MONEY WILL MAKE 2012 CAMPAIGN UNLIKE ANY OTHER

posted by Michael Chihak

The 2012 election campaign will be like the "wild West," says political analyst and research scholar Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C.

Ornstein is in Tucson this week to speak to law students at the University of Arizona about the dysfunction in American politics.

The man who wrote the book The Permanent Campaign and Its Future in 2000, accurately predicting the decade-long and ongoing trends in U.S. politics, also will appear on Arizona Week Friday evening to discuss campaign financing.

Ornstein worked with Arizona Sen. John McCain to help author the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, more popularly known as the McCain-Feingold law. He says most of that law has been usurped by court rulings, leaving the average voter out of the loop of influence in political campaigns.

Next year's race for an open U.S. Senate seat in Arizona likely will bring "millions upon millions" of dollars in campaign contributions pouring into the state, Ornstein says. He says the balance of the Senate could ride on it, and thus both parties and their supporters will be keenly interested.