Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘Secret Money Floods Campaigns’
As a reader of The New York Sun, I was disappointed by the front page story bemoaning the failure to require disclosure of even the most modest campaign contributions to the presidential campaigns [National, “Secret Money Floods Campaigns,” February 12, 2008]. The large numbers of small campaign contributions being raised on the Internet, too small to be publicly disclosed under federal campaign finance rules, should be celebrated as a mark of political strength and participation — not demonized as some kind of front for possible foreign corruption.
Indeed, if anything, the $200 threshold for public reporting of federal campaign contributions is entirely too low, not too high.
In the Constitution, individuals have a right of associational privacy to contribute to the candidate and causes of their choice, and their identities and affiliations should not be publicly reported without good cause.
The original $100 reporting threshold, which the Supreme Court upheld over my objections in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo, was ridiculously and intrusively low even in 1976. And the current $200 threshold, which is even lower than $100 when adjusted for inflation, is even worse.
When presidential candidates are raising and spending upwards of $2 million in their bid for the nomination, how can the forced identification of someone who contributes one-millionth of that amount possibly justify the violation of privacy that the mandatory disclosure compels?
JOEL GORA
New York, N.Y.
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