HERE’S ONE REASON why you won’t see much of John McCain in California over the next month: If your name was synonymous with campaign finance reform, the recall is the last place you’d want to be. Why? Because the October 7 special election exposes California’s new-and-improved donor law for what it is: a shabbily-written statute that doesn’t hold all of recall’s players to an equal standard. Not that the good citizens of California haven’t done their best to try to curb the influence that money on politics. Over the last 15 years Californians have voted for ballot measures changing the state’s campaign finance laws–and time and again those measures were struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. In November 2000, voters signed off on the latest attempt at campaign finance reform, Proposition 34, which placed a dollar-limit on local and statewide races (federal contests don’t apply).

But, as the recall contest has shown, such “reform” is useless when lawmakers junk it up with loopholes. And that’s what California has–campaign money rules with more dodges than Al Bundy’s garage.