Campaign Finance Reform was the topic of the Library’s 1997 Maine Town Meeting. One of the featured speakers was Edward (Ned) Cabot, Chairman of Common Cause, the 260,000 member citizens lobby group founded by John Gardner. Since 1985, Cabot has served as a leader of Common Cause’s fight to make government more open and accountable to citizens. His primary focus, as well as that of the organization, has been the effort to clean up the corrupt finance system in which campaigns are increasingly dominated by contributions from special interest political action committees. Said Cabot, “Maine is a very good place to discuss campaign finance reform because of the grand tradition it has of civility, independence, and service embodied by Maine’s public servants, leaders such as Margaret Chase Smith, Ed Muskie, Bill Cohen and George Mitchell, and many other fine public servants on both sides of the aisle.”

Cabot cited a number of alarming statistics. It currently costs over $800,000 to win a seat in the US House of Representatives. Incumbents outspend challengers by a ratio of more than 3 to 1. The typical winner of a US Senate seat has to raise an average of almost $14,000 every week of the six years of a Senate term. Members of the tax writing House Ways and Means Committee accept an average of $374,000 in contributions from PAC’s that want some tax benefit.

To counteract these disturbing trends, Cabot offered eight points to consider when evaluating reform proposals: 1. Don’t think small; 2. Don’t neglect the lessons of American history; 3. Don’t be buffaloed by people who try to scare you by telling you that change can have unpredictable consequences; 4. Work hard to try to separate the myths from the reality about campaign reform; 5. Worry as much about enforcing the rules as you do about writing them; 6. Think hard about how what we call the public interest is different from what we call special interests; 7. Clarify the debate to distinguish between questions of fact and questions of value; and 8. Don’t reject a better world because you can’t create a perfect one. Cabot concluded by observing that we are unlikely to care much about reforming the way elections are financed unless we believe that government makes a difference in our lives. He warned that cynics who condemn all politicians and all government are as great a barrier to reform as politicians who use big money to perpetuate themselves in office.