Campaign Finance Reform?

The most lavishly-funded campaign for local public office on the Nov. 7 ballot is being waged by St. Louis County Executive Charlie A. Dooley...What he doesn't have is an opponent with a legitimate shot at beating him...Republican Joe Passanise...has raised less than $15,000 for his campaign...A community college teacher and a former county highway engineer, Mr. Passanise entered the race on his own, without the support of the county Republican Committee...Mr. Dooley...has built on the Democratic political machine...He tapped the same source of campaign contributions, mostly developers and law firms...and has carpet-bombed Mr. Passanise with nearly $1.2 million in spending....For County Offices, St. Louis County, 10/24/2006, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

If you want an example of the fraud of campaign finance reform, this is a pretty good example. A non-incumbent, independent-thinking politician, rather like John Spencer running against Senator Clinton, has no chance before the campaign ads start to run. And look at the list of this incumbent's contributors: "law firms, developers...", the kind of folks, in other words, for whom a county executive can do a lot of favors...The incumbent is outspending his "opponent" over 500 to 1. In New York State, Senator Clinton's committee to re-elect has raised $40 million, more than ten times what former Mayor John Spencer has been able to dig out from under those rocks not owned by friends of the RNC. The more one looks, the more it seems that campaign finance reform, whether McCain-Feingold, or any other legislation, is chiefly aimed at obstructing non-incumbent, independent thinking office-seekers from a chance at victory, to make holding an elective office as permanent a career as being an agency bureaucrat in the District of Columbia. In such an environment, elections can get perilously close to meaningless, as in St. Louis County. This is not intended as a comment on either candidate, but on the system that restricts the one while rewarding the other, in each case without regard for their qualifications or for the voters.

Luther