A recent posting here reviewed possible paths for campaign finance regulation: a determined attack on loopholes, a biding for time until scandal possibly arrives and allows for legislative reform and expanded opportunity for regulation, or an openness to rethinking the issue?

Which of these is chosen will be influenced by which aspect of campaign finance is thought to be really pressing: how much money is spent (volume); how it is spent (influence), and how much is publicly known about it (transparency). Of course, in any critique of campaign finance, from the left or right, there is a little bit of everything thrown in, but one of these three considerations is usually emphasized over the others.

Arguments about the prospects for campaign finance regulation now fall broadly into three categories: (1) close up loopholes; patch up the rulebook; (2) wait for scandal to break the logjam; and  (3) rethink the issues.  In recent weeks, we've had clear restatements of these alternatives.

The Times was doing well with the younger set in recent days, hammering home the virtues of legalized access to marijuana, but it has taken a step back. Now it is questioning  the right of youth to accept unlimited support from parents and other relatives through family-established or -financed Super PACs.

This was one opportunity for the realization of a young person’s dream—unlimited financial support from family which could not be used as leverage to tell the kids what to do. This spending must be independent.  It’s the law.

Let’s first repay the compliment: Larry Noble is knowledgeable and experienced, and he has devoted earnestly and out of genuine conviction the better part of his professional life to the cause of campaign finance reform.  He has worked and occupied senior positions at Americans for Campaign Reform, the Center for Responsive Politics, and the Federal Election Commission, and he is now at the Campaign Legal Center.

Eugene McCarthy: We didn't have any kind of formal links with [the anti-war movement] - you know, they were kind of doing their own thing. In fact, some of them were a little upset when we started the campaign saying we were draining off energy; they were more radical. And they weren't harmful, but they weren't much help to us. So ... I wouldn't say we distanced ourselves from them: we just sort of let them do their own act.”

Interview with Senator Eugene McCarthy (1996)

Harvey Milk:  I stood for more than just a candidate .… I have never considered myself a candidate.  I have always considered myself part of a movement, part of a candidacy.  I’ve considered the movement the candidate …. Almost everything that was done was done with an eye on the gay movement.

“Harvey Milk’s Political Will” in Randy Shilts, the Mayor of Castro Street (1982).