Campaign Finance

THE MOTTO of the animals in George Orwell's Animal Farm is “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The irony, of course, stems from the fact that the animals started out trying to establish a completely equal system, but they failed miserably. The same can be said of campaign finance.

Reforms are generally aimed at the equality of voters, but the reality of campaign finance is that huge corporations and high-spending individual contributors have always been “more equal” than other voters. In addition to voter equality, campaign finance laws have been directed at stemming the rise of corruption. As a rule, efforts at campaign finance, like the efforts of George Orwell's animals, have failed miserably. After each attempt at reform, a new loophole seems to open up, and the result is almost always further inequality of voters and new methods of political corruption.

Elected officials are almost always campaigning. Terms of office at the national level were staggered by the framers who wrote the U.S. Constitution in an effort to guarantee stability. Even though the president does not have to face re-election for four years, campaign strategy and finance for the next election start almost immediately after an election, since both the president's party and the opposition party must plan for the off-year elections that are only two years away. Every two years, the entire House of Representatives must face re-election, as well as one-third of the Senate, and many states hold elections at the same time. As soon as the off-year elections are over, the focus returns to the next presidential election two years later when, in addition to the president and vice president, all members of the House and another one-third of the Senate will be elected, and the cycle of campaign financing begins again. As a result, politicians are always conscious of the next election and must be constantly aware of how much money might be needed to finance the campaign. It has become a fact of life in contemporary American politics that the candidate who spends the most money generally wins an election.