Building the Campaign Finance Reform Infrastructure: Grantmaking to Strengthen U.S. Democracy

What this fight is all about is taking the $100,000 check out of American politics for good. It’s about putting the little guy back in charge, and freeing our system from the corrupting power of the special interests’ bottomless wallet. It’s about forcing our government to pay attention to the little guy, those people who actually cast votes to elect us, and not just to the richest in corporate America or the powerful union bosses.

— U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), in opening debate in 1999 on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill

. . . Senator Mitch McConnell . . . sent letters to various trustees declaring his “concern that a serious error [that CED prominently identifies you as a backer of its legislative plan] has occurred, which may cause some embarrassment to you if it is not immediately corrected . . . ” Several of these executives, who worked for companies that had significant issues pending before Congress at the time, considered the letters a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate them with the implied message: Resign and keep quiet, or don’t count on doing business with Congress.

— Statement in a legal brief about how Senator McConnell (R-KY) attempted to pressure the nearly 300 business endorsers of the Investing in the People’s Business report by the Committee for Economic Development (CED) to withdraw their endorsement.

Introduction
The American electoral system has been deluged by huge amounts of money from campaign contributors seeking influence at all levels of government, from town councils to the U.S. Congress and the White House. In many cases, our political leadership has accommodated, even encouraged, this torrent, using their access to campaign contributions to create often-unbeatable electoral advantages over their challengers. Even when not bribery or corruption, it produces unequal political influence.

This situation has had the effect of eroding democracy and public confidence in government, creating a spectacle in which policy decisions are seemingly for sale in an auction that the general public lacks the wealth to participate in. It is a spectacle worthy of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, which inspired both muckraking journalists and reformers of the Progressive Era. “There is no enemy of free government more dangerous and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate,” President Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1904.

Written by: Robert B. Rackleff. Rackleff is a consulting writer and elected county commissioner in Tallahassse, Florida. He earlier was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Senator Ed Muskie and J. Richard Munro, chairman of Time, Inc. He is also a retired Naval Reserve Intelligence Officer. Rackleff earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree and was a doctoral student in U.S. History at Florida State University. He is the author of “Overturning Buckley,” in the Carnegie Reporter (Summer 2000), and a 1972 book, Close to Crisis: Florida’s Environmental Problems.

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