Re: [EL] The Millionaire's Amendment

Hi Adam:

Yes, the political science research is rich with studies documenting that self-funded candidates generally fare poorly at the polls. But this lesson has not been learned by candidates or lawmakers. Many wealthy individuals really believe they can simply buy an office -- and their opponents tend to believe likewise, resulting in an arm's race in fundraising and spending.

The Millionaire's Amendment was a very unnecessary provision of BCRA from a policy perspective, but proponents of BCRA could not convince many lawmakers of that, most of whom feared the rising phenomenon of wealthy self-funded candidates.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bonin, Adam C. <ABonin@cozen.com>
To: Election Law <election-law@mailman.lls.edu>
Sent: Fri, Nov 19, 2010 10:16 am
Subject: [EL] The Millionaire's Amendment

It just occurred to me that we've now completed our first full federal election cycle after Davis v FEC and, as such, with no Millionaire's Amendment in place designed to provide ameliorative measures for candidates running against self-funders. Yet unless I'm missing something (Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, *maybe*), I don't know that the lack of expanded limits hurt any candidate running against a self-funder save, perhaps, the still-being-counted TIm Bishop (D) v. challenger Randy Altschuler (R) race in NY-01; self-funders seemed to do just as poorly as they always do. http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topself.php

Has anyone given this any thought?

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