Is a "soft money" ban real reform? What about increased "hard money" contribution limits? Better disclosure rules? Free broadcast advertising? How can we know which deserve the "reform" label? How can we rate their relative value?

The Fannie Lou Hamer Standard can be our guide.

It's been proposed by the Fannie Lou Hamer Project [link: www.flhp.org ], a nonprofit group that sees campaign finance reform as a civil- and voting-rights issue.

"People are 'sick and tired of being sick and tired' of this pay-to-play system," says Project Director Stephanie Wilson, quoting Hamer. "The current campaign finance system restricts civic and political participation based on socioeconomic status. Therefore it has a disparate impact on communities of color and the nonwealthy."

Fannie Lou Hamer was a hero of the voting rights movement, a citizen who strove to advance the highest aspiration of our nation - political equality regardless of economic status, education, race, gender, or religion. This daughter of sharecroppers rose to national prominence as a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which in 1964 challenged the state's all-white delegation for seats at the Democratic National Convention. She was a talented leader who could organize and inspire fellow citizens. She had great civic worth but little net worth, and no powerful friends in Washington.

The Fannie Lou Hamer Standard says that whenever someone puts forward a "campaign finance reform" proposal, we can measure it by asking, "Would this make the system fair for someone like Fannie Lou Hamer - a poor woman, a person of color, a stranger in the halls of power, but someone with vision and passion and a calling to public service?

Here's how it works:

Increasing "hard money" limits further diminishes the already small political weight of a Fannie Lou Hamer relative to the big donors. That's not reform. "Hard" or "soft" money is still money and she's not a donor.

Banning "soft money" - the unlimited donations to parties that are now out of control - only marginally improves political equality for a Fannie Lou Hamer. It tilts the playing field a little bit back in her favor, away from big donors, but only a bit.

Full public financing puts more money into politics, but it's clean and accountable money available to anyone, including people like Fannie Lou Hamer. It encourages them to challenge privately funded and self-funded opponents. It allows ideas and organizing skill to count as much or more than fundraising as the measure of a candidate.

The campaign finance reform debate in the United States Senate has offered nothing for a Fannie Lou Hamer.

On the opening day of debate, March 19, Senator Chuck Hagel sought to deflect anticipated criticism of his "reform"- tripling "hard money" contribution limits and legalizing currently outlawed "soft money" by capping it at $60,000 per contribution. "We must guard against impugning each other's motives here on the floor of the Senate," he said. "No senator has the high moral ground over any other senator."

Perhaps not, but legitimate reformers could see right through his proposal.

"Not only is this bill a sham, but it would for the first time in more than half a century sanction corporate and union soft money and make it a permanent part of our political system," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.

Hagel is a poster boy for politicians on the take. As Curtis Moore reports for TomPaine.com ["This Man Calls Himself A Reformer" link -- http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/03/14/1.html ], Hagel loaned himself $1 million dollars when he ran for one of Nebraska's Senate seats in 1996. After winning, Hagel became a champion of air-polluting industries, none of which do much if any business in his state. In no time those interests had filled Hagel's campaign coffers, allowing the new Senator to repay his loan to himself. Hagel would allow his patrons and other special interests to give even more.

Senator Mitch McConnell, a states-rights conservative, says there is not enough money in politics. Yet on the third day of debate he opposed an amendment, sponsored by Senator Paul Wellstone, that would have allowed states to enact voluntary full public funding for federal candidates. Thus McConnell demonstrated a double hypocrisy: he doesn't want states to decide for themselves how to fund their federal candidates, and he wants to keep money out of politics if it doesn't come from special interests with strings attached.

As the second week of Senate debate began, it looked like "soft money" would be curtailed but not eliminated, and then only in exchange for a "hard money" increase. The leading reform group, Common Cause, has given every indication that it will accept this tradeoff. The New York Times editorialized on March 25 in favor of "reasonable" hard money increases.

The rationalization for such a deal is lost on Stephanie Wilson. She knows that there is far more hard money in the system than soft money.

"Getting rid of the smaller slice of the money pie and doubling or tripling the largest slice just doesn't take us anywhere," she says. "For a Fannie Lou Hamer, such 'reform' is like adjusting the lines on a polo field - she just isn't a player on that field."

"Symbolic appeasement is not reform," Wilson says. "Reform encompasses real change, and improves the plight of the majority."

That's an interesting statement for a voting-rights activist, whose movement has always focused on securing the rights of a minority to share power and justice with the majority. So what's this "plight of the majority" all about?

Wilson and her colleagues are saying that the fight for political equality - the very definition of "the American experiment" - needs now to concern itself with the plight of the vast majority who are not big campaign donors. That's more than 99 percent of Americans. A tiny majority, some one-half of one percent, gives almost all the money in politics. These donors are the cash constituents who enjoy first class citizenship and whose concerns now command the priorities of government.

The Senate's reform debate offers fine proof of this. The concerns of a Fannie Lou Hamer are hardly in evidence. Instead, "reform" has been defined as: What's good for incumbents and big donors? What makes fundraising easier for them?

The bill that comes out of this constricted debate will at best represent a small step in the right direction - if the President doesn't veto it.

Either way, the struggle for meaningful reform will continue, Stephanie Wilson says.

"But from here on out the Fannie Lou Hamer Standard must be the measure of reform."

John Moyers is the Editor and Publisher of TomPaine.com, a nonprofit on-line journal of opinion. He can be reached at 202/332-2881 ext.16, or at John@TomPaine.com.

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