Self-funded candidate rule brings campaign finance to court

A part of the McCain-Feingold reform law is being contested on behalf of wealthy candidates running for Congress.

from the April 21, 2008 edition

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Jack Davis twice ran unsuccessful campaigns to represent New York's 26th Congressional District. On April 15, he announced he is running again in 2008.

Mr. Davis, a Democrat, has pledged to pay his own campaign bills rather than seek support from special-interest groups. In 2004, he spent $1.26 million of his own money. In 2006, he lost by four percentage points after spending $2.27 million.

In contrast, Davis's opponent in 2006, Thomas Reynolds, a four-term Republican on the influential House Ways and Means Committee, spent $5.1 million. That total included a $1.15 million war chest that existed at the start of the 2006 campaign cycle. At the time, Representative Reynolds was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the party's campaign organization.

Despite these advantages, incumbent Reynolds is the one who qualified under the millionaires' amendment for campaign-finance law exemptions that could have yielded him an additional $1.46 million in multiple contributions. In addition, he could have received unlimited help from the NRCC, which he chaired.

Reynolds did not exercise his right to seek the extra funds. He didn't need to. Plenty of donors were willing to help him win reelection. But Davis's lawyer cites the episode as evidence of how the law is designed to benefit incumbents at the expense of self-financed candidates who do not enjoy similar access to a network of campaign donors.

"Section 319 is directly designed to discourage people from spending their own money, and if they do spend their own money it is designed to punish them for it," Mr. Herman said in a phone interview.

"The statute authorized the incumbent to receive over $1.4 million in extra-limit funds in the 2006 election, even though he had already outspent Mr. Davis by more than $3 million," Herman writes in his brief to the court.

Herman says the law is not aimed at creating a level playing field. Instead, he says, it is aimed at protecting incumbents in ways that violate core political-speech and equal-protection rights of self-financed candidates.

Government lawyers defend the measure as a "modest and constitutionally appropriate" attempt to decrease the influence of personal wealth in congressional elections.

Section 319 in no way burdens political speech, Solicitor General Paul Clement writes in his brief on behalf of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). It places "no restrictions whatever on a candidate's ability to spend personal funds in support of his own campaign," Mr. Clement says.

The measure's relaxation of an opponent's contribution limits does not unconstitutionally penalize a candidate's decision to fund his or her own election, Clement writes.

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