Elections

With the growing trend of front loading and the invisible primary, money continues to be very important within elections especially early on. Front loading is when more states begin to shift their primaries to the early part of the primary season, we saw this happen in the most recent primaries and it even led to problems among state primaries counting in nominating a presidential candidate. The "invisible primary" is the time before primary season when a candidate launches a campaign much earlier than you would think necessary. This is a time where mostly money is raised before the actual campaign is set into full swing.

Because so much money is needed to run a big election and to become noticed within the parties as the best party candidate and because there are limits to how much money can be donated to a certain campaign, candidates are compelled to develop large supporters with reasonably smaller donations around the country. This makes it much harder to make money than having a few big name donations, but if a candidate is successful with this strategy it helps to secure more supporters. Over the past election Barack Obama would continuously emphasize how his campaign was made by many small donations as opposed to a few big ones.

The most recent act that made it difficult for big donations to be made was the McCain-Feingold revisions to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. This law states that "no individual can contribute more than $2,000 (in 2002 dollars) to any campaign. Moreover, candidates can qualify for matching federal funds only after they have raised $100,000 in small sums ($250 or less, $5,000 per state) in each of twenty states. Political action committees may contribute up to $5,000 to a candidate, but their gifts are not eligible for matching public money" (84). This law really makes it difficult for certain groups to make large contributions, which helps to make the process of primaries and elections more democratic because a candidate will for the most part still be picked by the people instead of a few wealthy contributors.

Now however, many wealthy contributors with their own agendas for who should be elected are putting their money towards 527 groups. These are groups that are not necessarily regulated by the election committee and put out advertisements in order to sway people from voting for certain candidates and to vote for the ones they support. These are separate from the campaign ads put out by the candidates themselves, but still have effectiveness within the perceptions of people and are controlled by bigger powers.

I do not think that the influence of all factions and groups within parties can be purged. No matter what there is going to be some influence into all elections and within the minds of candidates and parties. It may not be best necessarily for factions to go away completely because they bring up different goals and agendas within a party that helps to keep it going and involve many other people. Many times a party does not represent one group or goal, but many.