Washington, D.C.—The nonprofit, nonpartisan campaign finance reform group Public Campaign today released the following statement from its executive director, Nick Nyhart:

“Officials with the Bush-Cheney ’04 re-election campaign are telling reporters that they expect to raise at least $170 million for next year’s presidential primaries. In inflation-adjusted dollars, that is more money than the combined amounts raised for the presidential primaries by Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, George H.W. Bush in 1988 and 1992, and Bob Dole in 1996.” 1

“The President’s dash for cash is corrupting the White House and corrosive to the public’s faith in government, which has already been battered by the Clinton fundraising scandals of the 1990s. The President shouldn’t misunderestimate the public’s disdain for special interest fundraising. I know he’s said he wants to ‘make the pie higher’ but not this particular pie, please.”

“But the President is inflating the money chase to extreme new heights. To give another example, he’s asking donors to collect $20,000 just to get a backstage photo with him, an amount that just two elections ago was enough to get a donor an hour-long coffee with President Clinton.”2

“By blitzing the country over the next two weeks selling access to big donors, inflating the cost of elections, and forcing other candidates to spend endless hours trying to play catch-up, the President is taking the selling of the presidency to a new level. Only a new system of full public financing of presidential campaigns can end this sorry spectacle.”

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1. The totals by candidate/year, with the inflation-adjusted figure (2002 dollars) in parentheses, are: Reagan/1980-$14.2m ($31.0m), Reagan/1984-$16.6m ($28.8m), Bush/1988-$23.2m ($35.4m), Bush/1992-$24.0m ($30.9m), Dole/1996-$30.7m ($35.3m), for a total of $161.4m. Source: FEC reports, private contributions to the presidential candidates during the primaries from individual and PACs.

2. Mike Allen, “Bush courts Big Donors in Presidential Mode,” The Washington Post, May 22, 2003; “DNC Fundraising in the White House: Coffees, Overnights and Other Events,” Final Report of the Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/7.pdf.