The Purpose of Campaign Finance Reforms

The Center for Competitive Politics posted a comment entitled Money well spent? that pointed out that the Pew Charitable Trusts wasted a lot of money underwriting efforts to enact restrictive campaign finance laws. A study by the Trust found that there was no relationship between the professional management of the 50 states and the existence of these restrictive campaign finance laws. So I wrote back the following:

I looked at the Pew Evaluation on Government Performance and indeed there appears to be little correlation between the level of professional management of the States and restrictive campaign finance laws.

But consider that this is not the indicator used by those of us who support reform of campaigns. What is not measured by the PEW study is how the States managed businesses that impact the daily lives of citizens. Was there favoritism to the Cable or Telephone companies on rules for setting rates and services? Likewise for HMOs, Insurance Companies, Banking and Usury laws, Power companies, or Polluters, etc.. This is where folks like me are concerned about the influence of special interests on the judgment of our Representatives.