|
| | ||||
Campaign Finance Reform Jan W. Baran, Esq., Election Law and Campaign Finance Expert Foreign Press Center Briefing Washington, DC December 10, 2003
2:30 P.M. EST
MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. Welcome also to journalists in the New York Foreign Press Center.
We are pleased to have yet another in our series of briefings connected with the elections of 2004. And today we'll be dealing with the complex, but rather important issue of campaign finance reform. Many of you may be aware that just today the Supreme Court handed down its decision on a court case that had been brought against the McCain-Feingold law. And today we have no less an expert than the lawyer representing those who had brought the case against the law: We have Mr. Jan Baran with us.
He's an expert on election law, campaign finance. He has written books on the subject. He has been very active on the issue and knows it inside and out. So again, I don't think we could have a finer expert with us. And given the pressures on his time today, we're particularly pleased that he could be with us.
He'll have an opening statement to make. He'll try to lay out the situation for you, and then we'll welcome your questions, as usual. MR. BARAN: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I do want to just point out that my name is pronounced Jan Baran [Yan Baron], although I'm sure in the original Polish it was Baran [Bah-ran] or something of that sort.
I would like to comment briefly on our political system and how it regulates the way in which candidates, particularly those for president who raise and spend money, and comment on that new laws that we are operating under here in the United States with respect to the 2004 election. It's these new laws that were the subject of the lawsuit that was just mentioned.
Our system in the United States for presidential campaigns depends, in part, on private funding and also on funding from the government, which we call public financing. Since 1976, we have had a system whereby individuals who wish to run for president may qualify to receive money from the government if they meet certain conditions; namely, they have to raise money from individual supporters within certain amounts, and then they have to go to the Federal Election Commission and submit a promise that if they receive money from the government they will not spend more than a specified amount of money for their campaign.
In our primary system, candidates can raise both private money and receive government money. And then, once the conventions occur, the general election begins. And for that period of time, which is usually approximately two months, in September and October until the election, candidates who are nominated by their political party may simply go to the treasury and request a check for the full amount of money that they can receive to fund their general election campaigns. This year, in 2004, that amount will be approximately $70, 7-0, million.
Now, what has happened over the last 25 or so years is that the value of receiving the money from the government, in relation to the amount of money that candidates can raise from private sources, has declined. And what we have seen in this election cycle, for the first time, is numerous candidates deciding not to accept money from the government.
President Bush, when he ran in 2000, became the first major party candidate to decline public funding in the primary election season and to simply rely on private contributions for his campaign expenses.
This year, in addition to the President, who's, of course, running for reelection, we have so far, at least two other candidates in the Democratic Party who have made the same decision, namely, Governor Howard Dean of Vermont and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. So those two candidates have decided not to accept money from the government, and therefore not accept the condition that they can only spend a certain amount of money.
The other candidates, Congress Gephardt or Senator Edwards and so forth, they are all participating in the public funding system.
One other development that occurred over the years and was quite evident, particularly in 1996 and 2000, was a phenomenon of very large contributors contributing to the political parties. We have had, since the 1970's, limitations on how much money individuals can contribute to political parties. And we have had for almost a century a prohibition on corporate and union spending or contributions to political parties.
However, in the last 20 or so years, there have been interpretations of the law that permitted corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to make, basically, unlimited contributions to the national political parties. And these types of contributions were called soft money.
We also witnessed, in recent elections, a phenomenon of various groups and corporations and unions sponsoring television ads, which were ostensibly not campaign ads, but were seen as the equivalent of campaign ads and, of course, were either complimentary or highly critical of named individuals who are running for public office. These are so-called "issue ads."
The phenomenon of soft money and issue advertising led to a new law that was enacted in 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, sponsored in the Senate by Senators McCain and Feingold, and sponsored in the House by Congressmen Shays and Meehan. It was that law which was the subject of the Supreme Court decision that was handed down today.
The McCain-Feingold bill had numerous provisions, but the first of its two principal features was that it prohibited soft money contributions to political parties. To put that into dollar terms, that type of income to the two parties during the last Presidential election in 2000 totaled approximately $500 million, or half a billion dollars, evenly divided between the Republicans and the Democrats. About $250 million went to Democrats, and $250 million to Republican Party committees, all soft money.
So the McCain-Feingold bill prohibited that type of money, and therefore, eliminated that as a source of income for the parties.
The second key feature of McCain-Feingold was that it made it, for the first time, illegal for corporations or unions or any groups using corporate or union money to pay for television ads or radio or cable or satellite advertising that mentioned a candidate in a period of time 60 days before the general election or 30 days before the primary election. This is a so-called "ban on issue advertising."
Today, the Supreme Court, in a five-four decision, upheld these two major provisions of this new law. The practical effect of this new law, which is now declared constitutional, is that it will change, in part, our system of funding.
First, it will mean that the national political parties must rely exclusively on raising voluntary contributions from individuals in limited amounts. They can no longer accept corporate money; they can no longer accept union money; or individual contributions in unlimited sums.
They, so far, have experienced an increase in the amount of this permissible money that they have raised in the last year compared to four years ago. But of course, the increase in that type of revenue is not equal to or even approximates the lost revenue as a result of the so-called soft money ban.
As a result, the national political parties, in all likelihood, will have less money, less revenues, to pay for their political activities in this election cycle.
Another practical effect of the law is that because soft money is banned to political parties, we are witnessing the appearance and use of soft money by other groups, organizations that are not political parties, either tax-exempt groups, trade associations or so-called political organizations that are not political parties. And they have appeared on our political scene for the first time in a significant way and are actively raising money from corporations and unions and wealthy individuals.
There have been stories of some wealthy individuals like Mr. George Soros of New York committing between $10 and $15 million to these types of groups. And they have funded these groups that will seek to participate in the upcoming election, to promote certain candidates and certain political causes.
The net result of this remains to be seen in the sense that we don't know whether these new groups will be as successful in raising the amounts of money that political parties raised in soft money in past elections. We don't know whether these groups can approximate raising and spending half a billion dollars in this cycle the way political parties did four years ago, but they're obviously going to try.
We also don't know whether the way in which this money is spent will be politically effective, whether they will be able to replicate the things that political parties do. But again, they will attempt to do so, and we will have to see how that develops.
A final comment that I have is that one of the other features of this law, which the court upheld, was an increase in the amount of money that candidates can ask from individuals compared to four years ago. Until this law, a candidate, including a candidate for President, could not accept more than $1,000 from an individual, from an American citizen. Now that limit is $2,000.
The effect of this increase in the limit is significant. Taking President Bush as an example, in the 2000 election, under the old $1,000 contribution limit, President Bush raised approximately $100 million for his primary election campaign. This time, the projection is that the President will be able to raise $200 million as a result of a doubling of the contribution limit.
This doubling of the limit also has made it easier for candidates like Governor Dean and Senator Kerry to forego the public funding from the government, as they have done, since they will now be able to raise up to twice as much money from their individual supporters as they would have been able to raise under the old law. So with all of those changes, we are going to experience a somewhat different campaign this time in 2004 than we did in the previous five or six campaigns. And the candidates are obviously adapting to the new system. But one thing we do know is that there will be continued fundraising; and a great deal of time is being spent by these candidates to solicit and accept the contributions they need to fund their campaigns.
It is a somewhat different system than any other country that I'm personally familiar with. In my own experience with elections in foreign countries, in democracies, we usually see a great deal more public funding, a lot of money that comes directly from the government to finance races, particularly in parliamentary type systems. And here, while we have historically depended on a private system, for the last 30 years – though only with respect to presidential campaigns -- we have had a combination of private and public funding.
With that, I would be glad to take any questions relating to the campaigns or on campaign finance, or today's decision by the Supreme Court.
MR. DENIG: Thank you very much. Please use the microphone and, as usual, identify yourself and your news organization. We'll start with ANSA from Italy, in the back there.
QUESTION: I'm Margery Friesner, ANSA, the Italian News Agency. I have to ask a question that begs to be asked. Why did you challenge the law?
MR. BARAN: Well, we have a first amendment in our constitution that bars the government from passing laws that impinge on the rights of individuals and groups to speak, to associate, to petition the government for their redress of grievances. There are also rights in the first amendment of freedom of press and freedom of religion.
And the government, historically, has not had a great deal of latitude in regulating the finance of campaigns, since restricting money and politics necessarily restricts the amount of speech that the money can finance, and therefore has been seen as implicating First Amendment liberties.
The court today, in a five-four decision, concluded that these restrictions that I mentioned earlier were justified under the First Amendment, on the grounds that a government could regulate in this fashion for a permissible objective, which is to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption in our political system and therefore, they concluded that these restrictions and prohibitions were constitutional under our First Amendment.
MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's go to New York for the next question. New York, let me have your question please.
QUESTION: I'm sorry. We have no questions at this time. Thank you.
MR. DENIG: Okay. All right. Let's go to Japan here in the front.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Hiro Aida with Kyodo News, Japan's news agency. Could you just elaborate a little bit about the use of soft money? Well, the system has changed, as you said, but before it was used by mainly by the political party committees, and now it's going to be used by those, well, taxable organizations, political organizations.
But, or apparent -- well, judging from what you said, it seems to be mainly used by TV ads, but what other kind of use, uses are there? And how many, you know, proportions of the -- you know, the use of money there, how many percentage was, you know, like that?
MR. BARAN: That's a very good question. Soft money that was received by the political parties, the majority of it was used to finance advertising on television, in particular. So we don't have any scientifically proved percentages, but general estimate is that of the $500 million that was raised and spent in soft money by the parties in 2000, at least half of that was spent on television advertising.
The remainder of the soft money was used by the political parties for two major purposes: One was to defray administrative costs, you know, salaries, the overhead, the operational of the political party; and, secondly, it helped finance other types of voter contact, primarily organization -- efforts to register voters to vote, to contact them on election day and encourage them to vote, to get them absentee ballots, and things of that sort.
So the soft money was used by the parties, primarily to advertise their messages on television; and then secondarily, to help defray their, what we call, "get out the vote effort," and their overhead and organizational activities.
What we don't know about these new groups, the non-party groups that are now getting organized, is in what way they will replicate the parties. They will still be able to use soft money for certain types of television advertising, although they won't be able to mention candidates or political parties 60 days before the election or 30 days before the election, so they can advertise on television around those blackout periods.
And secondly, they will, presumably, use that money to try and send mailings to reach voters, to use the telephones, to identify supporters of their candidates or their party or their causes, and urge them to go and vote on Election Day. We just don't know how successful they will be in raising money, and we don't know how successful they will be politically in trying to replace that part of what the political parties have done in the past.
QUESTION: My question is how to -- how you define the soft money? For example, the President Bush, the biggest donor, donation for the President Bush is from the Merrill Lynch, Merrill Lynch. And it's about -- the money's about over $500,000. And can you define this part of money as the soft money? Or do you think that because the employees of the Merrill Lynch, each, most of the employees from the corporation donated up to $2,000 to the President Bush. And do you define this part of money as soft money?
MR. BARAN: No. What you just said is the fact of the matter. An individual can only give $2,000 to President Bush. And in fact, the campaigns could never accept soft money. It had to go to the political parties before this law.
But what we do see is individuals who are able to go to many other individuals and collect $2,000 checks, and then they are recognized as a very successful fundraiser and then they are seen in the public as being these contributors, when, in fact, it is not just the individuals contributing all that money. It's a result of their fundraising.
And that's what this system does, you know, instead of having one person hand over a check for $500,000, the premium or the emphasis now is on finding people who can go out and raise money for a campaign. And so we're now devoting more attention to these so-called fundraisers as opposed to the individuals actually contributing.
MR. DENIG: Okay, let's come up front here to India.
QUESTION: Parasuram, the Press Trust of India. What are the conditions under which a candidate gets money from the government? Is it possible for a candidate to get government money as well as private money? And is there any matching system, that is to say, if the candidate raises $10 million; will the government match that? What are the conditions?
MR. BARAN: The conditions on presidential public funding is that they can, first of all, not receive more than $2,000 from any individual because they have to honor the contribution limits. They may receive matching funds up to $250 for those contributions. So if a contributor gives $2,000, only the first $250 would be matched by the government.
And it's that matching system that is effective in our presidential primary season. They collect the contributions, they figure out the first $250. They present information to the Federal Election Commission and then the Department of Treasury will give them a check for that amount in federal money.
The ratio, the effect of the ratio is that if you have a primary spending limit of, let's say, $40 million, and a candidate raises $30 million, it is likely that only about a third of that amount will be matchable, and that's how he or she would make up the remaining amount of money from the federal government. But once they have raised the money that equals the spending limit, they can no longer receive any money from the government. And they have to abide by the spending limit.
Again, this is why, increasingly, candidates for president are not participating in the system. President Bush did not in 2000, and will not this year. Neither will Howard Dean or John Kerry, because the spending limit is only about $40 or $45 million -- I forget the precise number, although I can get it for you later. Yet, the cost of campaigning, which must continue beyond the primaries up to the conventions, which will be in August and September, is much higher than the spending limit. And they cannot sustain a campaign with that artificially low spending limit.
MR. DENIG: Okay, let's go to Khaled, here.
QUESTION: My name is Khaled Dawoud from Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper. I just didn't really, like, groups like the National Rifle Association, for example, when they want to make a major contribution now to one of the political parties, what would be the way, you know, to do something like this to avoid these new rules? And the second question is concerning the ads. You mentioned something that they have to stop 60 days before the elections themselves. So, I mean, are we not going to see ads for the last 60 days?
MR. BARAN: Well, let me answer your second question first. The effect of the 30-60 day ban on ads is only on ads that are sponsored by or paid for by corporations or unions, all right? So you won't see those types of ads, and we've had those types of ads in recent elections. In the 2000 election, it's estimated that there was about $90 million of that type of advertising. So you won't see that.
You are going to see ads sponsored by the political parties with their hard money. You're going to see ads sponsored by the campaigns, and you're going to see ads, presumably, paid for by individuals, because individuals are not subject to this 30-60 day ban. And -- I'm sorry.
QUESTION: Normal individuals?
MR. BARAN: Normal individuals, yeah. Real people, not corporations, not unions. A wealthy individual or a group of individuals who would like to pool their resources are still permitted to buy television advertising 30 or 60 days before and election. There are some other conditions, but they could, unlike a corporation or a union, which would include the National Rifle Association, they could not -- they, those groups cannot purchase that type of advertising because the NRA is incorporated, even though it's not for profit.
Now you asked, you know, what would the NRA be able to do now under this system? I don't know whether in the past the NRA gave soft money to the political parties. But internal he past, theoretically, they could have just written a check to a party. I don't know if they did, but whether they did or not, today they could not write a check to the political party. What they can do is they can encourage their members to write personal checks to the parties or to the political candidates and they will be permitted to form a political action committee, which they have, which raises money from individuals. And that money can be contributed to candidates or can pay for issue advertising. And, in addition, the NRA may still do some advertising on television, but not within the 30- or 60-day period. And they could use other means of communicating as well: telephones, direct mail, newspaper advertising and so forth.
MR. DENIG: Just a follow-up to that. You had mentioned the growth of non-political party groupings or organizations. Can those new groups place ads 30 and 60 days before the elections?
MR. BARAN: It's unclear because some of these groups are receiving funding from organized labor. Some of these groups are receiving funding from corporations. If they are receiving that type of funding, they could not use that money to pay for issue ads 30 or 60 days before an election. So we, for the first time, have a new disclosure requirement on individuals who engage in that type of advertising.
MR. DENIG: Okay, let's take the lady right there.
QUESTION: Olga Balcova, Slovak Radio. I would like to ask you why it is so, why unions and corporations cannot issue it these 30 or 60 days and the others, like individuals can?
MR. BARAN: Well, I have not read the court's decision in its entirety since all the opinions total almost 300 pages and it just came out at 10:00 this morning. But my understanding is that the majority of the court concluded that corporations and unions, unlike individuals; can be more restricted, more prohibited under our First Amendment -- that they have less protection when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of association.
MR. DENIG: Let's go to New York for our next question. New York, do you have your question?
QUESTION: Yes. Thank you. It's not quite clear --
MR. DENIG: Can you introduce yourself, please?
QUESTION: Yes. My name is Jan Tromp. I'm from the Netherlands. It's not quite clear to me, what are the exact consequences of opting out? Are there still any limitations, restrictions under the law? Or can you do whatever you want?
MR. BARAN: The effect of opting out of public financing for a presidential candidate is that they will not receive any public money, any money from the government. And secondly, they will not have to abide by any spending limit on how much money they spend for their campaign. Otherwise, they still must comply with other provisions of the law. For example, they can still only raise money from individuals in amounts no greater than $2,000. They still have to file reports with the Federal Election Commission and so forth.
MR. DENIG: Just a follow-up on that. Can they receive union and corporate donations?
MR. BARAN: Candidates may not accept any money from unions or corporations.
MR. DENIG: Let's go to the gentleman back there.
QUESTION: Hello. Kazuo Nagata, Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan. Governor Dean says he wants to raise small amount of contributions from as many individuals, and is that -- is this a new strategy? I mean, what I want to ask, I think, was what -- what kind of people donate to the candidate and the campaigning? Are they -- do they tend to be eager to work for the candidate, not only writing a check and perhaps talking about persuading his or her friends to vote for the candidate and tend to be helpful for the candidate?
MR. BARAN: Well, in a nation of some 280 million people, which is the population of the United States including women, infant, and children, about one percent, or 3 million people contribute. It's an estimate again, but you know, there are 3 million contributors. They contribute to political parties, political candidates and political committees. Their motivations are diverse. Some would probably seek something for themselves, which is why we have contribution limits, so that they can't give too much money in return for a public official's official action.
I'd like to think that the vast majority of Americans who financially support their candidates do so because they want to support that candidate. They believe in those causes. They may know that individual. I mean, it's not unusual for people to know someone who's running for office and want to support them, and they do so with their personal funds. Under our system, contributions to political candidates may not be deducted from taxes, you know, so it's not a tax-deductible event.
There's no personal benefit to the individual in giving a politician some money, as opposed to donating to charity where you then, at least get a tax deduction for the -- for the money. But, you know, our campaigns are necessarily expensive. The average Congressional district for a member of the House of Representatives now approximates 600,000 people.
Obviously, in our states, we have states like California and Florida that involve millions and millions of people, and it is a very expensive proposition for somebody to run for the Senate, or for the House of Representatives and to pay for messages, to travel, to assemble a staff and to attempt in our society to gain the momentary attention of the public for their campaign and for their causes and issues and platform.
It is a problem that I think is just going to increase as -- as the population grows and as, basically, the public's attention becomes more and more diffused. You know, I mean we have a lot of things that we care about in this country including our government and politics, but for most Americans it's not the most important thing in their lives. And trying to figure out how to get the right channel on 200 channels on your television set tends to be a lot more important every night.
MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's go the front row here, this gentleman.
QUESTION: Ki Yon Kuk with Sega Times, Korea. What kind of tools corporate and unions still have to influence politics?
MR. BARAN: I'm sorry. What can they give to politics?
QUESTION: What kind of tools?
MR. BARAN: What tools they have? Yeah.
Corporations and unions still have certain tools, and even, potentially, I guess, rights under our legal system. One is, they may form a Political Action Committee, which I mentioned earlier. This is a -- it has to be a committee consisting only of individual money, money from American citizens, no corporate money. They have to register that Political Action Committee with the Federal Election Commission, and then they have to file reports periodically on where the money comes from and where the money is going. And the money can be contributed to candidates, but, again, only up to a certain amount of money.
The limit for Political Action Committees is $5,000 per election. The limit for individuals is $2,000. So corporations and unions have that right.
Secondly, corporations and unions have a right to communicate with their own members or their own employees and stockholders. And the unions, in particular, have been very well organized and effective politically. The AFL-CIO, with approximately 14 million members around the nation may spend its union money to contact their 14 million members to encourage them to support candidates of the union's choice, to get those members registered to vote, to get them to the polls, get them absentee ballots, to organize phone banks and pay for all of that with union money.
Corporations, which are structured a little differently, cannot do all those things that unions can do because they're just not structured that, but they still have the right to communicate to their employees, to their stockholders.
The gentleman in the back mentioned Merrill Lynch and the CEO of that company allegedly having successfully raised from his officers and colleagues $500,000. If you did so, part of that is likely because the company exercised its right to communicate to the people in the company and say, "Well, would you consider donating $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign?" They can do that.
But they cannot spend corporate and union money to advertise, you know, messages that say, "Vote for President Bush," or "Vote for Governor Dean," when the advertising is directed to the general public.
MR. DENIG: Okay, let's go back to Japan and then we'll do India.
QUESTION: I'm Hiro Aida again. I'm just wondering what are the conditions for you to be eligible for public funding? I'm thinking about a third-party candidate who may have a very limited, you know, area of political activities and even, you know, you may be influential in just, in a couple of states. Could you still get, you know, federal or public funding for your political activities or not?
MR. BARAN: The technical requirement is that a candidate for president must raise $5,000 in 20 states in amounts no greater than $250. So that basically requires a candidate to find 20 individuals in 20 states, or 400 people, to donate $250. And that, then, will qualify the individual to participate in the public funding system.
These amounts were established in 1974, that's 30 years now, and a lot of people think that the conditions for qualifying are artificially low and should be changed. And I think one of the things that we will see is, after this election, is a growing debate on whether to change our public funding system to increase the criteria for eligibility, to increase the expenditure limits so it becomes more attractive for people to stay in the system, and other changes as well.
MR. DENIG: Let's go back to India.
QUESTION: Parasuram again. The question I have is, when a company like Merrill Lynch hands over a check for $500,000, is there any way of checking whether the employees really contributed that money?
MR. BARAN: Well, the company cannot hand over a check for $500,000. Each check has to come from the individual.
QUESTION: And the U.S. tracks their checks, is that what they do?
MR. BARAN: Technically they send the checks to the campaign. And they have to either send it by mail or they have to deliver it at a fundraising event. But each check must come from an individual and must be signed by the individual. All that information --
QUESTION: The reason I am asking is that I once covered a case in Baltimore, and there was a party I shall not name, gave a large amount of money to fund election campaigns of Congressmen and Senators. And what this guy did was, he went to a restaurant and gave $1,000 to each waiter and asked him to write over a check. Is it legal? The judge there ruled it was not legal.
MR. BARAN: Yeah, individuals have to give their own money. They may not be reimbursed for their contribution. And it's illegal for somebody to simply write checks in somebody else's name when it's not coming from those people. So, you know, that does happen and people wind up being convicted, sometimes going to jail for that type of practice, but it's illegal.
QUESTION: But it goes on?
MR. BARAN: Yes. I mean, there are instances where it happens. I'm trying to think -- well, we had such an issue arise just in this election. About three months ago there was an allegation in the press that there were certain supporters of Senator Edwards, all from one law firm, who contributed all on the same day. And there were statements by some of those people to reporters saying, "Well, I made the contribution but I was reimbursed by my boss."
So it goes on. When it comes to the attention of law enforcement authorities, it triggers an investigation and I believe there's one that's still pending at the Department of Justice. That conduct is illegal. I, you know, yes, I think it's indisputable that there is illegal conduct in our society and in our presidential system, but I don't think that's the norm. I think it just happens.
MR. DENIG: Okay, let's take one last one, I think, all right, Khaled, you were first.
QUESTION: I just, to sum up, you know, do you think all these changes have managed to fix, you know, the way of putting limits on influential political groups to, to kind of not, you know, by certain candidates or something? And I just have, again, you know, concerning the advertising on TV -- I mean, I see lots of the campaigns, you know, lots of the debates carried live, you know, on most TV channels.
So why is this insistence on paying too much money for private -- I mean, as if I was just interested in voting. I mean, I can see all these debates and like they'll be good enough. I mean, I don't know.
MR. BARAN: Well, I think one answer to your question is that, you know, we only -- we have less than 50 percent of our eligible voters voting. So we have a political system here that's devoted to trying to get more people to vote. And of course, if you can get more of your supporters to vote, then you will be elected. And if your opponent gets more, then that person will be elected. And, and a lot of what's going on in politics is trying to find people who would be supporters and get them to the polls. And all of that requires the expenditure of considerable sums of money to find out who those people are, to send them a message, and to get them to the polls.
QUESTION: Same question as last time. All in all, did it change the system?
MR. BARAN: In terms of whether all of this has changed the system, yes, it's changed the system. Does it make money less important in politics? I think the answer is no. I mean it's still going to be expensive. People are still going to be very active in politics. You know, we have an election system of the sort that not only gains attention and support here, but you know, it's followed by everyone in the world.
I mean, you can travel literally anywhere in the world during an American election, and 9 out of 10 people, it seems, could tell you who the two candidates for President of the United States are. And with that type of interest, that type of commitment, certainly in our society, I think it's still going to be important for participants to be engaged. And part of that engagement means that they have to raise and spend money to participate because that's inherent in our society. It's just going to be costly.
So what we now have are different rules on where money can come from and who can spend it, but there is still going to be a lot of money. That's my opinion.
MR. DENIG: Thank you very much, Mr. Baran. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. | |||||
