Why PACs keep Tennessee's political process fair

 

Tom Humphrey, the dean of Nashville's legislative reporters, ran a story in today's Knoxville News-Sentinel about legislators setting up personal political action committees, often called "leadership PACS." Humphrey probably didn't intend for the story to have the angle of an expose (its tone is informative), but for someone unfamiliar with the nuts-and-bolts of politics, personal PACS sound like some unseemly scheme:

 

 

Individuals can donate no more than $2,000 to a state legislator's re-election account in a primary and general election campaign combined. The limit for an individual's donations to a PAC set up by a lawmaker is $66,100. A legislator can donate no more than the individual amount, or $2,000, to another legislative candidate. But a PAC can give up to $15,000 to a candidate for the state Senate or governor and $10,000 to a House candidate. A legislator with both a PAC and his or her campaign account can combine the donation, sending a favored candidate up to $17,000.

The reality, of course, is that our present campaign laws, intended to limit the influence of money in politics, only make the influence of cash even more deep and wide. The cost of running a political campaign has not decreased merely because laws have been made limiting campaign contributions. As the price of running for office has gone up in recent years as new media sources become increasingly wedded to the political process, what once was mostly a rich man's game would become entirely so and prevent people from more run-of-the-mill places and truly diverse backgrounds from entering public life. A case could be made that individual contributions should not be limited because doing so infringes on a person's rights to freedom of association and freedom of speech.

 

 

One of the reasons that Tennessee can still boast that someone from a very ordinary middle class background can run for office is that loopholes such as the ability to create personal political action committees that can donate more than $2,000 to a candidate still exist. Yes, it may seem like someone is simply using these "loopholes" in Tennessee's campaign laws to get around the rules-but these so-called "loopholes" are a part of the rules.
 

Imagine a political landscape where the ability to create personal PACs didn't exist. Without those committees and the monies they generate, only those who had a great deal of personal wealth could afford to run for the General Assembly because they would be the only ones with the ability to raise the amount of cash needed to run an effective campaign. The present structure, while imperfect, still allows for someone who would be a good candidate to try and obtain the resources they need through political action committees, perhaps even their own.

 

Having wealthy candidates is not a problem, but the rules for campaign finance should help insure that wealth is not the first qualification for a candidacy.