Soft Money in Campaigns

Soft Money in Campaigns

Soft money is a term for political donations made in such a way as to avoid federal regulations or limits. Soft money is often used for funding a certain political part rather that the candidate. This issue is rarely brought up in the news or headlines for the simple fact not many people know what is going on with federal funding for campaigns. The negative outcome of this unregulated money is that certain parties will have more funding than the other. In other words, one party will be able to publicly slander and down size the other party. Another problem is that many large companies can give out huge sums of money to a certain campaign and then that company is showed favoritism. For instance, if a particular party had a bill that was to increase taxes on cigarettes, then Marlboro might give a large sum of money to them to hopefully persuade them to drop that bill so Marlboro's customers stay happy. I have reviewed three articles that will further educate our understanding for soft money in federal campaigns.

Thomas B. Edsall is a staff writer for the Washington Post. He has written an articled called "Republican Soft Money Groups Find Business Reluctant to give." Republican operatives attempting to compete with Democratic groups for large sums of unregulated presidential campaign funds have run into a number of roadblocks, including reluctance on the part of many corporations to contribute to new independent groups (Edsall A21). What is being said here is that republicans are having trouble obtaining the large amounts of money that the democrats are still receiving. Many of the larger corporations do not feel comfortable giving funding to a campaign of new independent groups.