WASHINGTON IS OBSESSED with campaign fund-raising practices. In 1997, political elites spent considerable energy debating the legality of Al Gore’s telephone fund-raising, while a Senate committee held televised hearings on White House coffee klatches.
Fueling the obsession is the fact that fund-raising is governed by literally thousands of pages of statutes, regulations, and rulings, which apply to every candidate for president and Congress. Three hundred officials at the Federal Election Commission supervise the process. And to most in Washington, “campaign-finance reform” means adding more of the same. Although Washington insiders depend on the freedom of speech for their livelihood, most object to unrestricted speech in the campaign context. The McCain- Feingold bill, notably, calls for new bans and regulations, and for a bigger and more powerful FEC to enforce the growing mountain of laws.
But in all of the debates over campaign reform, no one in Washington seems to have glanced across the Potomac to the Commonwealth of Virginia, which has just inaugurated a governor elected under a remarkable campaign-finance system as different as possible from those the reformers love.
According to the conventional wisdom, Virginia should be mired in corruption. America’s 12th-largest state, after all, limits neither the size of contributions to its political candidates nor the amount spent by campaigns. It has no public funding of campaigns and permits corporations and unions (barred from contributing in federal elections) to make donations. Commonwealth law merely requires public disclosure of the money politicians raise and spend. Yet Virginia is not mired in corruption. Asked to identify a local scandal involving campaign finance, University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato pauses, then replies, “I really cannot think of a major campaign-finance scandal.”
So, how does a large, modern state escape endless pages of campaign-finance regulations — and avoid campaign-finance scandals as well? Virginia relies on just two measures: disclosure and term limits. Disclosure is the linchpin.
Virginia’s approach is consistent with the political philosophy of native son James Madison. Madisonian democracy accepts the reality of factions and allows for factions to be heard. Indeed, it encourages broad participation in politics so that no single faction can dominate. Legal restrictions, such as those governing federal campaigns, distort this competition. Their Rube Goldberg requirements and prohibitions spawn such phenomena as “independent expenditures,” “soft money,” and “issue ads,” all of which complicate the flow of political money to its designated ends and make political support more difficult to trace.
In Virginia, because there are no contribution and spending limits, no such contrivances arise. Instead, “special interests” openly support their chosen candidates. (The only groups not allowed to contribute are judges, pari- mutuel betting licensees, and racing-commission members.) Contributors of over $ 100 are named publicly, in alphabetical order, with their occupation and employer listed. And reporting must be timely: within 72 hours, for contributions of over $ 1,000 for a statewide office or $ 500 for any other office received in the last 13 days of the campaign. With this information in hand if they want it, the voters make their choice — and the winner takes office only if his contribution and expenditure reports are complete.
In Virginia, a candidate of modest personal wealth can raise the millions needed for a statewide campaign. The winner of the November ’97 governor’s race, Jim Gilmore, is the son of a butcher. He succeeded the son of a professional football coach (George Allen), who himself succeeded the grandson of slaves (Doug Wilder). Compare these governors with the incumbent U.S. senators, elected under the federal campaign laws. Chuck Robb and John Warner are men of means with glamorous personal backgrounds (Robb is married to President Johnson’s daughter, and Warner was married to actress Elizabeth Taylor). Unlike the U.S. Senate, the Virginia State House is not increasingly populated by millionaires.
In an added irony, U.S. Senate races are so far the most expensive campaigns in the state, though the federal rules were intended to curb spending. The 1994 race between Robb, Oliver North (who raised $ 20 million), and an independent candidate cost $ 27 million and holds the state record. Warner’s 1996 opponent, a cellular phone company investor, spent over $ 10 million of his personal fortune in a losing campaign; all together, that election cost the candidates and their parties $ 18 million. By comparison, the gubernatorial races in 1993 and 1997 cost $ 12 million and just under $ 18 million respectively.
Under the Virginia system, contributors are publicized — and sometimes become controversial. Thus, in the 1997 gubernatorial race, Republican Gilmore was attacked for accepting a contribution from conservative television preacher Pat Robertson (a Virginian). Gilmore’s opponent, Don Beyer, produced a TV ad that warned voters, “By taking $ 50,000 from Pat Robertson, Gilmore is showing he would be the governor for the extreme right- wing agenda.”
The largest contributors to Gilmore and Beyer, by far, were their respective political parties. The Republican party alone gave Gilmore over $ 2 million. But the next highest contributors clustered around $ 30,000. This figure is about where the federal contribution limit for PACs — set at $ 10, 000 in 1974 and still unchanged — would be today if adjusted for inflation.
Except for a few well-publicized heavy-hitters, then, Virginia donors give at a level deemed acceptable to federal lawmakers in 1974, and they do so without compulsory contribution limits.
The second important feature of Virginia’s system is that governors may not serve consecutive terms. Accordingly, incumbent governors do not divert time and energy to their own political fund-raising unless they are seeking other political office, which is rare. (Only four Virginians in history have served as both governor and U.S. senator: Robb, Harry Byrd Sr., Claude Swanson, and James Monroe.) If President Clinton hadn’t been eligible to run for reelection in 1996, would he have had all those coffees and overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom? Probably not, nor is there any history of contributor shakedowns in the Governor’s Mansion or at Monticello.
Term limits may not come up in Congress this spring, but campaign-finance reform surely will. Lawmakers will have an opportunity to choose between the post-Watergate regulatory model, embodied in McCain-Feingold, and an alternative still on the drawing board that will emphasize disclosure. The bipartisan popularity of McCain-Feingold — endorsed by virtually every major newspaper editorial board — suggests that Washington remains intent on taking a cumbersome federal campaign-finance system and making it still more unworkable. McCain-Feingold would only drive political money further underground — and probably be held unconstitutional by the courts.
Before compounding the problem of campaign financing, members of Congress should compare the federal system with Virginia’s and ask themselves which works better. If they do, perhaps a majority of members will admit that the 1970s experiment with campaign-finance reform has miserably failed. Then, those favoring a return to reason can perhaps work with the chairman of the Senate committee having jurisdiction over election laws, who has introduced a reform and disclosure bill — none other than John Warner of Virginia.
Jan Witold Baran and Allison R. Hayward are Washington, D.C. attorneys who specialize in election laws and government ethics.
