"Campaign finance reform bites the hand that passed it.

[Chmee]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 7eiqkh.asp

Interesting article on how of the campaign finance reform stuff is shaking out this election cycle.

The short version is back in 2002 congress passed the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (BPCR) to eliminate all of that evil soft money that people might use to express their political opinions. Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly until the 2004 election rolled around. An interesting thing came to light then. No longer able to raise the evil soft money, candidates were restricted to raising hard money, which is limited to 5,000 per donor. As it turns out, Bush was raising more hard money than his challenger. A lot more. What was worse, Kerry had spent most of his money in the primaries while Bush was still sitting on a big pile of it. All was not lost however. George Soros, billionaire financier, really didn't want Bush to be re-elected. So he sets up several 527 organizations (527 comes from the section number of the Internal Revnue Code they are organized under). These 527's would be unconnected with the formal party, but working for a similar goal (getting Bush out of office). Soros commited 10 million for a start. This is effectively considered soft money, and would be used for issue advocacy, get out the vote campaigns, much as soft money was used in the main parties before BPCR came along. Well, some republicans decided to join in the fun and formed their own 527. They then went to the FEC and said basically, We have this new 527 and we were thinking about getting a rich benefactor to hand us a big wad of soft money that we would then use to promote our political views and, gosh we were wondering if that would be legal? FEC comes back after mulling it over a bit and effectively says, No. The republicans were disappointed I am sure but can at least take solace from the fact that they didn't actually seem to have gone to effort yet of getting a rich benefactor, or starting operations. Unlike the Democrats. Although at this point no one, to my knowledge, has tried to charge them with what they have already done, it certainly puts a damper on their plans to try to spend money through the 527s. Which leaves them back with the hard money, which as we pointed out earlier, is looking somewhat thin.

For those who don't remember, I am firmly against the BPCR. But I can't help but chuckle a bit at the various people running into difficulties with the stupid laws that they decided to push in the first place. And to be fair, I would be just as amused if the roles were swapped and it was the Republicans having trouble with it.

The article is worth a read, it goes into a lot more detail.

[Dalmoth]

I think I agree, it would be equally funny the other way around.


I'm pretty sure the cap now is $2,000 however.

Was listening to the radio yesterday.

69% of Bush's money is from $2,000 dollar donors
42% of Kerry's money is from $2,000 dollar donors
21% of Kerry's money is from $1,000 to $2,000 dollar donors

16% of Bush's money is from less than $100 dollar donors.
No corresponding number for Kerry was reported.

The laws themselves have not done a lot to remove the influence of those with disposable income on the process.