Editorial, 10/6: Big campaign spending alters playing field
Candidates for the Nebraska Legislature spent $3.5 million competing for spots on the November ballot, a shocking 44% increase compared to the previous record for legislative primary election spending set four years ago.
Legislative race spending has soared since 2012, when the Nebraska Supreme Court threw out the state's Campaign Finance Limitation Act that used incentives to encourage candidates to abide by voluntary spending limits.
It has further accelerated as Republicans try to win 33 seats to gain a filibuster-proof majority in the officially nonpartisan Legislature and Democrats and independents try to thwart that effort.
To that end, the state's last two governors, now-Sen. Pete Ricketts and Gov. Jim Pillen, both multimillionaires, have poured cash into the campaigns of like-minded Republicans — some $162,500 from Ricketts, $99,388 from a Pillen family political action committee.
Those contributions significantly added to the spending arms race that saw average spending for each of the 73 legislative candidates set a record of $49,052, with 10 candidates spending more than $100,000 and one hitting the $180,000 mark.
Sadly, that effort to buy an election, at least at the primary level, usually works.
The higher-spending candidate came in first in 17 of the 24 contested legislative races this year and placed second in six others. So the biggest spenders are on the ballot in 23 of the 24 races. Ironically, the highest spender of them all, Tracy Hightower-Henne, who ran for northeast Omaha's District 13, finished third and is not on the November ballot.
That's not healthy for truly representative democracy in two ways. Most obvious, it transfers to a great degree the choice of a senator, new or incumbent seeking a second term, from the voters to the funders, who use their wealth to tip the playing field in their direction.
But the need to raise tens of thousands in a race for a job that pays $12,000 puts the office out of reach for "average" citizens, thereby altering the makeup of the Legislature ever more in favor of older, wealthy, most often white and most often men.
With no limits, voluntary or mandatory, on campaign spending and no limits on contributions, there's little that can be done to curb the explosion in campaign spending, without legislative actions — which, given the makeup of the Legislature, will not happen.
That leaves voter awareness as the only remedy to offset those who would try to overwhelm their opponent in spending and, behind them, those who have put the cash on the spending scale.
Voters should know about how much candidates are spending and where that money is coming from — a job for the media and political parties — and use that information as a factor in making their decisions when filling out their ballots.
