Campaign Finance Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Campaign Finance - Coursework ExampleCampaign Finance comes through many different avenues, from single-person donations to contributions from big and small corporations and political surplus interest groups. These days its impossible to run for any position without m 1y for travel, ads, and get-out-the-vote endures. The only way someone without the financial clout of Ross Perot can go toe-to-toe with the big boys is by joining one of the two main parties the Democrats and the Republicans. Without the reach, both financially and politically, of these two parties, the odds are squarely against you. True, the occasional self-supporting might win a seat on Congress, but how many independents do you know that won a seat who werent former members of one of the parties?So, the first step in financing a campaign is joining a partyunless, of course, youre Ross Perot. But even he ended up getting squashed in the end through other, much political, methods.Campaign finance is categorized in two ways hard coin and soft property. Hard money is donations made directly to political candidates. (Wikipedia Campaign Finance in the United States, paragraph 2) These direct donations come from organizations, individuals, and (you guessed it) the political parties. Soft money is money that isnt received or spent by the candidates campaign but spent by individuals/organizations for political advertisements (often made by the said individual/organization) for a favored candidates position or attacks on his opponents. More or less, hard money is donated to a campaign for the candidate to spend while soft money isnt donated, just spent. Theres a fine line between the two that has more to do with semantics than the action, itself. While on that points a limit on how much hard money can be sent to a candidate, there is no limit on how much soft money his political allies can volunteer to spend on his behalf.