Sen. John Kerry’s campaign disclosed Friday it was mulling the extraordinary step of delaying by at least a month the Massachusetts Democrat’s acceptance of his party’s presidential nomination, a move meant to keep President Bush from enjoying a fundraising advantage.
There are questions whether the unusual move would be legal. But that the campaign publicly acknowledged it was considering such an unprecedented action underscored its determination to concede nothing to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
If Kerry delayed accepting the nomination, it would further erode the party conventions, which in recent decades have lost their sense of drama, becoming coronation ceremonies while steadily losing media and public interest.
And those familiar with campaign-finance laws said the mere fact of the Kerry campaign’s deliberations proved that campaign-financing laws were badly broken, reinforcing the enduring power of money in American elections.
His campaign is considering the delay because of a disadvantage having to do with the scheduling of the political conventions this year and federal campaign financing laws.
Those laws require candidates opting for public financing of their general election campaigns to receive their money from the U.S. Treasury after their party’s nominating convention.
For Kerry, that means he would be eligible for $75 million in public financing following the Democratic Convention in Boston, scheduled July 26-29.
The Republican convention in New York is to take place five weeks later, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, after which Bush would get his $75 million in taxpayer money.
The Democrats are worried because the Kerry campaign would have to make its public dollars last five weeks longer than the president’s campaign would.
In addition, the Bush campaign could keep spending the large sums it has raised from private contributors up through the GOP convention. As of the end of April, the Bush campaign had raised a record $201 million.
The Kerry campaign, for its part, has had unexpected success in raising campaign funds from private contributors. By April’s end, it had raised $117 million. So it would prefer to raise and spend such contributions as long as it legally can.
For decades, the eventual standard-bearers of both parties have wrapped up their parties’ nominations in primaries long before the conventions.
Without an actual nomination and acceptance occurring at a convention, some wondered if it would even make sense for the television networks and cable news companies to devote much, if any time, to coverage. Television networks said Friday they were uncertain how such a move by Kerry would affect coverage.
The campaign emphasized the plan was only in the discussion stage. “There are many options to consider, and no decisions have been made,” David Wade, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement.
“But the reality is that with the high stakes of this election, the Democratic Party can’t afford to fight with one arm tied behind its back,” he said.
But Wade added that “Democrats will consider many options to help level the playing field.”
Kerry declined to comment Friday.
Questions loomed about just how the Kerry campaign could delay a nomination-acceptance speech and if it would pass Federal Election Commission scrutiny.
One possibility was that the Democratic convention would go on as scheduled, with delegates giving Kerry the nomination and his waiting for a month or more to accept.
“There’s a real question whether or not you can legally do that and still keep funding for the convention,” said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan organization that tracks the money in politics. Noble referred to the fact that the party conventions also get public financing.
“That would require the FEC to decide that the nomination includes the acceptance of the nomination, that they would accept that being a month later,” he said. “And I don’t know that the FEC is going to be able to accept that. It’s a hard argument to make, that the nomination process can take a whole month.”
If the Democrats decided to delay the actual delegate vote, the results of which usually are announced with great fanfare during the roll call of the states, “that could be a problem,” Noble said.
“Doing a [Democratic] convention with government money only to officially nominate Kerry later is pretty much a bait-and-switch on American taxpayers,” said Merrill Smith, a Bush-Cheney campaign spokeswoman.
“Maybe they’ve found a way to manipulate federal law in such a way … but fundamentally this is about John Kerry thinking the rules apply to everyone but not him,” she said.
A Democratic National Committee spokesman indicated that the organization was primarily interested in its nominee winning the presidency. “We are aware that the Kerry campaign is considering a number of options and has not come to a conclusion on any of them yet,” said Hano Cabrera.
“From the party’s perspective, our goal is to ensure we have a nominee who is in a strong position to take on the Republicans in the fall,” he said.
The six-member FEC is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats and it’s possible the panel would split along partisan lines on the question.
If that happened, the issue might have to be resolved by the courts, where it could end up anyway, even if an FEC majority rendered a clear-cut decision.
Campaign-finance law experts said the issue raised by the Kerry campaign pointed to how obsolete the finance laws are.
“Presumably ballot access laws provide some constraint here, but this is just another example showing how badly the presidential funding system needs to be revamped,” said Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute.
“The campaign finance rules were designed 30 years ago for a nomination system that no longer exists,” he said. “Until this is fixed, the candidates will do whatever they can, legally, to win. It doesn’t look pretty but that’s the way it will work. The whole system cries out for a serious look and an overhaul after this election is over.”
