Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail by Raymond La Raja Schaffner and Brian Schaffner

Chapter 1
 Campaign Finance Laws, Purists, 
and Pragmatists: Who Benefits?
 Politics in Washington appears hopelessly polarized. The widening ideologi-
cal gap in the U.S. Congress has received most of the attention (McCarty, 
Poole, and Rosenthal 2006; Rohde 1991), but similar dynamics have been 
playing out in many state legislatures (Shor and McCarty 2011). While the 
consequences of such polarization are not always clear, there seems little 
doubt of one effect: partisan rancor in legislatures has increased dramatically. 
In recent decades we have observed an unusual degree of policy gridlock 
and the deterioration of Congress as a deliberative body (Mann and Orn-
stein 2012). A complete lack of compromise appears to block government 
from acting on pressing issues such as immigration or tax reform, which are 
widely acknowledged in both parties as ripe for policy transformation.
 The problems do not stop there. A strong case has been made that policy 
gridlock exacerbates wealth inequality through a basic failure to adjust poli-
cies to new economic and demographic realities (Hacker and Pierson 2010; 
McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006). Perhaps most worrisome for the 
long- term health of American democracy is the possibility that our institu-
tions do not adequately represent citizens, with parties standing for highly 
ideological policies that are at odds with the preferences of the vast majority 
of voters (Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2005).
 Why We Write
 As close observers of American politics, we worry about polarization and 
its potential impact on the democratic process. That is why we are writing 

 this book. We see no magic remedy for this problem, but we can help iden-
tify underlying causes, which might lead to fruitful reforms. Our experience 
in analyzing elections and governing suggests to us that a link might exist 
between the ideological distancing of the parties and the weakened state of 
party organizations in the United States. In an era when money is an essen-
tial electoral resource, party organizations have often struggled to finance 
politics because campaign finance laws and court jurisprudence constrain 
political parties more tightly than they limit interest groups or individual 
donors.
 Party- Centered versus Candidate- Centered Financing
 Given our concerns, the question posed in this book is a practical one, 
although it is informed by theory and research about political parties. Would 
a party- centered campaign finance system improve our politics? In other 
words, we ask whether rules giving political parties more freedom to raise 
and spend money on candidates would attenuate the excesses of ideological 
polarization between the major political parties.
 We present our detailed response to this question in the remaining chap-
ters of this book. Our argument is that financially strong party organiza-
tions should reduce party polarization. It may seem odd that making parties 
stronger organizationally would abate their programmatic intensity, but we 
will present evidence that this is so. As we explain in the following chapters, 
party organizations behave somewhat differently from other political actors 
in the campaign finance system. Specifically, parties are the sole political 
organizations whose primary goal is to win elections. We will argue that this 
unique characteristic forces parties to exercise a moderating effect on those 
who win office. One of the main thrusts of our argument will be that the 
introduction of party- friendly campaign finance laws would moderate the 
distancing of the major political parties in Congress and the states.
 Aside from seeming paradoxical, our position may not be popular. Politi-
cal parties are not the most admired institutions in American life. Accord-
ing to a recent poll by Rassmussen, 53 percent of U.S. voters think that 
neither party in Congress is the party of the American people. The disdain 
for political parties is an American tradition dating to the Founding and 
expressed anxiously by George Washington in his Farewell Address; Wash-
ington admonished his compatriots to shun the “incongruous projects of 
faction,” which often serve “a small but artful and enterprising minority of 
the community.”

Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail by Raymond La Raja Schaffner and Brian Schaffner