Election records show that Sen. Charles Percy narrowly lost his 1984 re-election bid to Rep. Paul Simon. Some people believe Percy got beat by a chameleon.
You Simon-lovers, chill. That’s not a slap at Paul. There was a real chameleon in that election.
As chameleons go, it was big and ugly. About 6 feet tall on hundreds of billboards that popped up around the state. It had beady eyes and a forked tongue and a long, curling tail. The billboards said, “The U.S. Senate is no place for a chameleon!”
The chameleon was a TV star, too. In the commercials it changed colors from red to yellow to green to blue to orange.
By the end of the campaign, the chameleon was better recognized than some politicians, such as the commissioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
Percy tried to haul the chameleon before the Federal Election Commission. More precisely, he tried to bring a case against the chameleon’s proud papa, a businessman from California named Michael Goland.
Goland, who had no connection to Simon, spent more than $1 million to knock off Percy because Goland thought Percy wasn’t a friend to Israel. Goland started running the chameleon ads in the Republican primary, when Rep. Tom Corcoran ran against Percy. The senator survived the primary, but Goland tripled his spending on anti-Percy ads in the general election and Percy lost to Simon.
That’s something to keep in mind this fall when there’s another push in Washington for campaign finance reform. Be careful what you wish for. The reform could spawn a revival of chameleons.
The target of the reformers, and the villain of the summer’s Senate committee hearings, has been the “soft money” ruse used to pour cash into campaigns.
Federal election law allows no more than $1,000 from an individual and $5,000 from a political action committee to a candidate in each election. But there are no limits on how much money can be contributed to political parties as long as the parties don’t use the money directly on a federal candidate’s campaign.
That’s the “soft” money, the money that lured Al Gore to a Buddhist temple and Haley Barbour to a yacht in Hong Kong harbor. The two parties raked in more than $230 million in soft money for the 1996 campaign and, despite the rules, the money certainly had an impact on the candidates.
The reformers’ solution to soft money is simple: ban it.
The reform bill getting the most attention, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), would do that. The bill also is packed with gimmicks like voluntary spending limits, free TV time and a ban on PACs. The sponsors believe the 1996 campaign scandals have given them an opening, and they are talking about staging guerrilla war tactics in Washington to force a vote on the bill this fall.
They mistakenly believe they can squeeze the money out of politics. They can’t. What they will do is invite more chameleons into politics.
That is, if they eliminate soft money by putting the $1,000/$5,000 caps on all contributions, they’ll squeeze the money that goes directly to candidates and political parties. But they won’t curb the desire to win elections.
More Top Picks Best Rv Surge Protectors
The result will be more chameleon campaigns, crusades by individuals and groups who profess no ties to a candidate, but spend lots of money on TV ads to let you know who should win. As long as these groups stick to “issues” in their ads, and don’t expressly advocate a candidate’s victory or defeat, they aren’t subject to most campaign finance rules. That gives them loads of room to maneuver.
Chameleon campaigns are spreading. The most prominent one in 1996 was waged by the AFL-CIO, which spent millions of dollars to run the “Mediscare” ads against many Republicans. No connection to the Democrats, of course.
That’s not to pick on the union. The Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Association have tried similar maneuvers. Half a dozen conservative groups waged last-minute TV campaigns in 1996 against Sen. Dick Durbin in his race against Al Salvi, and viewers had little or no idea who was behind the ads.
If these groups want to express a political opinion, more power to them. But McCain-Feingold would make them more powerful than the candidates themselves.
The independent spending and fundraising is tougher to track, and it’s harder for a voter to detect where the message is coming from. The sponsors of McCain-Feingold say they recognize this, and they want to greatly widen the legal definition of “express advocacy” so more independent spending can be regulated.
That’s flawed on two counts. The bid to have the government regulate the content of private political speech is constitutionally dubious, and it can’t be enforced.
If they get out of line, we’ll sic the Federal Election Commission on them, right? Sure. And what year would you like an answer?
Chuck Percy filed his complaint about the chameleon ads eight months before the general election. One month after Percy lost the election, the FEC threw out his complaint. It acted only after it was ordered to by a federal court.
The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint in mid-1996 alleging that Bob Dole violated campaign spending limits. The FEC is still ruminating and cogitating on the complaint 10 months after the election.
The answer to changing the campaign system is really pretty simple, but it’s too simple to call it reform.
Raise the caps on campaign contributions to a reasonable figure such as $25,000 so candidates don’t have to spend every waking hour begging for $1,000 pops.
As a trade-off, put some limits on soft money–say, a $25,000 cap on how much an individual or group can contribute to a party.
And stop there.
Let the candidates and parties finance and run their own campaigns with some modest limits so they’re not hauling in six-figure checks with a To-Do list attached. That’ll keep the chameleons out of politics, at least the ones who aren’t on the ballot.