James Davis: “as soon as the 42 Democratic freshmen arrived in Washington we chose as our highest priority to reform the campaign…”

“as soon as the 42 Democratic freshmen arrived in Washington we chose as our highest priority to reform the campaign finance system in this country. And we knew there were two things that had to be done to accomplish that: First, the bill had to be bipartisan; and, second, it had to be incremental. So the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Tom Allen) is the leader on our side, working hand-in-hand with the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Asa Hutchinson), and a few other Republican freshmen who wrote a bill attacking two of the most gaping loopholes in our campaign finance system: Soft money, unlimited contributions given to political parties, not for good government, I would submit in many cases. And anonymous, and often misleading and inflammatory political ads run by third-party groups from outside the congressional districts, in most cases, where the ads were being run. And that bill was opposed. Matter of fact, at least one group said that the courts had upheld their rights to run political advertising. In fact, they went on to admit that if they were forced by our bill to put their names on their political ads, they would not run the ads. That is exactly why we were doing the bill. If somebody is not willing to put their name on a political ad, they are not willing to stand behind the representations they are making to voters in attempting to influence the outcome of an election.”