MISSOURI WATCH: GOOD INTENTIONS GO AWRY -- AGAIN

Once again the Law of Unintended Consequences has kicked in, and once again Missourians will pay a high price for unanticipated results stemming from perfectly legitimate and well-intentioned efforts.

In this instance, the unintended consequences spring from the efforts of a great many Missourians, Republican and Democrat alike, to halt the abuses of excessive campaigns. Even before the nefarious practices of the Pendergast machine in the late 1920s and 1930s, Missouri's free-wheeling electoral process left something to be desired when it came to honesty and integrity. In the 1800s, Missouri saw a number of campaigns that bordered on the slanderously criminal, and things didn't improve much even after Tom Pendergast went to federal prison.

By the mid-1900s, campaign rhetoric was hardly a model example of how decent elections are conducted, but it took the advent of the 3-minute television commercial to find the true, sewer-level brand that saw candidates branded with every negative epithet known to subhuman campaign managers and strategists.

Sick of name-calling that served no purpose other than negativity and character defamation, both the General Assembly and better-government groups spearheaded efforts to restore some degree of civility -- and honesty -- in the Show Me state's electoral process. The problem was that Missouri soon had one too many campaign laws, one enacted by elected representatives of the people and the other written by persons not completely conversant with constitutional rights and laws.

The results of all this were several:

1. Missouri wound up with conflicting reform laws;

2. Certain needed campaign changes were thrown out because they were ruled violations of the First Amendment;

3. Candidates for statewide offices were severely limited when raising contributions, although the amounts allowed by reform laws seemed sufficient in an earlier, more sanguine age, namely the period prior to the advent of expensive but extremely negative TV commercials;

4. By limiting the ability of candidates to seek the kind of money they believed was required to wage an effective campaign, the reform measures automatically gave much greater, and totally unintended, power to the political parties, which fall within the protection of the First Amendment. Thus, the true movers and shakers of post-reform campaigns are not the candidates themselves but the political organizations of the state, namely the Democratic and Republican parties of Missouri.

By virtue of their constitutional rights under the First Amendment guarantees of free speech, the political parties in our state, and every other state, can raise as much money as they wish, unfettered by any contribution cap. As the old political cliche goes, the one who controls the purse is the one who controls the campaign. The awful truth is that with the combination of public indifference and disgust with the electoral process and the campaign limits imposed on candidates themselves and the high cost of running for office---all combine to put not only the candidates at the mercy of their own parties, but even worse, permitting two minority organizations in Missouri to control the nature and tone of important campaigns.

The compliance rules are not difficult. The party organizations can raise and spend as much money as they like as long as their efforts are not coordinated or controlled by the candidates themselves. Thus, when a special election was held to pick a successor to Bob Griffin in Northwest Missouri's 6th House District, a great deal of money was spent by both parties, without the knowledge of the men actually seeking office. The hapless GOP candidate in this instance was unaware that his party wrote and paid for commercials charging the Democratic candidate with consorting with people who support homosexual marriages. The chairman of the Republican State Committee, a lawyer named John Cozad, even defended the underhanded tactic, which was considered so obnoxious that the GOP candidate called his opponent to apologize.

I'm quite certain the Democrats have the same potential for culpability, and we are likely to see examples far sooner than we would wish. One should never underestimate the ability of political types to lower campaign discourse to sub-sewer levels, and this ability is bipartisan in nature.

The truth is Missouri was better off before reform efforts were enacted when candidates could at least control the tone of their own campaigns---and could be held accountable for abuses. We are now stuck with the worst of all consequences: obscene spending, no candidate responsibility and campaign decisions made by those who need answer to no one.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.