Campaign fund limits lose some elastic
Justices reject 'millionaire' rule
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the "millionaire's amendment," a campaign finance measure intended to level the field for congressional candidates facing wealthy opponents who spend lots of their own money.
The law says that when a House candidate spends more than $350,000 of his or her own money, an opponent can accept larger individual contributions than normally allowed and can receive unlimited coordinated party expenditures.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling that reflects skepticism of campaign finance overhauls, said the law violates the First Amendment. "We have never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different contribution limits for candidates who are competing against each other," Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority.
Since the provision took effect in the 2004 election, about 110 candidates have triggered the amendment. Its most prominent beneficiary so far has been Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who was able to receive additional contributions in his 2004 US Senate primary campaign in Illinois because an opponent spent nearly $29 million of his own money.
The law has separate provisions for House and Senate candidates; the Senate provision was not at issue in this case. But Michael Toner, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said he did not see "a basis for the government enforcing the Senate provision in light of this ruling."
Adam Bonin, a lawyer who has handled election law cases, said self-financing candidates now can overwhelm their opponents. "Congress made a reasonable effort to try to level the playing field here, and the court substituted its own judgment of what's fair," he said.
But the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group, reported yesterday that this election, fewer candidates appear to be spending enough of their own cash to trigger the amendment. It said self-funded candidates typically lose, despite their big spending.
John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, coauthors of the landmark 2002 campaign finance law, stressed yesterday that the ruling does not affect what they called the central component of the overhaul, the ban on soft money - six-figure donations to political parties.
"That ban is at the core of the reforms I worked for," McCain said in a statement. 