
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 6, 1995                   TAG: 9506070037
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAMPAIGN REFORM

Money may always have been the mother's milk of politics, but the volume of the flow keeps getting bigger.

At the level of presidential campaigns, public financing has made possible the imposition of some controls on political contributions and spending. At the congressional level, where there is no public financing, such controls are weaker - as sufferers from last year's U.S. Senate campaign in Virginia can attest to.

Ominously, big-money campaigns are growing more in evidence in state campaigns, too. Virginia has virtually no campaign-finance controls, other than disclosure requirements, for state office. The Old Dominion might do well to see how a plan fares in Connecticut to limit both political fund-raising and campaign spending via voluntary contributions to a state campaign fund.

Virginians are already acquainted with part of the idea. On the Virginia state income-tax forms, you can check a box to contribute to either the state's Democratic or Republican parties. As in the Connecticut plan, such contributions are voluntary add-ons that raise the total due (or lessen the refund to be received); the money is thus not taken from tax revenues.

The Connecticut bill, though, would go much farther, indeed would be the most stringent in the country. To qualify for $1.5 million from the fund, candidates would have to raise $100,000 - and once they qualify, they could raise no more. To put this into perspective, the state's two gubernatorial candidates last year spent a total of $10 million between them. Maximum contribution to a political candidate would be $250 (down from Connecticut's current $5,000), and 75 percent of contributions would have to come from within the state.

The greatest obstacle to the plan's success may prove to be the disinclination of the public to contribute to the fund. The irony, of course, is that this disinclination reflects public suspicions of the political system that themselves are fed by the unseemly, unending hustle for campaign dollars. Somehow, the cycle of distrust feeding more distrust must be broken.

by CNB