Letters to the Editor | Funding is largest obstacle to fair campaign

This letter is a response to Allison Good's article "Fringe candidtates marginalized in primary races"; 1.31.08.

To start, I would like to applaud Allison Good for her article last week (“Fringe candidates marginalized in primary races,” 1.31.08) about presidential candidates who have perhaps the best ideas but lack the public attention that allows their ideas to be heard.

I think, however, that as students facing incredibly subtle and complex problems in the world, we often content ourselves with outlining a problem without proposing viable solutions. Good suggests at the end of her article that “It is only right that all candidates are given a fair chance, a chance that includes plenty of media coverage, regardless of how they fit into the two-party system.”

I agree that all serious candidates should be given free airtime—either in the form of televised debates which include all the candidates or as a certain amount of free advertising time, a practice common in many European countries. But this media equality is not enough to truly level the playing field and allow ideas to dictate the leading candidates.

The main force distorting American politics today is the influx of private money into the campaigns. As of the end of 2007, $582.5 million had been donated to the presidential candidates, 59 percent of which was donated to the top fundraisers (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and John McCain) who are incidentally the current frontrunners in a field of 21 initial Democratic and Republican candidates. Mike Gravel, with whom Good agreed but about whom she did not previously know, has collected only about $380,000 to date (opensecrets.org). These figures do not even include third-party candidates, who traditionally have even more trouble raising money.

I am not arguing that Gravel (or any of the other candidates who raised relatively small sums of money) is the best candidate, or even that he could have been a presidential contender had he raised more. I am simply saying that without the money to hire political consultants, run television advertisements, or even pay for travel expenses incurred while campaigning around the country, these candidates did not even stand a chance.

The solution to this problem is to try to get money out of politics through public financing of campaigns. Under a system similar to those already in place for state elections in Connecticut, Arizona and Maine, candidates who show a broad base of support (by collecting signatures and $5 donations) would receive government money to run their campaigns. The Supreme Court has ruled that it must be a voluntary system in order to avoid violating the First Amendment, but publicly-financed candidates who are being significantly outspent by privately-financed opponents may receive additional funds to make the contest competitive.

There is currently a seriously flawed version of public financing for presidential elections, but with some legal tweaking and public pressure for candidates to accept public money, this system could go a long way toward solving the problem Good described.

—Becky Rice ’08, Democracy Matters