You wouldn’t think politicians would have any trouble raising enough money these days. The presidential race is expected to be a billion-dollar affair, and spending records have been shattered at the congressional level.
But many candidates are being outgunned by superPACs and other outside groups with nearly unlimited funds at their disposal. Those dollars have swayed primaries in states such as Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio. More than $500,000 in superPAC cash from a 21-year-old college student helped decide the winner of a contested GOP primary last week in Kentucky.
With billionaires dashing off multimillion-dollar checks to superPACs, political scientists and some politicians themselves are worried that candidates have become mere bystanders in their own campaigns.
“Those on the ballot are much more of an afterthought than they ever were before,” says Jon Erpenbach, a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin. “In some cases, candidates don’t even matter.”
All of this has triggered debate about whether it makes sense to have a system in which campaign finance limits apply mainly to political parties and candidates. Opinion on how best to fix the problem remains split roughly along party lines.
An increasing number of Republicans want to close what they consider the opposite of a loophole, saying it makes no sense to handcuff candidates when money is otherwise flowing so freely.
“The problem is the limits,” Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander said at a recent Rules Committee hearing. “These new superPACs exist because of the contribution limits we’ve placed upon parties and candidates. Get rid of the limits on contributions, and superPACs will go away.”
Abolishing those limits would only open the door to outright influence peddling, according to those who advocate keeping the rules in place.
“To suggest that the solution to the problem is for candidates to raise the money themselves would just double down the possibilities for corruption,” says Josh Orton, political director of Progressives United, a liberal political action committee that favors campaign finance limits. “Can you imagine the kind of conversations that could happen if we lifted the restrictions on corporations giving to candidates themselves?”
SOURCE Big Money And The Ballot Box : NPR.