Sorry folks, I get the digest version of the listserv so my previous post did not respond Bill Maurer’s argument about the MA. 

Lawmakers may indeed have been motivated by self-interest when they passed the Millionaires’ Amendment, but it had very little impact on incumbents’ fundraising while it was in force, largely because the opposition personal funds formula offset a self-financer’s advantage in personal funds by any advantage his opponent enjoyed in off-year fundraising.  In other words, incumbents’ war chests made the MA irrelevant in most races.  There were a handful of exceptions, but as I noted in my chapter in The Election After Reform, only one incumbent actually raised MA funds in 2004, and that candidate (Steve LaTourette) only picked up an extra $134,950 thanks to increased contribution limits.  In both this chapter and my expert report in Davis v. FEC I argued (and provided empirical evidence) that the MA did not turn out to be the incumbent-protection racket its critics predicted.   Instead, its primary beneficiaries were open-seat candidates or primary opponents to self-financers, yet even most of them did not derive much benefit from the MA’s provisions.  For the most part they either did not need MA receipts to defeat a millionaire, or they were at such a huge disadvantage that the help from the MA was not enough. 

Jennifer

Bill Maurer wmaurer at ij.org 
Fri Nov 19 12:42:05 PST 2010

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Craig makes an excellent point.  I would go a step further and argue

that the Millionaire's Amendment was representative of the politicians'

desire to use campaign finance laws to insulate themselves from

challengers or even criticism.  There was no other reason for the

Millionaire's Amendment than to act as a mechanism by which established

politicians could protect themselves from competition from self-funded

candidates.  This is despite the fact that, as Craig correctly points

out, they don't really need the protection, given that many

self-financed campaigns are like an eBay auction where the candidate

spends all their money but doesn't get with the item on which they were

bidding.  

Craig makes an excellent point.  I would go a step further and argue

that the Millionaire's Amendment was representative of the politicians'

desire to use campaign finance laws to insulate themselves from

challengers or even criticism.  There was no other reason for the

Millionaire's Amendment than to act as a mechanism by which established

politicians could protect themselves from competition from self-funded

candidates.  This is despite the fact that, as Craig correctly points

out, they don't really need the protection, given that many

self-financed campaigns are like an eBay auction where the candidate

spends all their money but doesn't get with the item on which they were

bidding.

Jennifer A. Steen

Assistant Professor of Political Science

School of Government, Politics and Global Studies

Arizona State University