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Politics

Public campaign funds eschewed

By TIMES WIRES
Published January 23, 2007

The public financing system for presidential campaigns, a post-Watergate reform hailed for decades as the best way to rid politics of the corrupting influence of money, may have quietly died over the weekend.

For the first time since the United States launched its grand experiment with publicly financed presidential campaigns three decades ago, major party nominees in 2008 are expected to turn down all public funds.

The reason: The grant, expected to be $83.8-million, might not be enough to run a winning campaign.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., became the first top-tier candidate to tip her hand that she intends to leave the public money on the table. Senior Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson said Sunday that she would not take matching funds in either the primary or the general election campaigns if she wins the Democratic nomination.

Clinton's decision had been widely expected given her and her husband's fundraising ability. Her advisers have not disputed estimates that she will raise $100-million or more before the year is out.

Federal Election Commission member Michael Toner predicts that by Election Day, major party nominees will have raised $500-million each - roughly double what President Bush and challenger John Kerry raised in 2004, and far more than the Presidential Election Campaign Fund could afford.

While both Bush and Kerry rejected public funding for their primary campaigns in 2004, they accepted $74.5-million each for the general election campaign. Nominees have accepted matching funds in every general election campaign since 1976, when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford.

Abandonment of the public financing system would threaten the survival of a Watergate-era reform that was supposed to limit the influence of big donors in presidential politics and give more candidates the ability to compete.

The current system is being rendered obsolete by escalating campaign costs, sophisticated fundraising techniques, tepid public support and big-foot candidates such as Clinton.

There are efforts to revive the system, but it remains to be seen whether the heavy spending forecast for 2008 will, as public-finance advocates predict, trigger public disgust and lead to new reforms.

As originally envisioned, the matching funds system offered candidates a deal: In exchange for voluntarily limiting their spending, the federal government provides them with tax money to defray primary campaign costs and relieve them of having to raise money in the general election.

Taxpayers pay for it all by checking a box on their income tax forms earmarking $3. But despite outcries against the influence of private money in politics, the concept has not caught on with the public. At its height in 1980, 28 percent of taxpayers marked the box. Now, not even 10 percent ask that part of their taxes be used for presidential campaigns.

By law, the election commission raises the amount of matching funds based on inflation, but the cost of campaigning has far outpaced inflation.

[Last modified January 23, 2007, 01:19:14]