Now that the midterm elections are over and the dust has cleared, we should look back and take note of the process. Certainly as a liberal, who apparently got "shellac-ed" by all estimation, I may have an axe to grind, but the numbers speak for themselves...and I am talking of the cost of running for statewide and congressional offices, or at least the amount of money some candidates were willing to spend in order to become elected.
John Roberts and the Supreme Court recently declared that campaign contributions are merely "speech" and thus should not be regulated or inhibited in any way. This ruling, as repugnant as I may find it, went into our election process with nary a whimper from the electorate, leaving the rich, and leaving large corporations entirely free to spend at will in order to push their candidates, and their agendas (and yes...the unions as well).
No matter how you may view this ruling, I am sure we can find agreement that election spending is completely out of control; in fact is has reach obscene levels in some cases. Case in point, Carly Fiorina spend over 6 million of her own money in a failed run for the Senate from California. You do not have to be a bleeding heart lib to consider much more palatable alternatives for this money...but this is the tip of the iceberg. Let's look at three other examples.
Florida's Greene spent 23 million of her own cash reserves to mount her campaign. Garnering 284,000 votes, this works out to a whopping $83.55 per vote, hardly a bargain. Wrestling magnate Linda McMahon spent over $41.9 million from her pocket book, or $84 per vote.
Former Goldman Sacs exec and e-Bay head Meg Whitman got out her checkbook and spent over $144 million, and some estimate the total will top $160 million by the time the dust clears. That's a relative bargain at $38.32 per vote, until you realize she LOST her bid for California Governor. With that amount of cash, she could have paid the 2011 tuition of all 23,000 UCLA students, or certainly made some very happy non-profits this year.
This is not to say that in a democracy they should not be allowed to spend their own hard earned cash to mount a campaign, but we have to ask ourselves what affect this will have on who can run for office in the future. Abe Lincoln would not have a chance in today's world...but Larry Flint might breeze into office with his financial advantage. An exaggeration of course, but what happens to the caliber of candidates able to mount a successful campaign when the most important line item on their resume is personal wealth?
For my money, each office should be capped in terms of how much they could spend. A run for Governor? $50 million. A run at the Senate would be capped at 35 million, and so on. Of course the first thing any candidate would have to do is either pay for, or raise the money, but from then on, they would be free to be as innovative as possible when allocating those funds, certainly a consideration of fitness for office.
In the case of Whitman, it would have limited her to spending only $12 per vote, a much more palatable expense, and certainly fair across the board. And if it shortens up the election cycle periods, I couldn't be happier.
And that's the world...the "World According to Kimba." Thanks, as always, for reading.
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