Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Hadsall blog offers Nodler take on campaign contribution limits

Joplin Globe political reporter Joe Hadsall's blog offers an examination of the attempt by Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis, to restore Missouri's campaign contribution limits.

As noted earlier in The Turner Report, this bill, though it would restore what Missouri voters said overwhelmingly that they wanted in 1996, has little or no chance of passing this year and a quote from our own Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, is revealing:

Nixon referred to a statewide vote in '96, where about 70 percent of voters approved campaign limits. However, Sen. Gary Nodler said that the state's limits were not favored by the public, because it led to an explosion of faceless committees and groups.

Such as retired financial analyst Rex Sinquefield, who last year set up 100 political action committees in order to funnel multiple donations to candidates. He recently disbanded those 100 committees.



"Sinquefield proved that we can write limits all we want, but if someone wants to spend millions, they will find a way to do it," Nodler said. "The reality is that we tried limits. They were fully vetted, and the public didn't like them."


Instead of opening up the system to the wild west farce that it became last August, Nodler and his fellow "free speech" advocates should have worked to eliminate the loopholes and truly try to make campaign contribution limits work.

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