affecting House races is seeping into Senate contests as well.
While some political scientists have concluded from the high re-election rates that there exists a “Permanent Congress,” in fact, two-thirds of the House has served fewer than 12 years (Edwards 1990), and senators have experienced a 44 percent turnover rate over a nine-year period (Swift 1989).
In 1988, the average winning Senate campaign cost more than $4 million, while many challengers failed to raise even a third of that amount (Makinson 1989, 21). In 1990, of the 31 Senate incumbents seeking re-election, four had no opposition whatsoever and another 11 faced challengers who never presented a credible financial or political threat. Again, in a year in which incumbents were thought to be in disfavour, only one sitting senator was defeated, by a challenger who was out-spent 8-1.
The failure of legislative challengers to attain financial competitiveness comes in the face of demonstrations by political scientist Gary Jacobson that money is a much more important campaign resource for non-incumbents than for incumbents (Jacobson 1980, 48-49). And the failure comes at a time when PACs are playing an increasingly important role in funding incumbents’ campaigns. According to the FEC, 57 percent of PAC donations went to incumbents during the 1977-78 election cycle; a decade later, that figure had jumped to 74 percent.
Of course, labour PACs supported congressional Democrats strongly throughout this period, including substantial financial assistance to many Democratic challengers. What has angered the Republicans is that business and trade association PACs have shifted their loyalties more and more towards the Democrats. In 1988, 55 percent of business PAC money was funnelled to Democrats, mostly to incumbents. Just six years earlier, Republican congressional candidates got 60 percent of business PAC dollars (Makinson 1989, 15).
The Republicans, a minority in both houses of Congress, contend that their inability to field competitive challenges to Democratic incumbents in many instances is due to a lack of financial support from, among others, the business PACs. In turn, the PACs say that the Republicans often have failed to recruit credible challengers to begin with.
Among the advantages of incumbency are not only the attracting of PAC contributions - in part because of incumbents’ use of their legislative committee memberships as bases for fund-raising - but also the franked mail privilege, generous staffing including in home-state or district offices, travel, honoraria, and incumbent-dominated safe districts achieved through decennial reapportionment.
The Costs of Television
The chasing of PAC money, along with the frequent complaints that legislators are paying too much attention to fund-raising and not enough to legislating, are both by-products of the escalating costs of Senate and House campaigns. The professionalization of politics has given rise to computerized campaign headquarters featuring sophisticated and expensive strategies for targeting potential voters and contributors. However, television is repeatedly pointed to as the culprit behind the increasing costs of running for Congress.
Of course, paid television plays a major role in presidential campaigns. But the price tag has been less of an issue, for several reasons. First is the presence of alternative resources in the form of public financing. With soft money increasingly bearing the expense of such nuts-and-bolts activities as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, it has left general candidates free to use much of their public subsidy for television advertising. To a considerable extent, the general election public funding to presidential candidates has turned into an income transfer from the U.S. Treasury to private broadcasters.13 Meanwhile, during the pre-nomination period, state-by-state expense limits and the need to marshal scarce financial resources have limited the use of television. In 1988, television accounted for only 6 percent of all presidential pre-nomination spending (Alexander and Bauer 1991, 35).
At the congressional level, the role of television and its attendant costs have been overstated to a degree. In many House contests, particularly in densely populated urban and suburban areas, the boundaries of a House district are rarely contiguous with the viewership of a broadcast station. There are some 40 congressional districts within the viewing range of New York City stations: some are in New Jersey, some in Connecticut and some in New York. Consequently, it makes little sense to purchase expensive television time to reach many people unable to vote in that district. In these instances, carefully targeted direct mail has been the medium of choice in communicating with voters. In Senate races, which are run statewide, the expense of television is far greater, sometimes as much as 50 percent of the campaign spending.
The federal law governing broadcast stations does not require TV outlets to sell air time to candidates. Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 (the so-called equal time rule) mandates that if one candidate uses a broadcast station, that licensee must provide equal opportunities for all candidates for the same office (whether federal, state or local); this applies to both purchased and free time.
Another part of the law, section 312(a)(7), however, warns that a broadcast station’s licence may be withdrawn for “willful or repeated failure to allow reasonable access to or to permit purchase of reasonable amounts of time for use of a broadcasting station by a legally qualified candidate for federal office on behalf of his candidacy.” But this does not necessarily translate into the sale of broadcast time; the requirement may be fulfilled by the station’s sponsorship of debates or other forums.
In 1972, an amendment to the Federal Communications Act (section 315(b)) mandated that broadcast stations cannot charge political candidates more than the lowest unit rate made available to any other advertiser in the same class of time. The rule, which governs the period 45 days prior to a primary election and 60 days prior to a general election, was designed to insure that political candidates received the same discounts as a station’s most favoured advertisers.
Some broadcasters, however, have succeeded in frustrating the intent of the rule by selling advertising time on a pre-emptible basis. Because political candidates are advertisers who want time that is not pre-emptible, the “lowest unit rate” for this kind of advertising often has ended up being the highest rate charged by the station. Consequently, critics have complained that the law has done little to hold down political costs.
The Role of Parties
As with many other concerns, the role of the political parties is one that transcends strictly financial issues.
The reforms of the early 1970s sharply curtailed the financial involvement of political parties in both presidential and congressional campaigns, thereby leading to a further weakening of these structures. As noted in the first section, several provisions of the FECA Amendments of 1979 were designed to respond to these concerns regarding presidential campaigns. In addition, there have been suggestions that the limited ability of the two major parties to finance congressional campaigns has led to diminishing partisan loyalties on the part of legislators, making it increasingly difficult to mobilize votes in Congress.
However, the weakening of the political parties predates the appearance of campaign finance reform on the congressional agenda. To some degree, U.S. political parties have fallen victim to a more educated, more transient, more independent-thinking electorate. Television also has played an important role. Congress has been populated increasingly by non-traditional politicians who, rather than rising through the ranks of political parties, have ignored party structures and used some form of media to get their messages directly to the voters.
In short, parties have lost a great deal of their effectiveness, with many of their functions absorbed by other institutions or left unfulfilled. What the reforms in the political process, including political finance laws, have done is to give rise to a number of institutions, such as PACs, providing candidate support and dialogue with the community. These changes are so basic that it is doubtful that any legislation could succeed in reversing them.
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