THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 18, 1996 TAG: 9610180031
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 50 lines
The Dole campaign has made an issue of several large Clinton campaign contributions that appear to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. The money should be returned and the circumstances investigated. If laws were broken, the lawbreakers should be prosecuted.
But the Clinton campaign is hardly alone in flouting the law. Common Cause, the government reform organization last week asked the attorney general to appoint an independent counsel to investigate ``massive, knowing and willful violations of campaign-finance laws by the Clinton and Dole presidential campaigns.''
According to Common Cause, the violations in this year's race are on a scale not seen since the Watergate era. Both presidential campaigns qualified for federal matching funds by pledging to limit spending during the primary season to $37 million. They have not kept that bargain with the taxpayers.
The Clinton campaign has exceeded the limit by $34 million; the Dole campaign by $14 million. Furthermore, the law says parties cannot legally use so-called soft money ``in federal elections directly to support their presidential campaigns.'' Yet the Clinton campaign has used $22 million in soft money for just that purpose and the Dole campaign $9 million.
The habitual circumvention of the law is nothing new. The parties have long adopted a strategy of Violate Now, Pay the Penalty Later. Clearly, candidates are in a classic double bind. If their opponents spend outside the law, they can refrain only at the risk of losing the election while retaining their purity. That's a bargain few candidates would make.
Court decisions treating campaign money as equivalent to speech have undercut efforts to dam the flood of cash that is corrupting the process. The abuse of soft money shows that where there's a will, there's a way around the law.
It would be naive to believe that huge contributions by special interests aren't intended to garner special treatment. It is far more difficult to prove that favors were done as a result of contributions. Still, democracy is in danger of turning into plutocracy when elections are for sale to the highest bidder.
Common Cause hopes to make candidates modify their behavior. If an independent counsel were to get convictions, the law permits fines of $25,000 and five years in prison for each offense, but that's a lot of ifs.
At a minimum, full disclosure of all donations in a timely manner ought to be made to the public. Reform legislation offered this term by Sen. John McCain, R-Az., and Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wisc., made sense but won little support. Until voters refuse to elect candidates who abuse existing laws, no better laws - or candidates - are likely. by CNB