Reid: Amend the Constitution to stop Big Money in politics

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid says he felt “unclean” during his 1998 re-election effort.

I’ll bet: Reid was sweating out the results of that contest against then Rep. John Ensign, all the way down to the 428-vote finish.

But that’s not what Reid says left him feeling like he needed a shower: It was his first election in which political parties were allowed to spend big sums of money, Reid said. As a result, donations came fast and furious.

From the Huffington Post:

“It was a bad situation. I felt so unclean, for lack of a better word,” Reid said, speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a rare joint appearance with his GOP counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). “A person could give lots of money. One person gave a quarter of a million dollars. Of course, he wanted me to know that he had done.”

“I hope that did not corrupt me, but it was corrupting,” Reid added.

Now, it must be noted that Reid’s uneasiness with the free-flowing dollars did not rise to the level where he denounced the spending, or asked any political parties to stop spending money on his behalf. That would constitute unilateral disarmament, after all.

But now, Reid is campaigning for a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to pass laws regulating how much money could be raised and spent in a political campaign. The amendment must be approved by a two-thirds supermajority in Congress and then by the state Legislatures in three-fourths of the states to become effective.

The amendment was composed after a string of recent Supreme Court rulings that have loosened the rules on money in politics, erasing limits on corporate spending, union spending and individual aggregate donations to candidates directly. As a result, outside money — some donated anonymously — has come to dominate political races.

And Reid should know: The Patriot Majority PAC — run by Craig Varoga, which helped Reid’s 2010 re-election effort against Republican Sharron Angle — is the No. 2 biggest-spending non-profit group, behind only the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It’s aligned with the Senate Majority PAC, which features several former Reid advisers on its board.

Although some might suggest Reid is simply searching for a way to gain a political advantage over rival Republicans, the fact is, an amendment of the kind he’s advocating would put limits on all spending by all groups, no matter their political leanings.

Here’s some of what Reid had to say today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering the amendment:

I am here because the flood of dark money into our nation’s political system poses the greatest threat to our democracy that I have witnessed during my time in public service. The decisions by the Supreme Court have left the American people with a status quo in which one side’s billionaires are pitted against the other side’s billionaires.

So we sit here today faced with a simple choice: We can keep the status quo and argue all day about whose billionaires are right – or, we can work together to change the system, to get this shady money out of our democracy and restore the basic principle of one American, one vote.

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The cynics may scoff at the idea of us working together on an issue as critical as good government, but it wasn’t all that long ago that the issue of campaign finance reform enjoyed support from both Democrats and Republicans. Campaign finance reform has been proposed a number of times before – even by my counterpart, Senator McConnell.

In 1987, Senator McConnell’s own constitutional amendment empowered Congress to enact laws regulating the amount of independent expenditures. In advocating for his amendment, Senator McConnell said: “We Republicans have put together a responsible and Constitutional campaign reform agenda. It would restrict the power of special interest PACS, stop the flow of all soft money, keep wealthy individuals from buying public office.”

Senator McConnell had the right idea then. I am optimistic that we can find a way to rekindle those noble principles in him now.

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