process, these gains have been largely negated by the rapidly climbing costs of electioneering and concomitant dependence upon the few who privately provide those costs.

The system itself is good-the best that any nation has devised. But it needs updating and modernizing to the end that "one man, one vote" may be indeed a reality. Let us not, through inaction, permit it to drift in its present direction until we bring down upon ourselves the condemnation huried at the scribes and pharisees, for permitting our free elective processes to become like "whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within filled with dead men's bones and uncleanness."

The bills before us permit us an opportunity to revive the spirit of Democracy itself. Let it not be lamented that we neglected the opportunity.

[From Harper's Magazine, April 1967]

WASHINGTON INSIGHT-CLEAN MONEY FOR CONGRESS

(By Jim Wright)

(Jim Wright has represented Fort Worth, Texas, in the House of Representatives since 1955. He is the author of two books, "You and Your Congressman” and "The Coming Water Famine.")

Mounting campaign costs and unrealistic regulations are having ominous effects on American political life. A seven-term Congressman suggests what should be done

No facet of American life cries out more loudly for reform than the dingy gray area of political campaign financing, which casts a lengthening shadow across all else we do in our elective public institutions.

As a veteran of seven successful campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives and one losing race for the Senate, I've experienced at first hand the sky. rocketing cost of politics. It is now, in fact, nearly impossible in most states for men of modest means to seek high elective office unless they are willing wards of the wealthy.

The price of campaigning has risen so high that it actually imperils the integrity of our political institutions. Big contributors more and more hold the keys to the gates of public service. This is choking off the wellsprings of fresh, new thought and severely limiting the field of choice available to the public. I am convinced, moreover, that the intellectual quality of political campaigns is deteriorating as a result.

One curious by-product of big money in politics is the slick, shallow publicrelations approach with its nauseating emphasis on "image" at the expense of substance. In the arenas where Lincoln and Douglas once debated great issues, advertising agencies last year hawked candidates like soap flakes.

Nineteen sixty-six was the year of the political singing commercial; easily seven or eight times as much money was spent on 20-second or 50-second spots on TV as on programs permiting any serious discussion of issues. Candidates hired professional pollsters to sample the electorate and offer advise on the most effective color combinations, lettering styles, and photographic poses. The whole business was taking on a patently phony, make-believe veneer.

This situation will not change unless Congress enacts a meaningful body of law to reform the antiquated and unenforceable regulations that are evaded by almost every candidate and ridiculed by the public. In the past decade eighteen different proposals designed to do this have been introduced in Congress. Not one has been acted upon.

Campaign expenditurs for federal office generally fall under the purview of an ancient statute known as the Corrupt Practices Act of 1925. This law must have had some meaning in its day. But in 1966 it was about as effective as stuffing popcorn into the mouth of a running fire hose. The law stipulates among other things that a candidate for the House may spend no more than $5,000 in his bid for election, and a candidate for the Senate no more than $25.000. If I told you I had never spent more than $5,000 in a House race I'd be a hypocrite. And if I actually had spent so little in my first race, I'd never have been elected. The same applies to at least 95 per cent of my colleagues. The huge loophole in the law lies in the fact that a candidate need not report the funds collected and spent

T

in his behalf by a committee. The transparent fiction is that this goes on without his knowledge."

No candidate has ever been prosecuted for noncompliance with the Corrupt Practices Act (it carries penalties of two years' imprisonment and a $10,000 fine for willful violation). In times past, revelations of flagrant overspending or unsavory contributions evoked shock and public censure.

But today our very capacity for indignation seems to have withered. We take huge expenditures for granted. In the New York Senate race of 1364, for example, winner Robert F. Kennedy is reported to have spent $1,236,831, and over a million was spent in behalf of loser Kenneth B. Keating.

Last October Republican headquarters in New York announced that $4,330,000 had been spent up to that point inthe campaign to reelect Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his running mates.' Jesse M. Unruh, Speaker of the California Assembly and a key political figure in the state, says Republicans spent between $5 million and $6 million in electing Ronald Reagan last year. Uuruh believes the steadily mounting price of politics is putting pressure on both parties to nominate movie stars and other political neophytes with well-known names and faces. It simply takes too much cash to publicize an unknown, however well qualified.

Why does the pursuit of public office cost so much? Let me itemize out of my own experience in Texas, which is by no means unique. Just one first-class letter to every family in Texas requires-in production and postage-approximately $300,000. A single billboard in one of our big cities rents for $550 a month. Others can be had for only $75 or $100 a month. But multiply this by the thousands it takes to cover a large state. A 30-minute TV broadcast which I did on eighteen of the fifty television stations in Texas cost me a little over $10,000. The same amount of time, on the same stations, if taken in 20-second spots, would have cost $400,000. The "quicky" spot announcement is by far the most expensive thing on television.

Even races for House seats, with their more limited constituencies, can consume staggering sums. For example, an unsuccessful primary race for a Congressional nomination in North Carolina last year cost approximately $250,000 in mass-media advertising alone.

My Democratic colleague, Dick Ottinger of New York, frankly reported an outlay of $193.000 in his successful bid for office in 1964. He is to be commended for his candor.

But what kind of example do we give to the public for obedience to law? There may be some excuse when the general populace ignores an obviously unworkable and commonly disobeyed ordinance. But what excuse can there be for us who have it directly in our hands to change the law? It is our very profession to make the law, and to make it mean something-if, in fact, we want it to mean something! By refusing either to abide by it or to change it, we present a sad spectacle indeed.

CONVENIENTLY BLIND AND DEAF

An impossible dilemma confronts a candidate who wants both to obey the law and tell the truth. Last summer John J. Hooker, Jr., a Nashville attorney who unsuccessfully sought the Tennessee gubernatorial nomination, promised during his campaign to make a complete public report on his expenditures. He fulfilled the pledge on September 4, showing total spending of $591,296.27.

Political pros in Tennessee were shocked. Certainly it wasn't the first time there had been expenditures in this range; but it was the first time such a public disclosure had been made in the history of the state. Hooker could hardly have affronted tradition more flagrantly had he denounced old folks or come out in favor of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

The legal limits for a statewide primary race in Tennessee is $25,000. Hooker may have rendered himself subject to prosecution, though it is doubtful that one would be pressed. His successful opponent, Buford Ellington, played it safe and traditional. He filed a solemn declaration just a whisker under the legal limit-$24,809.12. A similar figure was rendered, straight-faced by the manager of former Governor Frank Clement's winning race for the Senate nomination-$24,089.22.

1 Richard Nixon, perhaps not a wholly unbiased observer, is reported to believe that Rockefeller actually spent close to $14 million in his reelection race.

Ellington, questioned by newsmen, conceded that, of course, it costs a lot more than $25,000 to run such a race. But he maintained that a candidate was complying with the law if he did not "personally know" of the various expenditures in his behalf. (His own report made no reference to funds devoted to adver tising, the reference being that the candidate had traveled throughout his state blind to billboards, car stickers, and newspaper ads, and deaf to his own radio and TV commercials.)

Ellington should not, however, be singled out for censure. Pretending not to know of expenditures in one's behalf is an accepted practice. When lawmakers generally flout the law, democracy is in peril. But still greater evils result when lawmakers are subjected to mounting financial pressures.

Just last year a Senate committee examined the ethics of Senator Tom Dodd of Connecticut, who paid off his campaign debts with the proceeds of testimonial dinners at each of which the principal speaker was a Vice President (Lyndon Johnson for the first two, Hubert Humphrey for the third). More than two thousand of Senator Dodd's constituents bought tickets to one or more of these gala affairs, which jointly netted over $100,000.

For a public official, debt is debilitating. It can plague his conscience and divide his energies. It can sorely test his integrity, or sap his courage at the very time he needs it most. Ultimately, if he remains single-minded in his devotion to the public weal and keeps his back resolutely turned upon temptation, debt can drive him, despairing, out of public life. Sometimes its shadow hovers over him for years afterwards.

I know this at first hand. In 1961, I made an unsuccessful race in a special election for the U.S. Senate. After it was over, we figured that we had spent some $270,000. Obviously, it hadn't been enough. But I ended up owing $68,000, mostly for debts which I had not personally authorized. It took me two and a half years to retire the notes.

Consider the case of Democrat Leonard Wolf of Iowa, who served one term in the House. He came to Congress in January 1959 owing $89,000 in campaign debts and business losses incurred while campaigning. He was defeated in 1960 when Nixon carried Iowa for the Republicans. Today, six years after leaving office, Wolf has finally paid off most of the $89,000. When friends urged him to run again in 1966, he understandably said, "No, thanks."

But even this financial disaster seems minor compared with the experience of James E. Turman who conducted an unavailing campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1962. He came close, made the runoff, but lost in the second primary. For almost five years, he has been making regular monthly payments from his personal income to retire his campaign debt. And he calculates that, on this schedule, he will not be in the clear until 1981. It will take nineteen years to pay for one near-miss at the polls!

Perhaps you're thinking, "That's too bad, but it's his tough luck. A fellow who can't afford it shouldn't take on a campaign of that kind." And perhaps you'd be right. But where does that leave any able young American who genuinely wants to contribute his time and talent to the political life of his country? Unless he has inherited spectacular wealth, it leaves him at the mercy of large contributors, who will expect him in one way or another to serve their interests.

TEN MILLION HANDS TO SHAKE

So far as my own case goes, I've been luckier than most politicians. When I made my first run for Congress I had enough money of my own to pick up the tab personally for half (about $8,000) of the campaign cost. Since the beginning, I've made it an unvarying rule never to accept more than a $100 contribution from any individual. The average over the years has been around $10. This preserves my independence from personal obligation. I wouldn't want it otherwise. A Congressman can get by this way if he's fortunate-as I am-in having a very understanding constituency.

But this formula is impossible for a statewide contest, as I discovered in my 1961 try for the Senate. In that race, two balloons of fantasy exploded in my face. The first was the notion that if I announced my candidacy early, I would frighten off other prospective aspirants. Instead, seventy-one would-be candidates threw their hats in the ring, creating the biggest field of entries in the history of Texas politics. If this raised some doubts as to my ability to intimidate opposition, I argue that it should have established me as a leader of men, since never before had so many followed the example of one.

My second and more serious fallacy was the assumption that a determined man in good health could make up by prodigious personal effort what he lacked in finances. I would simply campaign harder than anyone else in the race.

In the ensuing four months, I traveled 27,000 miles, made 678 speeches, slept an average of four-and-a-half hours a night and worked off eighteen pounds. During one week, I averaged eleven speeches a day in as many different localities. But it was like trying to siphon off the Gulf of Mexico with an eyedropper. For there were then ten million people in Texas; if I worked sixteen hours a day and wasted no time, it would have taken me some twenty-eight years to talk for one minute with every citizen in the state. I had four months.

The upshot was that I came close, but not close enough. Out of the seventy-two entries, I barely missed second spot which would have put me in the runoff, with John Tower, the sole Republican. Tower subsequently won over airline executive Bill Blakley who had nosed me out of the number two position. Each of these two men had spent on billboard, newspaper, and radio advertising at least three times the amount I'd been able to put together.

I planned to make the race again in 1966 when Senator Tower would be up for reelection. But, as the time drew near, the problem of money again loomed large. I could not bring myself to initiate alliances with those who could provide the wherewithal in big chunks. This is, alas, the accepted way in Texas, and probably in most states. Nor, with a son in college and two daughters almost ready to enter, could I mortgage their futures, on another underfinanced race which might leave me owing $100,000 or more and out of a job.

In a last-ditch effort to find a broad base of campaign financing I bought $10,000 worth of television time for one statewide broadcast. I told the audience exactly what it costs to run a statewide campaign in Texas, and said that I would become a candidate for the Senate if 25,000 individual Texans who agreed with my views would participate to the extent of contributing $10 each.

The response was good. I received nearly seven thousand letters-a bona fide expression of grass-roots support. But contributions and precise pledges totaled only $48,828.50-far less than the $250,000 I had considered a minimum base.

I am convinced that I could have won with sufficient public exposure. But to obtain it I would have had either to make a beggar of myself in repeated telecasts, or to meet privately with affluent individuals and organized groups to discuss what I could do for them primarily rather than for the United States. I'm not temperamentally suited for the former role nor conscientiously fitted for the latter.

So there was nothing to do but return the generous contributions and forget about running for the Senate.

MARTINIS AND LOBBYISTS

My experience is no great tragedy for America. But when the same thing happens all over the country, then the consequences are ominous.

Senator Dodd's testimonial dinners were at least supported by his own constituents. This is not true of the now-familiar Washington cocktail party which is financed by lobbyists.

The Congressional friends of the honoree are generally importuned to attend these gatherings (on free ducats), while blocks of tickets-ranging in price from $50 to $1,000-are bought by various lobbyists. Everybody stands around nibbling hors d'oeuvres and sipping martinis until a whistle blows and a few words are said in behalf of the honored guest. His campaign fund receives the proceeds. One trade-association executive was invited-in an eighteen-month period-to seventy such receptions.

Another money-raising gimmick, employed by the national party headquarters, is the fancy brochure with ads selling for $10,000 to $15,000 a page. The Democrats' latest book is called "Toward an Age of Greatness"; the Republicans' is titled "Congress-The Heartbeat of Government." Eleven of the nation's top twenty-five defense contractors have bought ads in brochures of this kind and they've deducted the price from their taxes as a "business expense."

Many advertisers have been corporations, legally prohibited from contributing to campaigns. But the proceeds go to the national campaign committees which divide them among various Congressional candidates. Other advertisers include companies whose activities are directly regulated by the government, including six airlines (American, Braniff, Continental, Eastern, Pan American, and TWA); three railroads-the Milwaukee Road, Southern Railway System, and Union Pacific; the Tennessee Gas Transmission Company; and various steamship lines.

only real experience in campaign financing has been in the field of Congressional elections, I shall confine my remarks largely to that subject rather than attempting to advise in the question of Presidential elections.

In the critical matter of Congressional election reform, I believe the answer lies not in subsidizing campaigns with public funds, but in establishing enforceable limits on total expenditures and individual contributions, requiring absolute disclosure, and making it attractive for average Americans to contribute in modest amounts to the candidates and parties of their own individual choice. The enactment of a fair, realistic and workable campaign spending law could pump new life into the bloodstream of our elective procedures and restore public confidence in both the integrity of Congress and the viability of our democratic institutions.

Or by giving these bills a mere perfunctory hearing, failing to push for legislative reform, and simply letting the dust of long neglect slowly settle back in all its accustomed corners, we could confirm the shadowy suspicion held by many that Congress is content with the gaping loopholes which make a mockery of our ancient and inadequate campaign spending laws, and that, in spite of our pious protests, we do not really want reform.

SHAMEFUL NEGLECT

And it would be difficult to blame the public for reaching such a conclusion. Congress in the past two decades has shamefully neglected to act on a single one of some 20 different proposals designed to bring a semblance of sense and order to the legal sham that is supposed to govern campaign expenditures. Each of us to some degree bears the onus of that failure.

The Corrupt Practices Act of 1925 originally must have been inspired by sincere purpose. It must have had some meaning in its day. In 1967, it is about as sensible, and about as enforceable, as trying to apply horse and buggy speed limits to jet age transportation. I daresay there is not a member of Congress, myself included, who has not knowingly evaded its purpose in one way or another.

That law provides that a candidate for Congress can spend no more than $5,000 in his bid for election, and a candidiate for the Senate no more than $25,000. If I told you that I had abided wholly by the spirit of that statute, I'd be an utter hypocrite-and everyone in this room knows it.

Today, in our larger and more populous states, it has become common practice to spend upwards of a million dollars to win a Governorship or a seat in the U.S. Senate. Some such statewide races, from an analysis of mailings, billboards, newspaper ads and radio and television time used in promoting an individual candidacy, are estimated to have exacted a financial toll in the neighborhood of $3 million each. Researchers have documented more than $200 million spent in the various elections in 1964.

A FEW TYPICAL EXPENSES

If these figures should be surprising to anyone, let me itemize a few typical expenses, as they would apply to my particular state. Similar statistics can be compiled on other states. Perhaps little of this will be really new to elective officials, but it should be an eye opener to the public.

Just one first-class letter to every family in Texas would cost-in production and postage-approximately $300,000.

One of the huge billboards-just one in one of our big Texas cities—with no more than a touched-up picture and a slick slogan-costs $550 a month. They're not all that expensive. Many are only $300 or $200 a month. But multiply the individual cost by the thousands it takes to cover a large state, and you'll have a fair idea what billboard coverage comes to in dollars.

Recently I did a 30-minute television broadcast on 18 of the 50 television stations in Texas. It cost me a little over $10,000. But the same total amount of time, on exactly the same stations, if taken in 20-second spots, would have cost $400,000! By far the most expensive thing in television is the juvenile little quickie which slips up on you and shouts a name or a singing commercial at you before you have a chance to turn it off.

A CYNICAL THING

I mention these things because I think the public is entitled to know them. It's their government that's at stake. The practice of campaign spending and