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The Longest Campaign

A five-part history of big money in presidential politics … and the efforts to do something about it

Back in the 1960s, when Jesse Unruh, the speaker of the California General Assembly, famously branded money “the mother’s milk of politics,” the extremes and excesses of the years ahead were probably beyond his imagination.

Today, running for the nation’s highest office has become so costly that by the time the November election rolls around total presidential campaign spending will, in all likelihood, easily exceed $1 billion for the first time in history. From Day One of every presidential campaign, how well candidates fare in amassing their war chests is a critical factor in how they are portrayed by the press and in how well they can make their cases to the public.

As the amount of money that pours into the process has grown, so has concern about its influence. Reducing the influence of money in politics has been a long, difficult, and continuing struggle since the nineteenth century. Throughout the nation’s history, as soon as new campaign-finance reforms are enacted, inventive political strategists and lawyers dream up ways to circumvent them.

Some reformers argue that the problem is not so much the amount of money in the political system as it is it where the money comes from, pointing to the ability of those on the giving end to gain influence with those on the receiving end. When big money buys access to elected officials, as it surely does, corruption inevitably lurks nearby.

It was not always thus. In the earliest days of the republic, hard cash did not play nearly so large a role in politics. For one thing, presidential candidates then—and for some time thereafter—didn’t campaign for the office the way they do now. The first of them, George Washington, essentially was drafted, elected, and reelected as a clear consensus choice. His immediate successors simply made themselves available and “stood” for the presidency without actively running for it.

There were no political parties, only factions of like-minded citizens who might bind together behind a particular candidate or issue. As for campaign organizations, individuals or groups supporting a candidate might publish and circulate tracts advocating his election or provide encouragement in the form of liquid refreshments at political gatherings touting him. There was nothing remotely resembling a professional election industry of the sort that has come to dominate American politics.

For a time, congressional caucuses nominated presidential candidates for the factions that eventually became known as the Democratic and Republican parties. The caucuses soon gave way in various states to the popular vote, and the new parties required greater treasuries for informing the citizenry of their candidates’ virtues and, inevitably, their opponents’ vices. The first targets in the quest for campaign funds were federal government employees, who were assessed a percentage of their salaries as a condition of continued employment.

Andrew Jackson, after his election to the presidency in 1828, instituted the spoils system. In the guise of combating corruption in the civil service, jobs were handed to loyal workers who could be counted on to support and help finance the campaigns of the incumbent party’s candidates. The system flourished under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. Congressional investigations confirmed the existence of the assessments, but lawmakers on Capitol Hill regularly defeated efforts to reform the system.

In 1867, after the Civil War, Congress finally passed a measure barring the solicitation of political contributions from workers at Navy yards and protecting such workers from being fired if they failed to give. Four years later came another measure that prohibited assessments of any federal workers. Then, in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered that all government officials stay out of political activities beyond expressing their views on the issues of the day, and voting.

Finally, in 1883, Congress approved the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which provided for the selection of certain federal employees through competitive examinations and shielded them from political assessments. In response, the parties, particularly the GOP, turned increasingly to prosperous businessmen to take up the financial slack. Many had been giving to leading Republican candidates since the election of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. When Mark Hanna of Ohio became the party’s national chairman in 1896, managing the campaign and election of William McKinley, the tapping of America’s corporate wealth reached new heights. By this time, Republican presidential campaigns were spending $3 million or more, and a few states started to call for bans on all corporate contributions.

The first effort to limit campaign contributions came in 1901, when Republican Senator William E. Chandler of New Hampshire, recently defeated for reelection by railroad interests in his state, introduced a bill that would have barred all federally chartered corporations, and all those engaged in interstate commerce, from contributing to elections at any level. Chandler was out of the Senate before he had a chance to see the bill voted on, but he continued to push his then-radical idea.