POLITICS ASIDE -- s.j. cahn

There’s no better proof the public considers the funding of political

campaigns to be dirty than the fact that your average donors don’t want

to talk about their contributions.

Following Pat Buchanan’s (not surprising) announcement last week that he

was jumping to the Reform Party, I attempted to call a few of the

Newport-Mesa residents who had given Buchanan money well before he began

talking about leaving the Republican fold.

Now, none of these people were huge contributors. We’re talking $250 to

$500 donations, not $50,000 in soft money. So I held out some hope that

they might be willing to say how they felt about Buchanan taking their (I

suspect) Republican money to the party of Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura.

No such luck. I was told they didn’t want to discuss it, and more than a

few were shocked I even knew about their donations.

To clarify that point, all political contributions are available for the

public to view. I encourage anyone with some time to visit the Federal

Election Commission’s Web site at o7 www.fec.govf7 . For a less

detailed, but more user-friendly site, check out o7

www.opensecrets.orgf7 . You can find out which of your neighbors donated

by searching by ZIP code; however, the site isn’t authoritative like the

FEC’s.

Donor unwillingness to talk isn’t really surprising. This has been true

for as long as I’ve been covering politics closely, which dates back to

early 1996, when campaign finance reform began to become news.

Briefly, there were pushes in various states -- Maine and Missouri in

particular -- to make campaigns publicly funded. These drives didn’t get

very far; after all, how many of us actually check the box on our income

tax form pledging money to the presidential race? So trying to put public

money into races like state attorney general or treasurer was just about

dead on arrival.

Then, in early 1997, the Clinton/Gore finance scandal broke. At the time,

I was a reporter in Washington and there were a number of proposals

before the House and Senate to alter the campaign finance laws. One

called for a ban on soft money; a competing measure would have removed

caps on fund-raising and spending while forcing disclosure within 24

hours.

Being a bit more naive than I am now, I thought changes would be made

during that spring. They weren’t. They haven’t been.

Two years later, judging by people’s shame in contributing, they still

need to be.

* S.J. CAHN is city editor of the Daily Pilot. Send your political news

to him at: Daily Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa 92627; by fax at (949)

646-4170; or by e-mail to o7 dailypilot@latimes.comf7 . He can be

reached at (949) 574-4268.