Speaking Up for the Little Guys

The battle for campaign finance reform has been waged in New Hampshire by Sen. John R. McCain (R-Ariz.) on his Straight Talk Express, by bowtied political pundits on Sunday morning talk shows and by toupeed legislators on Congressional floors. A federal judicial panel is now the center of the ideological battle in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the new “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.” It has pitted an unlikely alliance of the American Civil Liberties Union and former Lewinskygate prosecutor Kenneth Starr against McCain and former President Clinton’s Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman. The court should stand with those who want to stop vote buying and influence mongering, not the motley alliance that favors the present situation: entrenched political interests like unions, behemoth corporations like Enron and lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association that call the shots on Capitol Hill.

Constitutionally acceptable limits on political financiers are nothing new. There are already plenty of laws on the books regulating campaign contributions that the judiciary has upheld. The most contentious provision of the new law—the restriction of unregulated “soft money” donations to national political parties—simply closes a large loophole from Watergate-era legislation that fundraisers have masterfully exploited for years.

Opponents of the new law continue to charge that it abridges the free speech rights of wealthy American citizens, well-financed lobbying groups and other purveyors of soft money. But if money becomes equated with raw political expression, then wealthy individuals, by virtue of birth or choice of profession, get more free speech than others. Without the law, a Wall Street lawyer gets a booming voice capable of permanently drowning out the mere squeak a field hand in California can muster. If campaign contributions really are a form of free speech, then the status quo means “expression” for only the wealthiest of Americans.

The new law helps assuage this inequity by banning soft money contributions and preventing the broadcast of independently-financed “issue ads,” which are usually misleading and negative. Candidates will have to rely on the squeaks of California field hands, Detroit metal fitters and Cambridge academics to finance their campaigns, not the few booming voices of the wealthy. Smaller contributions, which can be matched with federal funds, will no longer get ignored by politicians who are responsive only to those capable of millions of dollars worth of “free speech.”

The judicial panel must uphold these important provisions and help end the pork-barrel handouts that Washington doles out to wealthy contributors. It would be a travesty if the judges overturned such a necessary and popular step toward a cleaner and more democratic federal government.