Progress Illinois

The Tribune's David Mendell takes a closer look at the Supreme Court's decision yesterday striking down the so-called "millionaire's amendment" and discerns that it wouldn't have any real effect on federal races here in Illinois this election cycle:

The amendment might have been triggered in the U.S. Senate race, in which incumbent Democrat Dick Durbin is being challenged by Republican physician Steve Sauerberg. The GOP candidate has given his campaign $1 million of his own money, but Durbin has raised $7.5 million. And because the amendment is implemented under a sliding scale formula, Durbin’s healthy campaign fund might have kept the amendment from kicking in. It would have allowed him to raise more than $2,300 from individuals, the current federal limit.

In the 14th Congressional district, Republican Jim Oberweis and Democratic Rep. Bill Foster each have dropped more than a $1 million of personal wealth into their campaigns, making the amendment a wash.

What Mendell fails to mention, however, is Marty Ozinga's vow not to spend more than $350,000 of his own money on his GOP bid for the 11th District congressional seat. That's the amount that would have triggered the amendment, allowing his Democratic opponent, Debbie Halvorson, to accept larger individual contributions.

It'll be interesting to see whether the Supreme Court's decision ultimately changes his thinking on the matter.

UPDATE: The Tribune talks to the Ozinga campaign and they indicate that the SCOTUS decision isn't going to have much of an effect on Marty's initial statements about how much he'd be willing to spend:

Wealthy southwest suburban congressional candidate Martin Ozinga III no longer has to worry about triggering the millionaire's amendment after the Supreme Court tossed that provision out of federal campaign finance law earlier this week.

But don't expect him to open up the vault and go on a spending spree in his 11th Congressional District bid to replace retiring Republican Rep. Jerry Weller.

"He's not planning to spend a ton of money out of his pocket. The honest answer to that question is, he has not made a decision on how much exactly he is going to spend," said Andy Sere, Ozinga's campaign manager, on Friday.

That mostly tracks with what Ozinga said when he launched his campaign in the spring, even if it's not what the Illinois Republican Party honchos were hoping for.

In my first post on this subject, I endorsed Barack Obama's recent decision to opt out of the public financing system. I noted that the move makes obvious sense from a tactical standpoint and further argued that, within Obama's fundraising apparatus, small donors have an unprecedented amount of influence -- resulting in a balance that any reformed public financing system should encourage. In this post, I'll address how McCain has gotten a pass from the media in the midst of this controversy.

John McCain's accusations of an egregious, public financing flip-flop on Obama's part have been broadcast far and wide in the past week. What has been infuriating about this latest controversy -- and McCain's central role in exacerbating it -- is the lack of acknowledgement by the press corps and the editorial boards of how McCain gamed the public finance system this election year.

In case you don't know the details of McCain's maneuvering, here's a helpful recap from Media Matters' Jamison Foser:

John McCain said he would take public financing for the Republican primaries. Then he used the promise of that public financing to help secure a loan for his campaign. Then, after he wrapped up the Republican nomination, he abruptly decided he did not want to be bound by the limits on campaign fundraising and spending that accompany public financing, so he announced that he had changed his mind.

But Federal Election Commission chairman David Mason sent McCain a letter saying that he cannot unilaterally opt out of the public financing system without FEC approval -- a letter the McCain campaign ignored. If McCain cannot opt out of the system unilaterally, he has broken the law by raising and spending funds in excess of legal limits, and continues to do so each day. Even if McCain isn't breaking the law, he has already broken his word and "reversed himself" on the question of whether he would take public funding for the primaries.

Referring to the national coverage, Foser writes: "I have seen no indication that a single reporter has asked McCain to reconcile his criticism of Obama with his own on-again, off-again relationship with the public financing system."

While this is obviously a much more significant issue at the national level, it's also been a problem in our local coverage.

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On June 19, Barack Obama announced that he would forgo public financing in the general election. I think both the decision itself and the resulting media coverage deserve some further discussion. So I'm going to cover both facets of this issue in separate blog posts today.

First, let's address the decision and the immediate response.

That the McCain campaign is jumping all over Obama for this move is no suprise. They're going to take every opportunity to hit the Democratic nominee hard on any perceived shifts in position.

Meanwhile, the media's harsh treatment of Obama on this issue isn't all that shocking either. If you run on the mantle of "change" and a "new kind of politics," you expose yourself to more forceful criticism when your campaign strategy appears too pragmatic.

Least surprising of all is the campaign's actual decision to pass up public funds. As has been noted elsewhere, it makes perfect sense from a tactical standpoint. We learned over the past eight years how high the stakes are when it comes to presidential politics. No sane Democratic strategist would give up Obama's significant advantage in resources this time around.

But while the GOP and various good government groups have lambasted him, the decision to pass up public funds shouldn't be viewed as evidence that Obama isn't serious about campaign finance reform. In fact, I'd argue that the most effective way to ensure reform is to win the election. And by opting out of the system this year, he has a much greater chance of doing just that.

I would even offer up Obama's fundraising operation as an example of what a reformed system should attempt to replicate.

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