BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The attorneys general from 26 states have joined Cincinnati's bid to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case involving the city's campaign spending limits law.
In addition, 20 U.S. senators -- 19 Democrats and one Republican -- have written to the U.S. solicitor general asking the Justice Department to become involved in the city's fight to keep the spending cap.
If the city is successful, it would overturn a 22-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared spending limits as unconstitutional restrictions on free speech.
The 26 attorneys general, including Ohio's Betty Montgomery, have signed a "friend of the court" brief supporting the city's position that circumstances have changed in campaign spending since the court's 1976 Buckley vs. Valeo decision and that the city should be allowed to prove the constitutionality of its law in a federal trial court.
"Unlimited campaign spending threatens public confidence in the election process," said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller. "We all seek a system that is open and clean and free of suspicion, but we believe the courts will have to revisit Buckley vs. Valeo for us to get there."
Last month, the Boston-based National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI), a campaign-finance reform advocacy group hired by the city to defend its law, filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking it to hear the case and to send the Cincinnati case back to U.S. District Court here for trial.
At issue is the campaign spending limits law Cincinnati City Council passed on a 5-4 vote in 1995.
Under the law, candidates can spend three times a council member's salary -- or about $140,000 -- in a city council campaign.
The campaign spending limit law was a reaction to an explosion in the cost of winning a council seat that took place in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Total spending by council candidates jumped from $958,000 in 1987 to $2.32 million in the 1995 council campaign. The average spent per candidate skyrocketed from $38,320 to $129,556 in the same period.
In recent council elections, a number of candidates have spent considerably more than the $140,000 spending cap, which was not enforced in the 1995 and 1997 elections, while the case was still in court.
Last year, Republican Councilman Phil Heimlich set a record by spending $456,352 to finish in sixth place. Mr. Heimlich ended up spending $12.04 per vote. Mayor Roxanne Qualls, in her 1997 re-election campaign, spent $303,367, more than double the spending cap, while Republican incumbent Charlie Winburn spent $269,417.
After the law was passed in 1995, Republican John Kruse, who spent $214,692 in his unsuccessful bid for a council seat that year, filed a lawsuit against the city. He said the spending limit law is unconstitutional under Buckley vs. Valeo.
U.S. District Judge Herman Weber agreed, ruling in favor of Mr. Kruse without holding a trial. The city appealed, but lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.
If four of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices agree to accept the case, it will probably be heard later this fall. If the petition is rejected, it is the end of the three-year-old court case.
John Bonifaz, the NVRI attorney, said he was encouraged by a recent comment by Justice Anthony Kennedy that Buckley vs. Valeo is a case that "ought to be looked at in light of our experience."
Christopher Finney, the lawyer for Mr. Kruse, said Tuesday that the Kruse position has never changed -- they have argued consistently that the city has failed to show there is anything about the funding of Cincinnati City Council campaigns that warrants a reversal of Buckley vs. Valeo.
Lawyers for the city have been trying to persuade the U.S. Justice Department to become involved In the case. NVRI officials believe the letter to the U.S. solicitor general signed by 19 U.S. senators will help bring that about.
No Tristate senator signed the letter, but Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., did. One Republican, Sen. William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, wrote his own letter in support.
