Separating finance from campaigning

I have been talking about doing a study of the role of political parties in America, and I mentioned this to my brother recently. He told me about his experiences working at the local level with politics. He was involved in recruiting candidates for the local city council. At the local level at least for him money did not seem to be much of an issue. The real problem was finding people willing to serve on the council. This got me to thinking about at what level in the process does money become a real problem, and how is the candidate involved. In the case of primary elections, where the candidates are chosen through preliminary elections of candidates, money raised by the candidates is clearly an issue. In this case the potential candidates are actively seeking the position, rather than being recruited by the party. Some of them may in fact be unwelcome to the leaders of the party. Under these circumstances, the money the potential candidate can raise independently of the party may be important in determining whether he becomes a candidate.

If the potential candidates were by law limited to spending only money provided by the political party, and the party were required to allocate money to the potential candidates equally as long as each qualified, through some petitioning process, to be a candidate, then the issue of raising money for candidates in a primary battle would go away. The onus for raising money and allocating it to the candidates would be on the party, not on the individual candidates. This would deprive the candidates of their freedom to act independently of the party through their ability to raise money, but it would relieve them of the burden of raising money. Competition between candidates would shift to their positions on issues and abilities to communicate with voters and manage the campaign.

At the national level, preventing candidates from soliciting funds would make fund raising dinners where the candidate himself appeared illegal. The party as an entity would be able to hold fund raising dinners, but the candidate would not be able to appear. This would perhaps reduce the attraction of the dinner for donors, but it would make it clear that the donations are to the party, not to the candidate, removing the ability of the donor to specifically (and improperly) influence the candidate. PACs would be forced to coordinate with the parties, not the candidates. They could still spend as much as they want, but only on the parties, not the candidates—unless of course, they spend so much money that they in effect take over the party, making it an appendage of the PAC rather than the other way around, as may occur with the Republican party.