Must read from WaPo! "McCain Feingold: Reform That Has Really Paid Off"

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033002070.html

Reform That Has Really Paid Off
By Norman Ornstein and Anthony Corrado Jr.
Sunday, April 1, 2007; B03

The most striking result of McCain-Feingold has been the spectacular resurgence of political parties. Far from withering, as critics predicted they would at the time of passage and as they continue to reiterate, our parties are richer, and stronger at the grass roots. In the two elections held before BCRA, the national parties raised a total of $2.1 billion, nearly half of it in unregulated "soft money" -- six- and seven-figure donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. In the two elections since, the parties raised exactly the same amount, but all in "hard money," meaning smaller contributions from individuals and PACs. The parties had to shift their focus to the recruitment of small donors. Both have taken advantage of the Internet and other fundraising tactics to add more than a million new grass-roots supporters to their donor rolls. Small donors are now the largest source of party money.

Consider the 2006 elections. In the previous midterms, in 2002, half the money raised by the national party committees was soft money. In 2006, individual donors who each gave less than $200 were the largest source of party donations, accounting for $1 of every $3 raised. The importance of those who give $20,000 or more has greatly diminished. In 2002, these donors were responsible for 46 percent of all party money, including soft contributions. In 2006, they provided only 12 percent of party resources. In all, the parties raised $309 million from small donors, compared with $108 million from the biggest donors.

Nearly all the party soft money raised in 2002 was channeled directly into television and radio ads, most of them attacks on opponents. Only a tiny share of the ads even mentioned the party that sponsored them. A much larger share of the money raised in 2006 went to party-building, grass-roots and get-out-the-vote efforts, all signs of party-building from the bottom up.

<>As members of a campaign finance working group in the late 1990s, we both helped to structure BCRA. We saw its provisions as narrowly targeted and incremental, not revolutionary. We thought the law would produce a flowering of grass-roots party activity, a resurgence of small donors and a reduction in the sale of access to elected officials in return for campaign funds -- and a decrease in the shakedowns of donors that this practice induced. But we thought it would take several election cycles for the changes to take root. Instead this happened immediately.