Varying campaign-reform efforts afoot in states

By The Associated Press and Freedom Forum Online staff

02.01.01

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As campaign-finance reform arguments resume at the national level, efforts to control campaign spending and place restrictions on political ads are also under way in various states.

In Montana, a legislator told a Senate committee in Helena on Jan. 30 that political candidates targeted by advertisements of special-interest groups should have the opportunity to approve or reject the ad before it appears publicly.

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Steve Doherty, D-Great Falls, who sponsored Senate Bill 296, said elections are tarnished by campaign lies. "Special interests have found the loophole," Doherty said. "I think we can close it."

The measure calls for special-interest groups to allow a candidate they're targeting in an advertisement an opportunity to review the ad, and to include the candidate's acceptance or rejection in the ad. If the candidate doesn't respond within two days, the advertisement must show that the candidate rejects the contents.

"I've been concerned about negative campaigning since I've been involved in politics, and this was the worst year I think we've seen," said Rep. Mark Noennig, R-Billings, co-sponsor of the bill.

Noennig told the Senate State Administration Committee that a survey of constituents in his district showed 41% disapprove of campaign ads that talk about the opponent.

"We need to improve the integrity of the election process," he said. "We need to change the tone of ads, not only nationally, but in the state."

Betty Beverly, executive director of the Montana Senior Citizens Association, said many seniors called her group in confusion over what they had seen, heard and read in campaign advertisements this fall. "They thought they [understood] what one candidate stood for," Beverly said. "They just want to know the truth."

Hal Harper, a former state representative and longtime advocate of changing campaign laws, said candidates also should be required to respond to the ads, "because it says you're going to subscribe to a higher ethical plane."

"My hope is that you take this issue as seriously as the people out there are taking it," Harper said. "Make people take responsibility for the campaigns they run."

The bill also received the support of the Montana Public Interest Research Group, but was opposed by an advocacy group and a political action committee, both of which argued the bill infringes on free speech.

Scott Crichton, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he understood why voters were disgusted with the tenor of political debate. "I respect the intent of trying to clean up politics, but I think politics is innately a dirty business," Crichton said. "I'm not sure what is proposed here is going to get where we want to go."

Steven Ertelt of the Montana Right to Life Association said the bill didn't allow sufficient time for review of ads and would impose costs for added air time or column inches to include disclaimers.

Ertelt also said the measure was nearly identical to a similar law in Iowa that the U.S. Court of Appeals Eight Circuit found unconstitutional in 1999.

And Paul McMasters, Freedom Forum First Amendment Ombudsman, told The Freedom Forum Online, "This proposal reeks of prior restraint. What incumbent elected official wouldn't love the idea of being able to approve or 'pocket veto' his challenger's attempts to speak directly to the public? I'm afraid that Sen. Doherty, in trying to close a special-interest loophole, would blow a gaping hold in the First Amendment.

"If we are to live up to our democratic traditions, political speech must be given the widest latitude," McMasters said. "Yet calls for restricting this sort of speech — in the name of democracy, no less — grow increasingly strident and increasingly insensitive to the profound First Amendment values they threaten. The answer to campaign speech we don't like is more speech, not less speech, coupled with immediate and full disclosure of campaign finances."

In Wisconsin, anyone who uses the name or likeness of a political candidate in an ad within 60 days of an election would be legally required to report how much was spent on the advertisements under a bill passed on Jan. 30 by the state Senate in Madison.

The bill, approved 23-10, would force groups that buy campaign "issue ads" to reveal who they are and how much they spent. The proposal still needs the approval of the Assembly, where its prospects were uncertain.

The bill's author, Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, said voters and candidates have a right to know who is paying for campaign ads. Current laws provide a legal loophole allowing third parties to run political ads without following the laws that govern candidates, she said.

"As a candidate, it's like trying to fly a plane through a thunderstorm in the middle of the mountains. You don't know who is attacking you; you don't know why they're attacking you; you don't even know what their name is," Robson said.

The unregulated issue ads typically name candidates and show their likenesses but don't explicitly say "vote for" or "vote against" them.

The bill also would include issue ads under a ban already on the books regarding direct corporate spending in campaigns.

Corporations are banned from making political contributions to candidates, unless they do it through their political action committees, which are subject to spending limits. Corporations can get around that prohibition by buying issue ads that don't identify who they are, said Rep. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton.

"They're breaking laws. We just can't see it because they're not required to disclose," he said.

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the measure should be just the first step in campaign finance reform. He said getting the bill passed in the Assembly would be "a much rougher [row] to hoe" than it was in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Critics of the bill, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, call it unconstitutional because it would infringe on corporations' rights to political speech.

"The First Amendment guarantees us the right to engage in independent political exchange, and that's not going to change," said James Buchen, WMC vice president of government relations.

A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last July upheld the legality of issue ads run by WMC, the state's biggest business group. But the court also recommended tightening controls on such campaign ads.

Speaker Scott Jensen, R-Waukesha, said Assembly Republicans would examine the bill to see if it was constitutional and fair. He also said the bill appeared to be singling out corporations, while unions would be left largely unaffected.

Jensen said that was because business groups generally prefer to buy issue ads, while unions often prefer to make independent expenditures — money spent independent of a candidate's campaign but on the candidate's behalf.

"To ban one group's preferred tactic and not the other does not give us a fair result," Jensen said.

In Oregon, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a measure on Jan. 24 in Salem to ask voters to give them the power to reinstate donation limits — restrictions on how much money donors can give to candidates for the Legislature and statewide office.

Previous limits on campaign contributions were declared unconstitutional in 1997 by the Oregon Supreme Court, which held that setting restrictions on contributions violated free speech.

Campaign spending has skyrocketed since then, as candidates have received and spent a record $12 million in last year's legislative races. Lawmakers proposing the new campaign spending limit said all that special-interest money unduly influences government.

"That kind of money is like broken glass in the gears of democracy," said Rep. Mark Hass, D-Portland.

In Colorado, the House state affairs committee killed a bill on Jan. 25 in Denver that would have amended the Fair Campaign Practices Act to limit the amount of money that political parties can give to state candidates.

Rep. Dan Grossman, D-Denver, said he had tried and failed to slow down the "soft-money express," which he said allows parties to collect and then distribute to candidates essentially unlimited amounts of money.

Republicans argued that the defeated House Bill 1093 would take away their freedom of speech.

A 1996 law, approved by 66% of voters, set limits on contributions to candidates. Portions of that law were overturned in 1999 by a federal judge who said it violated constitutional free-speech guarantees.

In Virginia, a Senate panel gutted a bill on Jan. 30 that would have required newspapers and magazines to obtain proof of identity from anyone submitting a paid political advertisement against or in favor of a candidate, the Roanoke Times reported.

An elections committee amended the bill (SB 1168) to make identification checks optional, and voted to include television and radio ads in the bill. The amendments were made in response to news-media complaints about having to run ID checks, the Times reported.

Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, had introduced the bill after a town council candidate in Christiansburg, Ann Hess, was targeted by an anonymous attack ad last May.

And in South Carolina, Senate Republicans failed to override Gov. Jim Hodges veto of changes in the state's campaign-finance laws the Legislature agreed to last year.

Senate Republicans gathered after the party-line 24-20 vote and said that it was bad news for citizens concerned about how political campaigns are financed. Hodges hailed the action.

"This is truly a dark day in South Carolina's legislative history," Sen. David Thomas, R-Fountain Inn, said. "This legislation was daylight legislation" that would have shed light on campaign finance contributions.

"We missed a great opportunity," Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, said, to bring "some sunlight on the system and let people know where the money is coming from, who is trying to influence the outcome of elections."

Hodges said the "Senate has rejected an unconstitutional bill that would have cluttered our elections with frivolous lawsuits." The legislation "would have enriched lawyers at the expense of voters," he said.

The bill passed after Hodges' 1998 campaign benefited from undisclosed amounts of money spent by video gambling interests to oppose then-Gov. David Beasley, a Republican. It would have expanded reporting requirements to issue-advocacy groups.

The South Carolina situation stood out in contrast to that of many other states, where Democrats often are the ones pushing for various campaign-spending reforms as Republicans resist.

People outside the South Carolina Legislature supported Hodges' veto. "The Republicans simply didn't understand the full implication of this bill," said Holly Gatling, director of South Carolina Citizens for Life. "It's not a campaign finance reform bill. It is a free-speech restriction bill."

Hodges said a better bill could come out of a task force he's set up to study the issue. Republicans said they would work to do the same.

Update

Montana Senate kills bill to add disclaimers to independent campaign ads
Measure would have allowed candidates to endorse or reject political advertisements by special-interest groups.  02.06.01