Michaels Goes Astray On
Campaign Finance Reform Ad
MADISON (Oct. 8, 2004) - Common Cause in Wisconsin (CC/WI) is dissappointed with Rpublican Candidate for U.S. Senate Tim Michaels. The organization claims Michaels attacks and disparages what they call a significant law. It's the first campaign finance reform at the federal level since 1974 and CC/WI feels a response is due regarding Michaels campaign ads in his bid to unseat Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin).
Common Cause in Wisconsin (CC/WI) is a non-partisan reform advocacy with more than 4,000 members in the state that does not support or endorse any candidates for public office. However, CC/WI does support campaign finance reform at the local, state and federal level and was very supportive of the federal McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. The law was passed by both Republican-controlled Houses of Congress and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. It was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in December of 2003.
In a recent one minute campaign commercial entitled "playground," CC/WI says Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Michels denigrates federal campaign finance reform and incumbent Democratic U. S. Senator Russ Feingold's long-term and ultimately successful effort to enact the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.
In yet another ad, Michels takes aim at the "stand by your ad provision" of the reform law which requires candidates to take personal responsibility for the content of their campaign commercials--a practice which CC/WI suggests is a vast improvement over previous practice. The organization's stand is that theclear implication of these ads is campaign finance reform is trivial and achieving it is meaningless.
A CC/WI spokesperson says Michaels ads are insulting to the intelligence of the overwhelming majority of Wisconsin citizens who consistently support any and all efforts to get “soft money” out of politics.
Tgether with Republican U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, Feingold first introduced the original legislation in 1995 and it was signed into law in 2002. This took seven years to accomplish, not the 12 years Michels falsely asserts in his ads. A strong, bi-partisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate thought highly enough of the McCain-Feingold legislation to vote for its passage and President Bush thought well enough of it to sign it into law. And a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold the constitutionality of the law.
CC/WI believes that McCain-Feingold is an extremely significant and important law. By banning the unlimited unregulated six figure campaign soft money contributions from corporate and union treasuries and from wealthy individuals that used to flow into the national political party coffers, the law has helped to diminish the corrupting and corrosive effects such money had on public policy-making in Washington, D.C.
There are many substantial issues where Mr. Michels and Senator Feingold can disagree and debate. Pandering to the very deep-pocketed special interest groups that long opposed campaign finance reform and denigrating any and all attempts to clean up what has become a corrupt, money-driven political process should not be one of them, according to the official stand of Common Cause in Wisconsin.
|
