CAMPAIGN FUND RAISING

For the last two years, Missouri has been going through fits and starts in attempting to reform the business of how campaigns are financed. Voters passed an initiative in 1994 that enacted the toughest restrictions on donations in the entire country. When challenged, most of that law was tossed out as unconstitutional by a federal judge who was subsequently upheld on appeal by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

In anticipation of the voters' action earlier that year, the General Assembly had passed a measure enacting so-called reforms, mostly designed to entrench incumbents and make the difficult job faced by challengers even more arduous. Among them was a provision that banned fund raising during the four and a half months the legislature is in session. Amazingly, this aspect of the law applied both to incumbents and to candidates who, as challengers, don't even hold public office.

It fell to U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh to do the right thing, and do it he did. This week Limbaugh made permanent his previous temporary injunction striking down the fund-raising ban during the legislative session. Limbaugh ruled, correctly, that First Amendment rights of free speech are violated by a ban lasting nearly half the year. "Four and one-half months is nearly half of every year in which a candidate is completely cut off from generating immediate funds for running his or her campaign," Limbaugh wrote. "While the state's interest in stopping corruption or the appearance of corruption constitutes a compelling ... interest, it has failed to meet its burden of advancing this interest through the least intrusive means."

It goes without saying that candidates not currently in office aren't subject to being influenced and need all the time and effort they can muster to raise the funds indispensable to communicating a message to voters. Judge Limbaugh made us proud with this one.