The modern system to raise money for presidential and congressional campaigns is about to turn 50. An early skeptic, the late Sen. James L. Buckley was the namesake for litigation challenging it, with critics today still citing his arguments.
Buckley died Aug. 18 in Washington, D.C., at 100, having been the oldest living member of Congress to that point. A senator from New York from 1971-77, he represented the Conservative Party but allied himself with Republicans, very much the minority faction amid decades of Democratic congressional dominance.
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By the time Buckley reached Capitol Hill, his last name was already associated with modern conservatism, as the older brother of National Review founder, Firing Line television host, and syndicated columnist William F. Buckley. But James L. Buckley, a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School who in between served in the Pacific during World War II, carved out his own independent political identity.
He was the lead challenger to the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act. Amendments to the law enacted in 1974, in response to Nixon-era fundraising shenanigans exposed by Watergate investigations, expanded public financing for presidential races. The updated law also set limits on contributions by people, political parties, and political action committees. All are overseen and regulated by the Federal Election Commission, which was created in 1974.
Buckley had a big problem with this. He grew concerned over the new restrictions, which effectively limit total spending by any one campaign. Spending and contribution limits would “squeeze out the ability of challengers to come in and confront the political establishment,” Buckley said as his lawsuit, Buckley v. Valeo, wound through the federal courts.
The Supreme Court in 1976 issued a split decision. Justices upheld public financing of presidential elections but struck down limits on independent expenditures, candidate self-financing, and overall spending. However, it did allow individual spending contributions to stay in place. Indexed for inflation, those are now $3,300 each for primary and general elections.
Federal Triple Crown
Buckley is one of a small group to hold positions in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government. It’s a public service feat roughly equivalent to MLB’s “Triple Crown,” when a hitter leads a league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in.
During President Ronald Reagan’s administration, Buckley was an undersecretary of state and then president of Radio Free Europe. Reagan in 1985 nominated, and the Senate confirmed, Buckley as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Buckley held another distinction as one of a handful of third-party Senate victors, the first independent elected to the Senate since Robert M. La Follette Jr. of Wisconsin won as a member of the Progressive Party in 1934.
In the 1970 New York Senate race, Buckley ran on the Conservative Party line, and his opponents included Sen. Charles Goodell, previously a conservative congressman from western New York. Goodell had been appointed to serve out the final 2 1/2 years of the term won in 1964 by Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general and brother of slain President John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy, seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, himself was assassinated on the campaign trail in June 1968.
Since moving across the Capitol, Goodell had become an outspoken Vietnam War critic and generally moved leftward, providing an opening for Buckley at a time of domestic tumult. The Democratic nominee in the three-way race was Rep. Richard Ottinger, who was also from a prominent family: His late uncle, Republican state Attorney General Albert Ottinger, narrowly lost the 1928 New York governor’s race to future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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Buckley won the Senate seat, with 38.75% of the vote to 36.77% for Ottinger and 24.29% for Goodell, whose son, Roger Goodell, has been NFL commissioner since 2006.
But Buckley’s political fortunes didn’t hold. In blue New York, Buckley in 1976 lost to Democratic rival Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an academic and former official in the administrations of Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Buckley in 1980 lost a Senate comeback bid in his original home state of Connecticut. But even in a strongly Republican year, with Reagan romping to the presidency, Buckley lost 56%-43% to Democratic Rep. Chris Dodd, who went on to spend 30 years in the Senate.
