Federal Campaign Finance Law Research Articles

Federal Election Commission Divided: Measuring Conflict in Commission Votes Since 1990

This article investigates conflict on the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A long literature has documented the polarization of elites in Congress, in state legislators, and among justices on the Supreme Court. Many assume also that polarization is present at FEC, the regulatory agency tasked with administering and enforcing federal campaign finance laws. The Commission has been characterized as toothless and ineffectual, but in recent years these charges have been coupled with claims that Republican commissioners have done more to sabotage enforcement than Democratic commissioners. This article advances these questions by using over 5,000 Commission votes to estimate ideal points for all commissioners since 1990. The evidence supports the claim that partisan conflict has come to characterize Commission voting patterns, with deadlocks on Commission actions skyrocketing in recent years. Attributing this entirely to ideology may not be warranted, but the evidence of a partisan divide at the Commission poses real problems for the agency in meeting its mandate to enforce the law and offer regulatory guidance.

Following the money: uses and limitations of FEC campaign finance data

Disclosure requirements under US federal campaign finance laws and subsequent court rulings have created greater transparency into the financing of campaigns that allow election watchdog groups to monitor and track the flow of money to and by outside groups. These requirements also have generated an extensive new source of quantitative data for scholars to use. Because of the substantial increase in spending by outside groups, it is both timely and important to examine the influence of independent expenditures on election outcomes, political behavior, and fairness in the democratic process. To evaluate and understand the impact of this spending, researchers must be aware of the scope and limitations of the campaign finance data collected by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). This article provides scholars who would like to use FEC data to answer some of these questions with an introduction to the data source, a discussion of how other scholars have used the data, and a case study to generate guidance on the challenges and potential solutions associated with accessing and analyzing these data.

The Influence of Technology on Presidential Primary Campaigns

There is no doubt that the American people object to the high cost of election campaigns. For example, a 2018 Pew poll found that 77 percent of Americans would support laws to restrict the total amount of campaign spending. Support for spending caps crosses partisan lines. The idea of legal restraints on campaign spending receives the support of 85 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans. Many blame the high cost of American elections on the Supreme Court's decisions in Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which deregulated aspects of federal campaign finance law. Ultimately, however, the origins of skyrocketing campaign costs long predate Buckley and Citizens United. More than any other single factor, innovations in communication technology have shaped presidential campaign spending since 1912. First radio, then television, and more recently the internet emerged as indispensable means of political communication. But the technological innovations have come with a high price for candidates and campaigns, driving costs relentlessly higher. This chapter examines how technology has shaped the presidential nomination process, making the pursuit of the White House an ever more expensive proposition. This work is a chapter in a forthcoming 2020 book entitled The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times.

527 Groups and Campaign Finance: The Language, Logic, and Landscape of Campaign Finance Regulation

In 2004 the country witnessed the first presidential election since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). A major purpose of BCRA was to end two of the worst abuses of the federal campaign finance law-sham issue ads and soft money raised by political party committees. The BCRA amendments, like existing federal campaign finance law, were designed first and foremost to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption resulting from large contributors' requesting favors from or gaining influence with the public officials whose campaigns their contributions benefited, regardless of whether the contributor or the lawmaker initiated the mutually beneficial process. As many foresaw at the time of BCRA's passage, individuals and groups with considerable assets would seek and probably find new campaign finance vehicles for achieving most of the benefits of the system prior to BCRA. Nonetheless, the swiftness with which 527 groups have threatened to replace political parties as the soft-money middlemen in federal campaigns surprised and angered many - from members of Congress to ordinary citizens. Since the 2004 election saw one of the most polarized campaigns on record and since 527 groups, both Democratic and Republican, were especially active in funding attack ads and other highly visible forms of campaign activity, they emerged as the arch villains of the process. Bills have been introduced in Congress to compel almost all 527 groups engaged in federal campaigns to register as political committees subject to federal campaign finance law (FECA). In addition, lawsuits have been filed to force the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to impose sanctions on 527 groups that failed to register as political committees in the last election. Lawsuits were also filed challenging some of the FEC's regulations on the grounds that they emasculated the provisions of BCRA, thereby contributing to the failure of reform efforts the agency is charge with implementing. As a result, some of the regulations were invalidated, some rewritten, and some are being appealed. In short, campaign finance reform is still in flux. The purpose of this Article is to analyze the legal issues that must be resolved before the validity of efforts to rein in 527 groups can be established. Most of these issues are constitutional because, by its nature, campaign finance regulation intrudes upon political speech, part of the core of First Amendment speech entitled to the most vigorous protection by the courts. My contribution to an area of the law where so many others have preceded me is to integrate the constitutional election law analysis with a technical analysis of what 527 groups really are and how they actually operate under the Internal Revenue Code. I also develop a new paradigm for understanding the conceptual foundations of specific constitutional doctrines that can and, in my view, do reveal a relatively coherent election law jurisprudence across the Supreme Court's campaign finance decisions, even taking into account the recent decision in McConnell v. FEC, which most commentators agree broke new ground. I divide the constitutional issues at stake into different categories and conclude that in some areas the precedents are difficult to square with the 527 reform proposals, whereas in other areas mainstream Court precedents tend to support the validity of the reform proposals. In conclusion, I raise some policy questions that, if faced squarely, should give lawmakers pause before painting all 527 organizations with the same legislative brush.

Congressional Disclosure of Time Spent Fundraising

This Article advocates passage of a law requiring members of Congress to disclose the amount of time they spend fundraising. In the wake of Citizens United and other court decisions severely limiting lawmakers’ ability to regulate campaign spending, many scholars have turned their focus to campaign finance disclosure laws. According to some, laws requiring campaigns and donors to reveal the source of contributions and expenditures are the last bastion of federal campaign finance law. Yet despite a history of broad acceptance, disclosure laws rest on an increasingly shaky foundation. The most troubling aspect of current disclosure law is that it contains loopholes so obvious and irresistible that many political players choose to spend dark money, the source of which is unidentified. Further, some argue that even when the source of political spending is disclosed, the information provided to the electorate is of questionable usefulness for a host of reasons. Finally, opponents of disclosure laws point to their potential chilling effect and threats of retaliation that can occur when the public learns who supported a certain candidate or ballot measure. Even those who support disclosure laws have recently conceded that perhaps the law should encompass only large spenders rather than those contributing only a few hundred dollars. For these reasons, there have been calls to reform federal disclosure law so it is more properly tailored to serve its goals without chilling speech. Many have proposed effective, intelligent changes that would improve the disclosure regime greatly. However, the current discussion about disclosure largely ignores the fact that there is a gaping hole in disclosure requirements: While the electorate receives some information about a candidate’s financial backers and can learn about a legislator’s votes and other activities, voters cannot discover how much time their representatives spend raising money. Information about legislators’ fundraising time is critically important: the average member of Congress spends between thirty and seventy percent of their time seeking money. The aim of requiring disclosure of fundraising time would be twofold: First, it would supplement current disclosure law by providing new, valuable information about legislators that is less susceptible to avoidance, is more useful to voters, and would not risk chilling speech. Second, it would discourage legislators from spending egregious amounts of time fundraising, thereby encouraging them to devote more time to the jobs they are elected to do. Though this Article focuses on the discrete proposal of requiring disclosure of time spent fundraising, it also advocates further scholarly examination of enhanced disclosure of legislators’ activities. Such requirements, like the one proposed here, provide greater benefits and often lack the drawbacks of disclosure laws that seek information from nongovernment actors.

Citizens United, Corporate Personhood, and Corporate Power: The Tension between Constitutional Law and Corporate Law

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court invalidated strict federal campaign finance laws and upheld the First Amendment right of corporations to use general treasury funds to support or oppose candidates in political elections. Shortly after the case was decided, a grassroots popular movement began calling for an amendment to the Constitution to establish that money is not speech and that human beings, not corporations, are the only “persons” entitled to constitutional rights. The concept of corporate personhood entered the national debate, causing many average Americans to question the legitimacy of corporations’ legal personhood status. Federal and state lawmakers have introduced several bills proposing a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood, and hundreds of cities nationwide have passed municipal resolutions supporting such an amendment. Progressive groups that oppose corporate influence in politics disagree on whether the push for a constitutional amendment is a good idea. This article identifies several problems with the amendment strategy and suggests that the focus on personhood is misplaced. Legal history shows that the personhood label has long been arbitrarily applied in constitutional law cases, and, as a practical matter, personhood is largely indeterminate and sometimes irrelevant. More significantly, corporate personhood and power do not find their origin exclusively in constitutional law, but in long-standing corporate law doctrines and deeply entrenched norms. An attempt to curb corporate power in the political realm through a constitutional amendment does not address the systemic features of corporate law that allow corporate entities to amass great economic and political power. To ignore the tensions that corporate law raises in this regard is to miss the deeper source of corporate ascendance in the modern world.

Corporate Participation in the Democratic Process in the United States and Germany

There are many factors that influence political elections, among them, money may be the most important one. The starting point of this Article is the judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court inCitizens United v. Federal Election Commission. After this decision is described, the approaches of the United States and Germany in regulating political speech by campaign finance laws will be discussed, focusing on the role of companies. This Article will outline the status quo of federal American campaign finance laws (Part B). Regarding the German approach, this Article will outline theParteiengesetz(Political Parties Act, hereinafter: Part G) and decisions of theBundesverfassungsgericht(Constitutional Court, hereinafter: BVerfG) (Part C). European regulations are not the subject of this Article. Both approaches will be compared and future prospects will be given as a conclusion (Part D).

Solidarity Revisited: Organized Labour and the New Democratic Party

This article seeks to engage Jansen and Young’s recent research on the impact of changing federal campaign finance laws on the relationship between organized labour and the New Democratic Party. Jansen and Young use models from mainstream comparative politics to argue that unions and the NDP retain links due to a “shared ideological commitment” to social democracy, rather than an expectation of mutual rewards and despite changes in the global economy. We critically assess the evidence, method of comparison, and theoretical assumptions informing their claims and find many aspects unconvincing. Instead, we propose that better explanations of this enduring yet strained relationship can be formulated by drawing insights from Canadian political economy, labour history and working class politics, and comparative social democracy.

Corporate First Amendment Rights after Citizens United: An Analysis of the Popular Movement to End the Constitutional Personhood of Corporations

No case in the Supreme Court’s last term was more controversial than Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Citizens United). In a sharply divided 5:4 decision, the Court invalidated strict federal campaign finance laws and upheld the First Amendment right of corporations to spend unlimited sums of corporate money to support or oppose candidates in political elections. Although mainstream criticism of Citizens United was fierce and widely publicized, a lesser known response to the case is a grassroots popular movement calling for an amendment to the Constitution establishing that money is not speech and that human beings, not corporations, are the only “persons” entitled to constitutional rights. The movement has ignited a national campaign to reverse the legal doctrine of corporate personhood, a doctrine that has allowed corporations for the last century to claim the same legal rights that natural persons possess. Anti-corporate activist groups revile the dominance of corporate power in modern society and believe now is the time to “overthrow corporate rule.” By orchestrating a nationwide initiative to amend the Constitution, these groups hope to follow in the steps of other social justice movements, like the suffragists and the civil rights activists, who successfully organized to demand legal reform. This Article seeks to bring attention to this burgeoning popular movement and the challenges it faces. The grassroots mobilization of these activist organizations in response to Citizens United raises important questions about the relevance of citizen interpretations of constitutional meaning and the role of law in shaping beliefs. This Article uses the doctrine of corporate personhood and the constitutional amendment campaign as points of departure for a broader analysis of the relationships between social movements, constitutional legal reform, and the expressive function of the law.

Is That a Bundle in Your Pocket, Or . . .?

As the 2008 Presidential campaign proceeds, calls for reform of bundling disclosure continue. Bundling permits individual funders to attract more attention from candidates by producing more funds than the contribution limit of $2,300 per election would permit. Advocates of greater regulation see bundling as an end-run around contribution limits and disclosure requirements of federal campaign finance law. Greater regulation of bundling could be the next step in the incremental but everlasting pursuit of political reform. Critics of bundling both inside and outside the Federal Election Commission (FEC) have called for additional regulations, especially in the disclosure of bundling. This essay looks at what bundling is and is not, what the law requires now, and why more regulation, even disclosure, may not be such a smart idea.

Legislative Issue Advertising in the 108th Congress Pluralism or Peril?

Legislative issue advertisements (also called “pure” issue ads) are ads about issues of public policy and not products or candidates. As such, they are not regulated under federal campaign finance laws. This study estimates the cost in air time and print space of legislative print and television issue ads that ran in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area during the 108th Congress.The authors identified 67,653 ads with an estimated cost of $404 million.The bulk of ad spending was concentrated among a small group of sponsors. One percent of organizations accounted for 57 percent of the total spending. Business interests outspent citizen/cause interests by more than five to one.All told, 94 percent of the specific issues examined were the subject of unbalanced persuasive efforts.The authors also analyzed spending in relation to reported lobbying expenditures. Results are interpreted in the context of traditional theories about the role of pluralism in insuring a healthy democracy.

The "Tribal Loophole": Federal Campaign Finance Law and Tribal Political Participation After Jack Abramoff

Gaming Law ReviewVol. 10, No. 3 Original PapersThe "Tribal Loophole": Federal Campaign Finance Law and Tribal Political Participation After Jack AbramoffAssociate Professor Steven Andrew Light and Professor Kathryn R. L. RandAssociate Professor Steven Andrew LightSearch for more papers by this author and Professor Kathryn R. L. RandSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:23 Jun 2006https://doi.org/10.1089/glr.2006.10.230AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byThe Political Economy of American Indian GamingAnnual Review of Law and Social Science, Vol. 4, No. 1Indian Gaming and Intergovernmental Relations1 June 2008 | The American Review of Public Administration, Vol. 38, No. 2 Volume 10Issue 3Jun 2006 InformationCopyright 2006, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:Associate Professor Steven Andrew Light and Professor Kathryn R. L. Rand.The "Tribal Loophole": Federal Campaign Finance Law and Tribal Political Participation After Jack Abramoff.Gaming Law Review.Jun 2006.230-239.http://doi.org/10.1089/glr.2006.10.230Published in Volume: 10 Issue 3: June 23, 2006PDF download

Reform in a Cold Climate: Change in US Campaign Finance Law

AbstractThe Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 was the first major change in US federal campaign finance law in a quarter of a century. Many attempts at reform had failed in that period. Few members of Congress were enthusiasts for reform, the two parties and two chambers had conflicting interests to protect, successive presidents did not promote the issue and public pressure for reform was weak. When reform was achieved in 2002, many of these formidable obstacles remained in place. This paper draws on the literature of public interest reform and policy innovation to attribute the change to a policy entrepreneur whose resources had undergone a sharp increase, the neutralization of opposition, the impact of an event (the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation) and membership turnover in Congress. The substantial support for the bill in Congress from Democrats, the party with most to lose from reform, is attributed to the inescapability of past commitments.

Inside the campaign finance battle: court testimony on the new reforms

In 2002 Congress enacted the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), the first major revision of federal campaign finance law in a generation. In March 2001, after a fiercely contested and highly divisive seven-year partisan legislative battle, the Senate passed S. 27, known as the McCain-Feingold legislation. The House responded by passing H.R. 2356, companion legislation known as Shays-Meehan, in February 2002. The Senate then approved the House-passed version, and President George W. Bush signed BCRA into law on March 27, 2002, stating that the bill had flaws but overall improves the current system of financing for federal campaigns. The Reform Act was taken to court within hours of the President's signature. Dozens of interest groups and lawmakers who had opposed passage of the Act in Congress lodged complaints that challenged the constitutionality of virtually every aspect of the new law. Following review by a special three-judge panel, the case is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. This litigation constitutes the most important campaign finance case since the Supreme Court issued its decision in Buckley v. Valeo more than twenty-five years ago. The testimony, submitted by some of the country's most knowledgeable political scientists and most experienced politicians, constitutes an invaluable body of knowledge about the complexities of campaign finance and the role of money in our political system. Unfortunately, only the lawyers, political scientists, and practitioners actually involved in the litigation have seen most of this writing --until now. Inside the Campaign Finance Battle makes key testimony in this historic case available to a general readership, in the process shedding new light on campaign finance practices central to the congressional debate on the reform act and to the landmark litigation challenging its constitutionality.

Free Air Time: The Continuing Reform Battle

171 IN THE SPRING OF 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002,1 the most comprehensive attempt at reforming federal campaign finance laws since the Federal Election Campaign Act was enacted and amended in the 1970s. Most significantly, the Reform Act bans “soft money,” the political donations from labor unions, corporations, and unlimited contributions from individuals that present the greatest potential to corrupt the workings of our government. It also puts teeth back into laws long on the books that required corporations and unions to use only limited and disclosed “hard money” contributions to finance campaign advertisements proximate to federal elections. Corporations and unions had been evading these laws by using their treasury funds to finance campaign advertisements masquerading as “issue discussion.” It took seven years to secure the enactment of the Reform Act—and the fight to ban soft money did not end with its signature into law. Indeed, we are currently waging a two-front war to protect the new law and ensure that its purposes are served. One front is at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), where a number of party-backed Commissioners have written implementation regulations that run contrary to the law’s language and intent and re-created aspects of the soft money system. My long-time Senate partner in fighting for campaign finance reform, U.S. Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), has joined me in filing legislation to overturn the FEC’s loophole-ridden soft money rules.2 Separately, our House counterparts, U.S. Congressmen Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA), have filed suit to repeal the FEC soft money rules.3 The other front is before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which is hearing the constitutional challenges to the Reform Act brought by roughly 80 separate plaintiffs, consolidated into one case, McConnell v. FEC.4 Upon appeal from the U.S. District Court, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case. Throughout the effort to pass the Reform Act, I have often stated that this legislation is just the first step towards restoring trust and confidence in our political system and eliminating the actuality and perception of corruption in politics. Other reforms are clearly needed. Reform of the Federal Election Commission is desperately needed to ensure that federal campaign finance law is enforced by an

Linking Knowledge and Action: Political Science and Campaign Finance Reform

The 2002 enactment of the first major reform of U.S. federal campaign-finance law in a quarter century featured a more substantial engagement of political scientists—through research, public advocacy, and expert testimony—than had been the case in the past. This essay reviews the evolution of research on campaign finance from the early twentieth century to the present, the intellectual tensions between the scholarly and reform communities, the conditions in the 1990s that promoted collaborationamong these groups, and the continuing disagreements over how best to manage the problems associated with money and politics—in the United States and in democracies around the world.He gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Emily Bailard, a Brookings summer intern from Yale University, and Larissa Davis. Bruce Cain, Anthony Corrado, and Trevor Potter provided valuable commentary as discussants when a version of this paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston. Special thanks to Sarah Binder, Richard F. Fenno, Jr., Charles O. Jones, Sheilah Mann, Norman Ornstein, this journal's editors, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The author would like to note that he alone is responsible for whatever errors of fact and judgment remain.

No Fair Play for Millionaires? McCain-Feingold's Wealthy Candidate Restrictions and the First Amendment

In 2002, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the first comprehensive changes to federal campaign finance law since 1974.' The new law, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold, included a provision to deal with the so-called Loophole, which allows wealthy candidates to spend unlimited personal funds on their own campaigns, without regard for contribution restrictions or voluntary spending limits.' BCRA's Millionaire Provision represents a new attempt to solve an old dilemma. Over thirty years ago, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA)3 attempted to address the same problem: candidates willing to spend their own money liberally to ensure victory. FECA prohibited candidates from spending personal funds in excess of statutory limits.' This prohibition, however, did not survive the Supreme Court's seminal campaign finance decision, Buckley v Valeo,' which held that restrictions on campaign spending violated the First Amendment.6 The Supreme Court's decision in Buckley governs all aspects of federal elections, including a self-funded candidate's right to spend her own funds in pursuit of federal office. By invalidating limits on selffunding while generally upholding contribution limits, Buckley created

Foreword: The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and the Constitution

341 THE BATTLE over what has now become the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act has raged for years. Proponents insisted it was a necessary effort to restore integrity to our federal election laws. Opponents condemned it as an unconstitutional infringement on the public’s right to discuss important issues of public policy. The new law has two main parts. The first part bans soft money to the political parties, so that unions and corporations can no longer contribute to political parties and wealthy individuals can no longer make six-figure contributions. The second part attacks the problem of sham issue advocacy, ads that waddle, quack, and smell like campaign ads, but that avoid campaign finance rules by the artifice of eschewing any of the so-called “magic words” of “express advocacy”—such as “vote for” or “elect.” The new law redefines the line distinguishing electioneering (which is subject to regulation), from genuine issue speech (which is not). Under the new 60-day bright-line standard, ads that mention a candidate and air immediately before an election are defined as campaign ads, subject to federal campaign finance laws. Swirling around the debate over these provisions were numerous empirical questions: How is soft money spent—on campaign ads or on party building? What candidates benefit most from the advertising bought with soft money? How do voters perceive sham issue ads—as education on issues or as electioneering? Who actually sponsors most of the sham issue ads—major institutional players or grassroots groups? How much genuine issue speech would the BCRA test cut out? The Brennan Center sought to answer these questions and many others in its study, Buying Time 2000: Television Advertising in the 2000 Federal Elections (2001), authored by Craig Holman and Luke McLoughlin, and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. We were gratified that so many of our findings made it into the Congressional Record. But throughout the debate, we were aware that the legislative battle was just the beginning. Ultimately, we knew, the Supreme Court would decide the fate of BCRA—and the result could depend on the answers to many of those same empirical questions. With that in mind, on November 9, 2001, we invited several legal scholars to participate in a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Northeast Political Science Association. The topic was the constitutional framework for regulating issue advocacy and soft money, and the authors were encouraged to use our empirical data in their analysis. We are pleased to publish in The Election Law Journal the papers that emerged from that discussion.

The Political Parties and Campaign Finance Reform

The major political parties have blown large and widening holes in federal campaign finance law. The most significant party practices ? independent expenditures, soft money fundraising, and issue advocacy ? map on to the fault lines central to the constitutional law of campaign finance ? so that limiting these party activities raises important constitutional question. Indeed, in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v FEC, a Supreme Court plurality determined that parties, like PACs, may engage in expenditures that are independent of their candidates and, thus, not subject to the limits on party contributions to candidates. So, too, several justices and some political scientists have questioned whether a party's support for its candidates even raises the danger of corruption which is a sine qua non for regulating campaign finance activity. This Article argues that parties are not like other political committees, such as PACs, and that their finance practices do trigger the corruption concern central to the Buckley doctrine. Due to the close structural connection between parties and their candidates, the overarching concern of the major parties with winning elections and wielding power in government, and the ability of large donors to use contributions to party committees to influence government action, the major parties should be constitutionally more easy to regulate -- not more difficult -- than other political organizations. The Article explains why restrictions on concerning party independent expenditures, party issue advocacy, and soft money fundraising are constitutionally sound, and it presents specific proposals for limiting party fundraising and spending that would be constitutional if the doctrinal distinctions the Supreme Court has drawn are interpreted in light of the particular relationships of party committees, party candidates, and party donors. These proposals are not anti-party but pro-campaign finance reform. Due to their roles of supporting challengers, focusing on grass-roots political activity, and combining and thereby partially diluting multiple special interest groups, the parties play a positive role in our political system. Indeed, I will suggest that once party money is subject to effective regulation, increasing the money the parties are allowed to spend in support of their candidates would actually be desirable. But unlimited contributions to, and unlimited spending by, the parties jeopardize the anti-corruption values at the heart of campaign finance law. Unless party money is subject to effective limits, campaign finance reform is doomed to failure.

Comment: Of Money and Momentum

A little more than two decades ago, the rules and institutions governing American presidential nominations were decisively reshaped by two major reform movements. The first occurred primarily between 1969 and 1972, when the Democratic party completely rewrote its rules concerning the selection of national convention delegates, which in turn compelled substantial changes in state primary laws and caucusing procedures. The second took place in 1974, when the U.S. Congress instituted sweeping changes in the federal campaign finance laws. For reasons that have never been clear to me, analysis and commentary about the new dynamics of presidential selection-from both academics and journalists-have focused overwhelmingly on the first of these developments, while largely ignoring the second. While a small river of ink has been expended on the alleged effects of the McGovern-Fraser guidelines, there is surprisingly little systematic work on whether and how the new campaign finance laws have altered the tenor of presidential nominating politics. For example, probably the best-known academic account of the contemporary nomination process is that developed by Larry M. Bartels in his award-winning book, Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (1988). Bartels mentions the subject of campaign finance on exactly three pages, and then only in passing. His model provides important roles for press coverage, public opinion, previous primary results, and enduring political predispositions, but essentially ignores the role of money (The same can be said of many other leading works on this topic, including Keeter and Zukin 1983; Brady and Johnston 1987; and Geer 1989.) Against this background, Katherine A. Hinckley and John C. Green's article Fund-raising in Presidential Nomination Campaigns: The Primary Lessons of 1988 represents, I believe, a significant contribution to the literature. Hinckley and Green do take money seriously-and in so doing, provide a very useful way of organizing and conceptualizing some of the major questions about its role in presidential politics. Indeed, I would go further than this and say that, by the end of their article, they convince me that they are about half right. Organization, in their sense of the term, does seem to be one important factor explaining the flow of presidential campaign funds. What I wish to defend is the proposition that the campaign also matters: that fund-raising also has much to do with the relative performance of the competing candidates. My argument proceeds in three stages. In the first, I raise a number of questions about Hinckley and Green's interpretation of the fund-raising model and the predictions that may reasonably be derived from it. Next, I offer a few criticisms of the variable the authors use as a measure of organizational influences on fund-raising. Finally, I provide a brief sketchgiven space limitations, it can be no more than that-of some of the most important ways that campaign performance and fund-raising success do seem to be interrelated. THE CAMPAIGN-DRIVEN MODEL REEXAMINED Hinckley and Green, it should be said at the outset, have taken on a very difficult challenge in this article: they are attempting to test and refute a model that, as they correctly note, has never been particularly well-developed. If good academic work often profits from the existence of a strong and wellformulated counterargument, the target that Hinckley and Green are aiming at is a regrettably blurry one. Conceding the inherent difficulty of their task, however, I nevertheless feel that the authors have significantly misunderstood and/or mischaracterized the body of arguments and insights that tie fundraising success to campaign performance. Indeed, I would contest almost every one of the hypotheses they list as being a clear or necessary implication of a campaign-driven model. Specifically: 1. A significant number of candidates raise the bulk of their funds during the period of the primary campaign. …