Wealthy, self-financed congressional candidate Jack Davis says the McCain-Feingold Act's "Millionaire's Amendment," which raises the contribution limits for opponents of wealthy, self-financed candidates, is not only unfair but also unconstitutional, and his lawyers will try topersuade the Supreme Court of that tomorrow.
The provision violates his rights under the First and Fifth amendments, gives an advantage to his opponent and imposes reporting requirements that force him to reveal his campaign strategy, says Davis, an industrialist who unsuccessfuly ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2004 and 2006.
But that hardly means he has tired of trying. He announced last week that he will again run for the western New York seat of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R), who is departing the House. This time Davis, 75, is pledging to spend $3 million of his money on the effort.
That would bring to about $7 million the amount Davis has spent trying to be elected to Congress -- a total that might serve as Exhibit A in Congress's defense of the law, which was passed to combat the impression that congressional seats can be "bought."
Davis says that is rich. "Look at the big contributors, look at the lobbyists that run things there," he said in an interview. "Are you telling me someone's not buying the election?"
Davis's is the latest constitutional challenge to the McCain-Feingold Act, named for Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and formally known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Justices upheld key elements of the act in 2003, but last year the reconstituted court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. loosened a critical part of the law regarding corporate and union financing of advertising.
The following takes us to the core legal argument:Davis and Washington lawyer Stanley Brand say the provision discriminates against candidates who prefer to fund their own campaigns in order to "convey a message of independence from lobbyists, large donors and other political 'insiders.' " The amendment "infringes on the core political speech of self-financed candidates and violates their right to equal protection of the law," Davis's brief maintains.
But a panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed and granted summary judgment in favor of the FEC.
The court held that Davis's challenge "fails at the outset" because the amendment "places no restriction on a candidate's ability to spend unlimited amounts of his personal wealth to communicate his message to voters, nor does it reduce the amount of money he is able to raise from contributors."
In short there is no limitation placed on the activities of the wealthy candidate, only an augmentation of what the challenger can do. Davis argues that this invites the corruption that the law is intended to curtail (the purpose of the act as a whole is to make elections--at least seem--more fair) but researchers mentioned in the article claim to have not found this law to have had much of an impact.
