ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611050013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS\Editorial Page Associate Editor
IF THE HEAT of a political race can be judged by the tartness of its juiciest scandal, then the U.S. Senate contest in Virginia has been bland fare indeed.
In The Case of the Transposed Head, an admeister for Republican incumbent John Warner superimposed a photo of challenger Mark Warner's face on a photo of Sen. Charles Robb shaking hands with former Gov. Douglas Wilder as President Clinton looked on.
OK, so the superimposition was an impropriety, for which John Warner apologized and for which the offending consultant was canned. But even if the photo-doctoring hadn't been discovered, its message - that Mark Warner, the Democratic nominee and a former state party chairman, has been, get this, active in Democratic politics - lacks a certain zing.
No Ollie vs. Chuck this year, in other words, for which we Virginians probably should be grateful. Unlike 1994, in 1996 the national media has generally ignored Virginia's Senate race, dwelling instead on Senate contests like the slam-bang fight in Massachusetts between incumbent Democrat John Kerry and Republican Gov. William Weld, and the umpteenth Democratic challenge in North Carolina to blowhard GOP incumbent Jesse Helms.
Even so, the Senate race here in the Old Dominion offers insights into a campaign-finance system that nobody seems to like but that everyone seems stuck with. The insights are perhaps all the more powerful because of the relative ordinariness of the contest.
First, a lot of money is going into the race, in the $10-million-plus range. Not too long ago, such a sum would have been thought astronomical. Today, for a mid-sized state like Virginia, it's routine.
And why not?
Newspapers continue to cover politics; this paper is among those that have worked to focus more on the issues and less on the horse-race aspects of political campaigns. But we live in a multimedia age, and most of the others give politics scant attention.
Moreover, the era of stump speeches, torchlight parades and legions of party-loyalist volunteers eager to spread the word - the traditional means by which candidates could argue their cases on their own terms - is long vanished.
So politicians turn to TV and radio ads, the composition and airing of which now comprise the bulk of campaign spending. With the multiplication of electronic-media outlets and the fragmentation of their markets, such campaigning will only get costlier.
Even the frugal state Sen. Virgil Goode, the popular populist from Franklin County, is doing some of it in his bid for the open congressional seat from Virginia's 5th District. In the sprawling 5th, he'd be foolish not to.
Second, campaign-finance rules and U.S. Supreme Court decisions, regarding First Amendment rights to spend money on political speech, have led to two basic ways to fund congressional campaigns. Warner vs. Warner offers as clear an illustration of them as any in the country.
When he first ran, in 1978, John Warner supplied his campaign with $500,000 of his own money. Now, he can go to the bank with the millions in individual and PAC contributions that come with incumbency and seniority. This year, it's Mark Warner funding his campaign from his own fortune, to the tune of $5 million and rising.
Each Warner has criticized the other Warner for the source of his campaign money. The real point, however, is that it costs big bucks to use today's communication technologies - and, under the current campaign-finance system, those bucks come either from a candidate's own bank account or from the bank accounts of those with a special interest in congressional actions, or a combination of the two.
If congressional campaigns are not to be reserved for the wealthy and the special interests, then what's left is taxpayer financing. It's not the entire answer, to be sure; it is, however, a key means by which most other democracies have more successfully controlled the influence of money in legislative politics.
But it's also an idea to which most Americans seem resolutely opposed. Well, you get the kind of congressional politics you're willing to pay for - and if the general public won't pay for it, someone else will.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB