Monday, June 25, 2007

Huckabee on McCain-Feingold

In light of the Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC decision announced today, I was curious to see what Mike Huckabee's position has been on McCain-Feingold to date. The well-funded Romney campaign (which has consistently emphasized the "McCain" aspect of "McCain-Feingold," for obvious reasons) had a press release about it, but I found this information about Huckabee's view (from The Club for Growth's profile of Huckabee): (here):
Political Free Speech

Maximizing prosperity requires sound government policies. When the government strays from these policies, citizens must be free to exercise their constitutional rights to petition and criticize those policies and the politicians responsible for them.

Governor Huckabee is on record criticizing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, though the majority of his criticism has focused on discriminatory measures that allows senators to transfer money from Senate committees to presidential runs, but deny governors the same freedom to move state funds into federal accounts. While he called for less restrictions and more disclosure regarding campaign contributions (The Hill 11/29/06) and okayed unlimited soft money provided full disclosure (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 03/10/00), Governor Huckabee is also on record favoring limiting individual, PAC, corporate, and political party contributions to state candidates (votesmart.org 2002).
The last section refers to this report which is essentially the law as it stood (in relation to Federal Elections) prior to McCain-Feingold.

According to this Club for Growth press release from March, Huckabee and other potential GOP nominees have expressed "strong opposition" to McCain-Feingold.

No comments: