High profile candidates for public office are so crunched by the need to raise ever-larger sums of money to fund their campaigns that they're forking over millions to fundraising consultants who'll help collect the checks. As Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal reports, the wider nets cast by these consultants are hauling in some questionable catch.

If you have a doubt in your mind about the explosion of campaign fundraising in recent years, just look at the escalation in consultant fees:

 

In the first nine months of this year, House and presidential candidates, political parties and political-action committees paid $31.1 million to about 800 fund-raising consultants and their companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that did an analysis of campaign-finance records for The Wall Street Journal. That compares with $12.3 million spent on 260 companies for such services in the first nine months of 2003, during the previous presidential campaign, and $2.1 million on about 130 individuals and companies four years before that.

And while the consultants do cursory inspection of the donors they recruit, every once in awhile a Norman Hsu slips through and with him a series of shady pass-through donations designed to circumvent donation limits.

Along with the donors of questionable integrity come the donors of diverse geography. Senate and House candidates must reach far beyond donors in their home states to collect campaign checks. As their campaign accounts come to rely more on and more on non-constituents, will their priorities shift too?

The hazards in raising money nationally and using consultants are clear: Politicians are further removed from their patrons, and donors often become just faces in a receiving line or names on a list. While that has long been true for presidential candidates, increasing numbers of lower-level politicians -- members of the House, governors, even mayors -- have begun hitting the national circuit as well.

The article lays a portion of the blame at the feet of campaign donation limits but I think that misses the point that all this fundraising is taking time away from that central duty of an elected official: to represent his or her constituents and their concerns. That's why we need legislation like the Fair Elections Now Act in the Senate which will offer a full public financing option to candidates for office.