Dissent Of The Day

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04 Apr 2008 06:27 pm

By Patrick
A reader writes:

I am not a campaign finance lawyer, I am not a lawyer, but I think your conclusion drawn in the post concerning McCain's Money Woes is wrong as it conflates two very different systems. The Boston Globe article had McCain returning limited general election contributions to his donors and asking them to redonate to a legal/accounting compliance fund. This step is being taking in preperation for him accepting general election public funds. You suggest that this is being done because he has locked himself into public financing:
After using the prospect of public matching funds to secure a private $4 million loan during the primary, it was unclear whether McCain had legally committed himself to public financing and the limits that go with it.
The steps that he are taking are in preperation for the general election. This decision process is completely independent of the decision process and rules that govern public financing of the primary season. For instance in 2004 both John Kerry and George W. Bush opted out of the primary public funds but opted in for the general election public funds. This decision allowed both candidates to raise and spend $100+ million dollars up to their respective party's nominating conventions. At that point federal funding and spending limits kicked in.

John McCain has currently opted in, received tangible benefits from remaining with the primary public funding program and is claiming to have lept out of these promises while the FEC is not releasing him from his clearly defined obligations. This is the issue of the loan that was partially backed by a promise of the McCain campaign to stay in the race if he was a loser in order to collect public funding. The public funding in question was the primary election funding and spending caps. The area of dispute is that the FEC does not allow candidates to opt-out after opting into the system if the promise of those funds were used as collatoral for any tangible benefits.

Going back to why McCain is opting into the general election matching funds, I agree with you that this is a sign of weakness as the 'weaker' Democratic fundraiser (Hillary Clinton) has roughly raised in two months as much money as McCain has raised in two years. The stronger candidate, Obama, has raised in two months more than the entire public funding allocation McCain will receive this fall. And this is with a divided party. Either Democrat will be able to spend McCain into the ground using hard, disclosed, coordinated action dollars if McCain opts-in. And if he opts-in, it is because his campaign does not believe that they can raise enough money fast enough from a demoralized Republican base to justify the fundraising costs and more importantly the opportunity costs of fundraising instead of campaigning. Not a good sign, but significantly different reasoning then the analysis you proposed.

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