Martin Sabo ( D. MN - Liberal Pig ) Voted against forcing a vote on Shays/Meehan bill.
Jim Ramstad ( R. MN - Liberal Pig ) Voted FOR forcing a vote on Shays/Meehan.
Remind me again why it's so important to elect Republicans?
Pressure builds over campaign finance
overhaul
Greg Gordon
Star Tribune
Published Feb 11, 2002
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Declaring that the Republican Party is facing
"Armageddon," House Speaker Dennis Hastert says he will do all he can to
block the biggest overhaul of federal campaign finance laws in a
quarter-century.
Backers of the bill, trumpeting the now-bankrupt Enron Corp.'s $1.6 million
in soft money donations in 1999-2000 as a prime exhibit, are lobbying
furiously to hold together the fragile coalition needed to win passage.
Once again, the battle over how to regulate the money behind national politics
has been joined. After months of delay, House floor votes are scheduled for
midweek.
"Now's the real show," said Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., who is among 20
Republicans who joined Democrats in signing a petition that forced the vote.
The bill would ban unregulated soft money donations, which in 1999-2000
totaled nearly $500 million to the national parties.
And it would prohibit the broadcast of thinly cloaked "issue ads" that identify
candidates in the weeks before a primary or general election.
How high are the political risks for those who vote against the bill, no one
really knows. What kind of impact the overhaul would have is also a subject
of debate.
But nearly everyone agrees that after years of work led by Sens. John
McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., the bill has never had a
better chance of passage. And President Bush continued last week to send
strong signals that he will sign it.
Swing legislators, including some of the 43 Republicans who voted for a
similar bill when it passed the House two years ago, are feeling the heat.
Rep. Sue Kelly, a fourth-term Republican from New York with aspirations of
a GOP leadership position, stood in the cloakroom adjoining the U.S. House
last week, lamenting being caught in a political buzz saw, a GOP colleague
said.
Kelly voted for the bill two years ago, but did not join the bare majority of
218 House members who signed the discharge petition that forced Hastert to
bring it to the floor.
Back in her Hudson River Valley district, consumer groups that support the
legislation had aired radio ads and arranged a barrage of phone calls in hopes
that voters will pressure Kelly to vote "yes." But on Capitol Hill, the colleague
said, Republican leaders warned her that absent a "no" vote, she could forget
about a plum assignment, such as a seat on the Ways and Means Committee.
"I've never seen pressure like this," said the Republican House member, who
insisted upon anonymity. Kelly's office did not respond to phone inquiries.
Votes in play
With rhetoric intensifying on both sides, similar political dramas could unfold
among dozens of other Republican and Democratic legislators as debate
begins Tuesday night.
Ramstad said that "both parties are addicted to soft money." While the
legislation "isn't going to totally clean up campaign financing," he said, "it's
going to eliminate the biggest cancer on the system -- soft money."
Ramstad said he's had no pressure from Hastert because the speaker knows
that voters in his suburban Minneapolis district favor the legislation.
The votes of at least two other members of Minnesota's House delegation --
veteran Democratic Rep. Martin Sabo and freshman Republican Rep. Mark
Kennedy -- apparently remain in play. For different reasons, each has voiced
strong reservations about the bill. Neither has said how he will vote.
Similar measures cosponsored by Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and
Martin Meehan, D-Mass., passed easily in 1998 and 1999. But those votes
were considered to be cosmetic: Legislators knew that Republican Senate
leaders planned to kill the companion McCain-Feingold measure. Last April
with Democrats controlling the Senate, the McCain-Feingold bill passed 59 to
41, with amendments that doubled to $4,000 the donations that an individual
can give to a senator and that allowed soft money donations to state parties.
Since then, McCain, Feingold, Shays and Meehan have agreed on a few
revisions to avoid a House-Senate conference committee.
Ramstad said "the whole ball game" this week will revolve around blocking a
series of "killer amendments" that would change the House version enough to
require a conference committee. If that occurs, he said, "the House leadership
will appoint openly hostile conferees" and the bill will die.
Hastert had kept a relatively low profile until he met with the House
Republican caucus last week and, according to people present, likened
passage of the bill to "Armageddon" for Republicans.
Hastert fears that the courts will strike down limits on spending by outside
groups and that the soft money ban will remain intact, so weakening the
political parties that Republicans would lose their slim House majority in future
elections, said his spokesman, John Feehery. Hastert thinks that with weaker
parties, Democrats would gain an edge because "labor unions are much more
aggressive than our business allies" at organizing and mobilizing voters,
Feehery said.
Doubts
Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., charged that the bill "will destroy our
Republican majority, and that's precisely what it's designed to do." He said he
is looking for amendments that would divert it to a conference committee.
But Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor,
said Hastert and the Republicans "may be shooting themselves in the foot . . .
by drawing a line in the sand.
"The easiest way to neutralize this issue, as Republicans have done in the
Senate, is to find common ground and pass something," Jacobs said. While
polls show that campaign finance is not a top-tier issue with voters, he said, it
could become "a powerful campaign theme" in key races.
University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, coauthor of "Dirty Little
Secrets," an expose on the campaign finance system, said he doubts that
voters will punish foes of the legislation.
And if the overhaul is enacted, he contended, it won't make much difference,
because special interests and politicians will "just move the money from one
box to another."
Backers of the legislation, Sabato said, have "set people up for real
disappointment. When you make those promises and the legislation passes
and not much happens . . . that's what deepens cynicism."
startribune.com |
