CAMPAIGN FINANCE `REFORMS' STRANGLE ALL BUT THE RICH.

Byline: Joe Gelman

THE next general election in our state will be very different from past elections, and when I say different, I mean for the worse.

Once again, complex state campaign finance and election laws, packaged as ``reform'' and promoted with a great deal of high rhetoric, were adopted into law.

And once again, despite all of the good intentions, we will discover that the changes will not live up to their billing, and will in fact have serious, unintended negative consequences.

To be blunt, in our rush to ``reform'', we have so totally rigged California's electoral system in favor of independently wealthy candidates and incumbents, that it is now truly difficult, if not impossible, to describe our electoral process as open and fair, with a straight face.

The problem lies in three areas:

Average individuals are now entitled to contribute far less to the candidates of their choice than they were in previous elections.

Wealthy folks are entitled to contribute massive amounts of personal money to their own campaign for public office without any limitations whatsoever.

Special interest political action committees tend to almost always support incumbents, are free to engage in business as usual.

The stimulus for the latest state campaign finance reform laws (not to be confused with federal campaign finance laws and our president's current troubles), can be found in the artificially generated, simplistic conventional wisdom that there is too much money pouring into state political campaigns, and that candidates are spending far too much time and energy raising that money instead of talking about the important issues.

The notion that state political campaigns are too ``money-driven'', has led us to impose new drastic, misguided regulations that will only serve to exacerbate the perceived problems we are supposedly trying to address, while undermining the very foundation of our democratic process at the same time.

The newly imposed tight limits on the amount a candidate can raise from a single individual will not curb a candidate's realistic need for a substantial campaign war chest to remain viable, it will simply force the more cash-starved candidates out of the political arena altogether, or force them to spend far more of their time running around raising money from a larger pool of individuals in a desperate effort to reach the exact same mathematical objective as before; to be financially competitive in a world where money is still the mother's milk of politics.

So, ironically, what the promoters of these latest reforms missed is that the more we impose limits on the amounts a candidate can raise from individual contributors, the more time and energy an average candidate is forced to spend on fund raising in a desperate, mostly losing effort to remain viable, especially if that candidate happens to be a challenger and is not independently wealthy.

Naturally, incumbents have much less of a problem because the election laws currently allow them to ``loan'' themselves whatever amount of cash they might need, from their own bank account, and if victorious, they can then leverage the power of their newly acquired public office to raise funds to pay themselves back every penny. Such a deal!

In other words, if you are an incumbent, you clearly like the new state campaign finance laws. If you are independently wealthy, you actually love the new laws. And if you are both an incumbent and independently wealthy, you are really in love with the new laws.

But if you just happen to be the average, honest, hard-working, passionate, well-meaning, true-believing candidate with a sincere desire to serve the public, and you are not an incumbent or independently wealthy, then you are tough out of luck.

You are the one, along with the general public, who is getting shafted. You are the one who is increasingly shut out of our democratic process by these latest so-called reforms. The system is totally rigged against you.

It is literally political affirmative action for incumbents and rich folks, limousine-liberals and country-club conservatives alike.

Tom Hayden is not considered to be the underdog in his bid for L.A. mayor because he is a left-wing wacko in a city full of left-wing wackos; he is the underdog because he is only personally worth tens of millions of dollars, as apposed to Richard Riordan's hundreds of millions of dollars. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Hayden.

Brad Sherman and Richard Sybert didn't win their respective primaries in the Valley's 43rd Congressional District because they were the most charismatic, interesting or ideas-driven candidates. To the contrary, they were both almost criminally boring, but they were also both able and prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to win.

Sherman, who ultimately won the race, is now busy raising funds from interest groups to pay back loans that he made to himself during the campaign. Surprise, surprise.

Mike Huffington was about as unqualified a U.S. Senate candidate in 1994 as one could possibly find, but he also happened to have $28,000,000 in spare change to throw around. So other more qualified candidates like Congressman Chris Cox of Newport Beach found themselves unable to compete and decided not to run.

Of course Huffington then ran against Dianne Feinstein who has plenty of her own cash.

Political operatives and consultants love the independently wealthy candidate because they are far more likely to get paid, and to get paid more, without the hassle and anxiety of aggressive fund-raising efforts, and not knowing how to finance the next direct-mail piece or radio spot.

One of California's leading GOP political consultants, Ken Khachigian, told me early in the Huffington campaign that unlike the cash-starved Herschensohn campaign, which he had managed two years earlier, in the Huffington campaign ``money will be no object.'' And apparently it wasn't.

I remembered Khachigian's comments to me when I was reading Ed Rollins' tell-all book, a few years later, in which he described the Huffington campaign as the only campaign in history to employ a full-time masseur to relieve campaign workers' tension at headquarters every afternoon.

The Huffington campaign also apparently issued a campaign credit card to a handsome young assistant press secretary to ``entertain'' prominent female reporters covering the campaign, in the hope of generating positive publicity. The staffer later wrote a notorious article called ``I was a gigolo for the GOP,'' about his escapades on behalf of Huffington.

And the major state parties have been only too happy to play along with the rigged system.

The major political parties, understandably, want to make it easier on themselves by not having to raise large amounts of funds to help a specific candidate, if that candidate is in a financial position to personally pick up most of the tab for an expensive campaign. This frees up party cash for other objectives, which is certainly a strategic advantage.

So it is not surprising that the major political parties have been working hard to recruit candidates who are in a position to cough up, in many cases hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of dollars, from their personal bank accounts to run for office.

If we are to achieve fairness and, frankly, a sense of sanity in our state's campaign finance and election laws, or in federal law for that matter, then there are two ways to go about it.

Public financing, which I am totally against because it smells of socialism, will cost the taxpayer an arm and a leg, and will encourage every nut with nothing better to do to run for public office at the taxpayers' expense.

Or, we can work to level the playing field by curtailing the financial advantages of incumbency, and limiting the amount rich folks can contribute to themselves. That is the answer.

Independently wealthy candidates should be allowed to contribute to their own campaign the exact same amount as any other citizen is allowed to contribute to a campaign.

After all, they are seeking public office, not private office, and they are not allowed to vote for themselves more than once on election day, why should they be allowed to contribute to themselves far more than is legally allowed for any citizen?

Once the public begins to understand that, in the real world, every financial contribution translates into actual votes on election day, only then will there be the kind of public pressure needed to reform the system in a fair and equitable manner, or shall I say, to reform this latest ``reform.''