McCain takes aim at system of campaign financing

By Jill Zuckman, Globe Staff, July 1, 1999

BEDFORD, N.H. -- In a rare move for a presidential candidate, Senator John McCain declared yesterday that drastic overhaul of the campaign-finance system and elimination of special-interest influence will be the centerpiece of his campaign.

With the end of the war in Kosovo, McCain has shifted his message from foreign to domestic, embracing a cause he has championed in Congress for years. He had harsh words for Republicans, Democrats, and even himself; the noontime crowd at the Bedford town hall interrupted him with applause and cheers 16 times throughout the address.

"We are all corrupted," said McCain, pointing to the titanic "soft money" donations that flow freely through the nation's capital, stifling legislation and political overhaul

"We are the defenders of an elaborate influence-peddling scheme in which both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder," McCain said.

For the Arizona Republican, campaign-finance overhaul is a trademark issue, one that has buttressed his reputation as a political maverick. It is a topic that most politicians don't talk about, and it is a cause that has isolated McCain from his party's leaders.

"He may be a US senator and therefore a Washington insider, but he doesn't have the same views and concerns that Washington insiders might have," said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College, explaining the boost McCain may get from the subject.

McCain delivered his speech on the same day that reports of second-quarter fund-raising for the presidential campaigns became public. Texas Governor George W. Bush, for example, shattered all modern money records by taking in an astonishing $36 million in the first half of 1999. McCain ran a distant second among GOP fund-raisers, with $4 million.

While many political professionals say voters are bored by talk of changing the way politicians pay for their campaigns, and while the senator's own advisers tried to talk him out of pushing the subject in his presidential campaign, McCain vehemently disagreed.

"They are wrong," he said. "Most Americans care very much that it is now legal for a subsidiary of a corporation owned by the Chinese Army to give unlimited amounts of money to American political campaigns.

"Most Americans care very much that the Lincoln bedroom has become a Motel 6 where the president of the United States serves as the bellhop," said McCain. "Most Americans care very much when monks and nuns abandon their vows of poverty and pay tens of thousands of dollars to have spiritual communion with the vice president."

While he cited Democratic scandals, he also criticized Republicans. McCain said Republican voters don't like seeing their party abandon efforts to make government smaller and closer to the people by opting instead to preserve financial contributions that give them an edge over Democrats. And he noted that since the Republicans have controlled Congress, special interest earmarks in appropriations bills, also known as pork, have increased dramatically.

"The rise in pork-barrel spending is directly related to the rise of soft money, as Republicans and Democrats scramble to reward major donors," McCain said.

McCain said that before any president can accomplish anything, the system of campaign finance must be overhauled.

"I want to reform our tax code. I want to reduce government by waging a relentless war against wasteful spending. I want to reform and protect Social Security and Medicare," he said, ticking off a long list of priorities. "But we won't reform anything until we first reform the way we finance our political campaigns."

For example, McCain said that when Congress held hearings for the 1996 Telecommunications Act, every affected company "had purchased a seat at the table with soft money." The result, he said, is that the legislation protected all of the companies and none of the consumers.

Currently pending in Congress is the McCain-Feingold legislation to ban soft money to the national parties, restrict corporate and union spending on campaign advertising, and provide for greater disclosure of contributions. McCain and his Senate partner, Wisconsin Democrat Russell D. Feingold, have had no luck breaking a filibuster that killed their bill in 1997 and again in 1998. So far this year, the bill has not made it back to the floor of either the House or the Senate.

To some in Congress, McCain's ardent championship of campaign-finance legislation is an attempt to repair his image after he was linked to the "Keating Five" imbroglio. McCain was accused, along with four Democratic senators, of intervening with federal regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr., a rich savings and loan owner. Following a drawn-out ethics committee investigation, McCain was lightly rebuked in February 1991.

Yesterday, McCain said the voters' perception that public service is a corrupt endeavor shames him.

"Their contempt is a stain upon my honor and I cannot live with it," he said. For that reason, McCain said, he would stake his campaign on the cause of reform.

"Even if it were true that Americans don't care about campaign-finance reform, and I do not for one moment believe that it is, I would not give up this fight," he said.