Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Tim Michels remarked in a recent interview with The Daily Cardinal that his opponent's, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., $8 million campaign war chest is a fitting example of how campaign finance reform efforts have failed. It is becoming increasingly difficult for challengers to unseat incumbents in Congress, he said. This comment raises questions about the decreasing turnover rate in Congress and its possible effects.
Feingold's fundraising success has surpassed any previous Wisconsin senatorial race, Michels spokesperson Tim Rovy, said.
\He clearly understands that he's the underdog in this race,"" Rovy said. ""It's difficult to go up against a challenger, especially one who has raised record amounts of money.""
The re-election rate for incumbents in the House of Representatives has been increasing over the past 60 years to its present level of 95 percent, according to UW-Madison political science Professor Charles Franklin. However, this trend is less apparent in the Senate, where the re-election rate is between 75 percent and 80 percent, Franklin said.
The difficulty of unseating an incumbent raises concerns over democratic responsiveness.
""If members are too secure, the threat of being tossed out becomes irrelevant, and members don't represent their constituencies well,"" Franklin said.
Soft money contributions also tend to favor incumbents, because interest groups have already invested in the more experienced candidate, Franklin said.
Feingold's signature legislation, the McCain-Feingold Act, was intended to fight soft money contributions. However, soft money contributions have reached record numbers in this election, Rovy said.
""We believe the campaign finance package has been a huge failure, and has allowed even more money into the system,"" Rovy said.
Franklin agreed that the new law has done little to curb soft money contributions.
""Feingold claimed his goal wasn't to take the money out of politics, it was to regulate the money that was already in politics,"" Franklin said.
One possible reason for the record contributions may be the emergence of 527 groups, such as Moveon.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. These are organizations not directly associated with a particular campaign, but which support a particular candidate.
The effects of these third-party advertising campaigns are considerable. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that 527 groups' unlimited spending is constitutionally protected as free speech, a recent Badger Poll found that 66 percent of voters support limiting the spending of these groups and 82 percent of Wisconsin voters found the Swift Boat ads to be a distraction from the real issues.
