From the Chicago Tribune

Primaries become game with no limit
By Tim Jones, Tribune national correspondent.

Published November 14, 2003
The political arms race that threatens to shatter campaign spending records escalated Thursday as President Bush fattened his war chest while a second Democrat weighed the prospect of abandoning a generation of spending limits for the presidential primaries.
Adding to what is expected to be an unprecedented supply of campaign cash, President Bush collected about $2.5 million in donations for his more than $100 million coffer with a pair of $2,000-a-person fundraisers in Florida. Bush hopes to raise at least $170 million for the uncontested Republican presidential primary, about 60 percent more than he spent in 2000 to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Less than a week after former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean became the first Democratic presidential contender to opt out of the Watergate-era public financing system, Democrats are awaiting a decision from Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on whether he will follow suit.
Defections from the taxpayer-funded campaign system have the potential of killing the limits on fundraising and spending that were intended to level the financial playing field and open the system to all candidates.
In 2000, Bush was the first candidate to turn down public funding in the primary, and his victory has encouraged others this year to shun the 28-year-old campaign reforms, partly out of self-defense. The economics and the rising costs of campaigns--and the ability of some candidates to raise much more than they can receive through public funding--are working against the federal supplement.
"It will become increasingly irrelevant in the primaries. You'll have two tiers of candidates, one outside who can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money and then the second tier inside the system who will have to spend less, because they have no other alternative," said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who researched a recent study on the nation's campaign finance system.
"At that point people may legitimately ask, `Why do we have a public financing system?'"
Demands to fix system
The question is already being asked, accompanied by calls for Congress to repair an outdated system before it is too late.
"I'm hoping we can limit the amount of the damage to the system this year," said Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who co-sponsored campaign finance reform legislation last year. "We had an effective public-financing system for presidential campaigns."
Fred Wertheimer, executive director of Democracy 21, a non-profit group advocating changes in campaign finance laws, said the shunning of public financing in the primary "is not the death knell, but it is a warning. Fix it or lose it.
"I think we're seeing some strategic and tactical moves that were triggered by President Bush's intent to raise in excess of $200 million for an uncontested primary, and we're seeing reactions to that," Wertheimer said.
Aides to Kerry said the candidate is prepared to announce soon a decision not to accept public funding. The senator could tap into the cash of his multimillionaire wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who has ties to the Heinz fortune.
Another Democratic candidate, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, announced Thursday that he would remain in the public-financing system.
Congress enacted the cash supplement in time for the 1976 presidential election in response to fundraising abuses in 1972. The limitations were intended to lessen the influence of money. Under the system, candidates would agree to spend no more than $45 million during the primary season and $75 million in the general election.
Taxpayers paid for the system, but public support--at least financially--has waned. Twenty years ago nearly 30 percent of taxpayers checked the box on their federal tax returns to help pay for the program. That support has dropped to 11 percent.
"The public has always been very hopeful about campaign-finance reform but it has had low expectations that a system could be found that would be fair, equitable and would really work," said Andrew Kohut, executive director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Kohut said people look at political financing with a mixture of realism and skepticism. They are not likely to punish candidates who abandon public financing.
Candidates take a risk
Opting out of public financing is not without risk. Candidates forego the possibility of receiving up to $45 million for their primary run. But in doing so, their fundraising and spending are limited only by their ability to attract financial backing.
Dean, who has raised more than $25 million, has decided against public funding in the belief that he can raise much more compared to the amount from the public system.
Green, who was the research director for the September report issued by the Campaign Finance Institute, said spending limitations in public funding during the primary season "are less and less realistic."
"The system has provided an incentive for strong candidates to opt out of the system," he said. "It has to be changed so the parameters fit the real world."
Wertheimer said there is no danger that any candidate will abandon public funding in the general election because the amount--$75 million--would be spent in a much shorter period of time: September through Election Day.
"The problem is the primary," he said.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune