Columnist E.J. Dionne: Consultants, focus groups, polls…what about voters?

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1998 | 11:36 a.m.

MY HOPE in today's election is that the voters will confound predictions of a low turnout for a wonderfully perverse reason. All the news coverage forecasting dismal levels of participation tells voters that each ballot can count so much more.

That would be a very good thing in an election that has demonstrated some of the worst trends in our political life. Consider first, money.

If you thought 1996 was the year of big abuses in our campaign finance system, look at the tens of millions that have been spent this year busting the contribution limits imposed after Watergate.

The parties claim they have a loophole. They say they can raise unlimited money and spend it in any race they want, as long as the booty goes to "issue ads."

The rationale is that if you and your friends feel strongly about something -- the minimum wage, the environment, abortion or, for that matter, campaign finance reform -- you should be able to spend what you want to push your cause.

But the parties aren't spending this money for any other cause but electing their own candidates. Nothing wrong with that -- except that the parties and their candidates are supposed to live under certain rules designed to keep money from dominating campaigns.

This election offers voters opportunities to protest the campaign money system. In Massachusetts, and also in Arizona, "clean money" initiatives are on the ballot. They would give candidates the option of getting public money if they eschew raising big money from private sources. Passage of these initiatives would send a message of voter dissatisfaction with a system in which money rules.

This is also the Mitch McConnell election. McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky, is the unabashed foe of any and all efforts to change the political money system. He is on the hook in this election in three races.

In Wisconsin, Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat, is one of Congress' firmest advocates of campaign money reform. So firm is his conviction that he's agreed to live under the limits he'd impose on everybody else. But McConnell as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has flooded the state with money for ads attacking Feingold. A Feingold victory would be a vote against the money system. A Feingold loss would help prove that money rules.

In McConnell's home state of Kentucky, two House members, Democrat Scotty Baesler and Republican Jim Bunning, are squaring off for an open Senate seat. Baesler is one of the leading advocates of campaign finance reform. If he wins, it would be a blow to McConnell's claim that nobody has ever won or lost an election on the basis of the campaign money issue.

And then there is Rep. Linda Smith, a Republican seeking to defeat Washington's Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. Smith -- solidly right-wing on so many issues -- has fought the entire Republican leadership on behalf of campaign reform. McConnell, whose goal is supposed to be helping elect Republican senators, has been markedly ungenerous toward Smith.

Smith, in an interview, referred to the very liberal magazine that disagrees with her on almost every issue. "Every time an article appears in the Nation" about her battles with McConnell, she said, "these checks come in from around the country." The contributors write that they may not agree with her, but they don't like what McConnell is doing.

Political money is part of a larger problem. Campaigns have become so much about money spent for professionals who deal with polls, ads, direct mail and turnout that actual living, breathing citizens are almost extinct in the conduct of many of our electoral battles.

The modern campaign is a candidate who takes a break from fund-raising calls to talk to a media consultant who has just talked to a pollster who has just talked to a focus group.

"The public feels disengaged," said state Rep. Dan Bosley, who represents this area and is happily unopposed. "You have no field organization, no grass roots."

Echoing what politicians all over the country say, Bosley argues that the incentives in the system are wrong. "We don't have to go to people and explain the case," he says. "We just do these ads with these sound bites."

Nobody loves elections more than I do. I confess to enjoying talking to political consultants. And I can spend many happy hours studying polls. But the system we now have is badly broken.

As between citizens and money, we need to tilt the process back toward citizens. How many elections like this will we have before it happens?