Another campaign season is getting underway, as is another season of congressional talk about campaign finance reform. For all intents and purposes campaign finance reform of any kind is dead in the 105th Congress. No one exactly knows how the 1998 election will turn out, but based on the history of how money has influenced election outcomes, a few predictions can be made. The results of our national elections repeatedly demonstrate that a candidate's access to money, in the form of personal wealth or large campaign donations, is a major factor in determining victory or defeat.
Money is probably second only to a district's demographics in determining which party holds a seat.
And in swing districts that are neither safely Republican or Democratic, money may be the primary determining factor. The 1994 off-year election is a case in point. The Republicans gained a net of 52 seats in the House of Representatives. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this GOP sweep had less to do with public dissatisfaction toward Democrats than with the Republicans' financial wealth and strategies for spending it. In an unprecedented gambit, GOP strategists poured money into campaigns of Republicans who were challenging incumbent Democrats.