of "soft money" political committee that critics say can be used to legally skirt state and federal campaign finance restrictions, a new study shows. The analysis by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington examined political committees similar to the one that Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller heads to raise money for Democratic candidates running for state offices around the country.

Maryland individual and corporate donors gave $4.8 million in the past three years to a type of "soft money" political committee that critics say can be used to legally skirt state and federal campaign finance restrictions, a new study shows. The analysis by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington examined political committees similar to the one that Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller heads to raise money for Democratic candidates running for state offices around the country.