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Senate watches its back while weighing reform

    Some fear fight over campaign bill will only help incumbents

    By CRAIG GILBERT
    of the Journal Sentinel staff
    Last Updated: March 24, 2001

    Washington - No matter how they feel about campaign reform, senators have this in common:

    They're all incumbents. They like their jobs. And they are loath to change the rules in ways that hurt themselves politically.

    "Your self-interests are certainly in play," said Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel. "It's not like we're uninterested bystanders here."

    Some critics fear that the two-week battle over the McCain-Feingold campaign bill will simply produce an "incumbency protection act," padding the already huge advantages of office.

    "That's what we have to prevent," said reform leader Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).

    The debate so far has sounded at times like a gripe session for sitting senators. They've told personal horror stories about the cost of TV ads, the burdens of raising money and the threats posed by rich challengers and hostile interest groups.

    And they've tried to do something about it. The first concrete act senators took toward reform was "one that protects ourselves," said Democratic leader Tom Daschle. "That's not a very good message."

    Senators on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a new provision to ease fund-raising rules for candidates who face rich, self-funded opponents. Millionaire foes are an incumbent's nightmare, because they are among the few who can match or surpass a sitting lawmaker's war chest.

    "That's clearly a measure designed to ward off wealthy challengers," said Colby College government professor Anthony Corrado, an expert on campaign finance.

    Hagel, who voted "no," ridiculed the idea that incumbents deserve a helping hand.

    "We're just cast adrift out here on a lonely island," he told a reporter sarcastically.

    Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd made the same point on the Senate floor.

    "We raise money all the time during our incumbency," he said. "We can send franked mail to our constituents at no cost to us. It is a cost of the taxpayer. We do radio and television shows. We can go back to our states with subsidized airfares. We campaign all across our jurisdictions."

    But that didn't stop some senators from speaking plaintively from the floor about the woes of office.

    "It's bad enough that it is a pretty hectic life," said Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin, who added that lawmakers give up their privacy, too.

    On top of that, "You can walk along the streets of your hometown and people race to the other side of the street to avoid you because they are afraid you are going to ask for another contribution," he complained.

    Re-election rates are high

    No matter the motive, the Senate's actions on campaign financing will be scrutinized for their ultimate impact on incumbency. In the 1990s, incumbent re-election rates averaged 90% in the Senate and 93% in the House.

    "There is a profound conflict of interest here. The people who are making the rules are the people who are playing the game," said John Samples of the libertarian Cato Institute. He is a critic of the McCain-Feingold bill.

    Samples said lawmakers "aren't evil people," but when they debate campaign rules, "They think, what is this going to mean for their next election?"

    Corrado disputes the idea that the impetus behind campaign reform is incumbency protection. But neither does he expect Congress to help challengers much.

    "The types of reform that would have the greatest effect in promoting competition are not on the table at this point: public funding, free television time," Corrado said.

    Curbing interest group ads

    How would the McCain-Feingold bill - and the changes already made or in the works - affect the advantages of incumbency?

    One key feature of the bill restricts election-time ads by interest groups. This is popular with senators who decry the explosion of attack ads by unregulated outside groups and who complain they have lost control of their own campaigns.

    "We are overwhelmed," Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran declared last week.

    The new rules would apply to ads that refer to a federal candidate in the 60 days before an election. They would ban unions and corporations from using their treasuries to pay for the ads, and would require other groups to disclose their ad spending and large contributors.

    While there is fierce debate over the merits, there is little doubt the impact of these restrictions would be to curtail the sort of broadcast attacks that officeholders bitterly resent. That's why some groups have condemned the measure as a "gag rule" on criticism of politicians.

    "It's absolutely clear this is just to make the life of incumbents easier. That's all it's about," said Samples.

    Lawmakers took steps last week to address other grievances, as well. They passed a provision to force broadcasters to offer TV ad time to candidates at discounted rates. Oklahoma Republican Don Nickles called that a "gift to politicians worth millions of dollars." Defenders of the measure point out it would benefit incumbents and challengers alike.

    Two other issues have big implications for incumbency, although their exact effects are disputed.

    One is the centerpiece of McCain-Feingold, the ban on "soft money," or unlimited contributions to the parties. Eliminating these sometimes six- and seven-figure gifts is key to making reform fair to challengers, Feingold said.

    But there are differences of opinion on that.

    'Soft money' debate

    Dick Morris, former pollster to President Clinton, wrote an advice column to incumbents last week urging them to ban soft money because it really helps challengers. The theory: Soft money is channeled through the parties and often used to help strong challengers knock off the other side's incumbents.

    For instance, when Democrat Tom Carper defeated incumbent Republican William Roth in Delaware last year, the Democratic Party spent twice as much helping Carper as Carper did, said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the Cook Political Report. "Most of it was soft money," said Duffy.

    Corrado, of Colby College, said there's some truth to the idea that soft money can help challengers.

    But he also notes that members of Congress are raising more and more soft money for use on their own re-election campaigns. He thinks a soft money ban would improve competitiveness in congressional races. Many reformers agree.

    "It's not going to be a defend-incumbent act if we ban soft money," said Michigan Democrat Carl Levin. The soft money ban is so important, said Feingold, that without it, his bill "should be killed."

    The 'hard money' issue

    The other big issue is "hard money," the direct campaign contributions that were capped in 1974 after the Watergate scandal. Right now, an individual can give a federal candidate no more than $1,000 per primary and $1,000 per general election.

    But many senators want to raise that, as part of a broader deal to pass the soft money ban. They point out those caps are more than 20 years old and haven't been adjusted for inflation.

    Some analysts say raising these limits is a boon to incumbents, since they typically draw from a larger pool of big donors. Republicans like the idea a lot more than Democrats. But it will be a critical fight this week. Not even John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Feingold, the reform leaders who have vowed to vote together on every amendment, have agreed on the issue. Feingold is more resistant to higher caps. He said in an interview last week that raising the limits too much "could lead to the criticism" that the bill favors incumbents.

    "I'm going to have to compromise and he's going to have to compromise," McCain said.

    One other item: The bill does nothing to curtail contributions by political action committees, which overwhelmingly give to incumbents.

    So will the Senate pass an incumbency protection act?

    Some observers say the system can't get any more tilted toward incumbents than it is now. In 2000, 400 House incumbents ran and only six lost, a 99% re-election rate. Senators had a lower re-election rate - 79%.

    "Any bill the Congress produces is going to be less favorable to incumbents than the current system," said Corrado, the campaign finance expert. On the other hand, "any bill that passes the Congress will not be as favorable to challengers as it could be."

    Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 25, 2001.

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