Your March 18 editorial “The uneven rules of competition” described how Peter Fitzgerald, by spending the unprecedented amount of $7 million, had a tremendous advantage over Loleta Didrickson in the Republican primary. Your solution to this inequity is to lift the spending caps currently limited by law. This reasoning is illogical, detrimental to democratic principles and simply irresponsible.
Statewide, federal and even some local candidates for office are required to spend extraordinary amounts in campaigns. There is a decided advantage for those with personal fortunes like Mr. Fitzgerald. You state that there is “more to politics than money.” This is certainly true, but allowing candidates to spend even more, as you propose, would further destroy an electoral process desperately in need of honest reform. As greater amounts of money become a prerequisite for public office, our system of representative government is threatened. The last time I checked, millionaires comprised a fractional minority of our population. How many millionaires sit in the United States Senate?
As our society becomes more driven by the “bottom line,” it would be nice to think that the foundation of our democracy, representative government, would be less dependent on big money. If legitimate campaign finance reform is not enacted and more money is needed to win office, our lawmakers will become less and less representative of the people.
