Protecting the Incumbants
Here's an interesting column I found in the New York Post today.
The basic plot.
IS "campaign-finance reform" about preventing political corruption? Or is about restricting political speech to protect politicians from criticism? The standard line, from Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold - along with a complacent media - is the former. But what's going on right now in Maine points to the latter.
In short: The federal courts have told a Christian group it can't run a radio ad next month, when the Senate is scheduled to take up consideration of the Marriage Protection Amendment, because the ad takes a mild swipe at Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) around the same time she faces a June 13 primary election.
HOWEVER, I want to point out his quote from the decision.
(The court's logic: "The advertisement might have the effect of encouraging a new candidate to oppose Sen. Snowe, reducing the number of votes cast for her in the primary, weakening her support in the general election, or otherwise undermining her efforts to gather support, including by raising funds for her re-election." God forbid.)
It seems stunning to me that the court would be more concerned about the Senator's ability to run....UNOPPOSED.....then someone else's freedom of speech.
1 Comments:
The entire system is stacked in favor of incumbents. Considering that the only folks who get to vote on campaign finance reform, at least at the federal level, are themselves incumbents... one has to assume up front that whatever "fix" gets passed is not going to unduly hamstring the existing advantage of incubency.
On the other hand... I don't know that there is a way to negate the advantage of incubency. Even here in Portland Oregon where we just had the very first election using the Voter Owned Elections (VOE) model there were complaints about incumbent advantage.
VOE essentially is an opt-in system for now. How it works is each candidate can choose to opt in, with an incumbent opting in obviously producing no small amount of pressure on any challenger to also opt in. Those who opt in get a flat $150,000 to campaign with. If a challenger doesn't opt in and spends more than that sum then the VOE kicks a matching amount to the candidate who opted in - thus leveling the financial playing field. I happen to like it. I think it's the most exciting and inovative campaign finance reform ever in this country. But... even with the financial playing field leveled an incumbant still enjoys a built-in advantage just by virtue of name recognition and a city-wide bully pulpit via the local media.
I don't know of any way to completely level the playing field. Perhaps there isn't one and the best we can do is try to even out everything that we can and hope for the best.
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