Inadequicies with Campaign Finance in the 2000 Election
Inadequicies with Campaign Finance in the 2000 Election
The 2000 elections will be remembered for more than the cliffhanger presidential race. This year's campaign also essentially buried federal limits on the role of money in American national elections.
Record-shattering sums--and new ways to get them into campaigns in large, unregulated amounts--have shredded restrictions imposed after the Watergate scandal.
On Thursday, the Democratic and Republican parties reported their first postelection finance totals, beginning to provide a comprehensive view of the 2000 campaign. Altogether, political donors, who four years ago anted up a record $2 billion for candidates for federal office, raised the stakes this year by an estimated $500 million.
Election winners and losers alike are expressing incredulity at the escalating money race and wondering what the future holds.
"It even staggers me, and I'm pretty hard-core," said Harold M. Ickes, the driving force behind the Democrats' no-holds-barred 1996 fund-raising and a top advisor this year for Hillary Rodham Clinton's successful New York Senate race.
Records fell left and right this year.
Six years after a California candidate spent $27.5 million of his own money in an attempt to win a U.S. Senate seat, a New Jersey investment banker proved that it could be done--with double that sum.
In the presidential race, the Republican nominee, George W. Bush, refused federal funding for the primaries because that would have forced him to accept spending limits. As a result, he waged the first privately financed $100-million campaign in U.S. history.
And independent interest groups, exploiting loopholes in campaign spending laws, pumped so much money into their own advertising campaigns in some congressional districts that the candidates themselves felt like bystanders.
"You had as much control over the system as a Londoner during the blitz," said a shell-shocked Rep. Brian P. Bilbray, a San Diego Republican who was defeated last month.
More of the same is in prospect. With both the House and Senate evenly divided and the redrawing of House districts according to the new census expected to create more competitive House seats in 2002, a renewed race already looms.
Each election since Watergate has set new standards, and this one was no exception:
--In New...