A deal on campaign finance/ethics?

We might get our first look today at a "deal" on campaign finance limits. The people I talked to late Wednesday were reluctant to call it a deal but said there were tentative agreements on the concepts and the task was now translating those agreements into legislation for a vote.

Here are some provisions on which there is supposedly broad agreement, though things can and do change when put writing. (Even the leading ethics/good government groups wouldn't return calls or comment about negotiations. Nothing says ethics reform like watchdog groups not talking about what they're working on behind closed doors with the very lawmakers they say need reforming.)

But I digress ...

The basic limits are still ...
$5,000 limit on individual campaign contributions.
$10,000 limit on corporate, union campaign contributions.

Year-round, real-time disclosure of campaign donations triggered with donations of $1,000. The reporting would be based on the receiving of the donation which would be defined as the campaign depositing the check, which is an officially recorded transaction.

The fear is a candidate will hold onto a huge check and not deposit it until after the election and thereby hide who's really financing the campaign. But one veteran of statehouse campaigns said he's yet to find the political mailing house willing to work on credit. Those involved in political campaigns tend to want to be paid upfront since they know going in that someone's going to lose.

OK, let's get to the good stuff.

Campaign committees run by legislative leaders and political parties would be limited in how much they can donate to candidates in primary elections. The restrictions are on a sliding scale:
$200,000 for statewide races.
$125,000 for the Senate and countywide offices in Cook County.
$75,000 for state representative and county wide offices outside Cook County.
$50,000 for other offices.

And those limits would be aggregate. For example, if the Democratic Party gives $150,000 to a candidate for governor, that candidate could only accept up to $50,000 from a campaign committee controlled by the Democratic House leader.

OK, my first reaction was that the idea of limiting primary election contributions was nothing but political cover, perhaps a save-face deal for both the reformers and lawmakers that wouldn't really do anything. The political parties and leaders don't spend big in the primary.

All the stories you read about big money campaigns are from the general election. Daily Herald political writer Joe Ryan this week examined how much legislative leaders spend on key races every other fall.

This deal would do nothing about that. It targets the primary, not the general.

Late Wednesday I asked one of the lawmakers involved how this was supposed to fix anything.

The response was a different, but logical explanation that the restrictions would target influence, not price tags.

If the idea is to make lawmakers more independent (and thereby more ethical), this key member said, then the target should be the primary, not the general. Here's why:

Legislative leaders don't want to lose seats on their respective sides of the aisles. So they're not going to stop helping "their" candidates in the fall elections. What they might be inclined to do is go find a new candidate and write that candidate a blank check in the primary to replace a lawmaker who's fallen out of favor. The leader keeps the seat and gets a loyal rookie.

The "reform" theory behind the primary caps is that if lawmakers know legislative leaders can't easily punish them by running primary challengers, they might be more willing to stand up to leaders and vote more independently.

The problem this is likely to face in many media and political circles is that it's unlikely to do anything to control the skyrocketing costs of general election campaigns.

Look for an amendment to pop today, probably in the the House.