BEATING THE SYSTEM

Jerry Bruno knows all about his Congressman. He can't help it. The retired college professor who lives in Portland, Maine, is not a political junkie or even someone whose money and clout might be worth the attention. But all through the day, he is barraged with information about Republican James Longley. A stranger calls on the phone to praise Longley as a "friend of small business." A radio spot touts the lawmaker's "antigovernment" stands. A TV ad complains that Longley is the victim of "cheap shots" by "Big Labor bosses." Then there's the whole series of anti-Longley commercials, which charge that the Congressman has voted to trim student loans, reduce the security of pension funds and "cut Medicare [to] give new tax breaks to the wealthy." Says Bruno: "It's enough to make your head spin."

What's new about this media onslaught is that none of these pitches or disparagements were paid for by Longley or his Democratic opponent, Thomas Allen, or even their respective parties. The pro-Longley spots come courtesy of the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Restaurant Association and a coalition of corporations led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The anti-Longley information was supplied by the AFL-CIO and, to a lesser extent, the American Association of Retired Persons. By taking advantage of a legal loophole in campaign-finance laws that permit so-called independent expenditures, special-interest groups are hogging the airwaves, phone lines and printshops in dozens of the most hotly contested congressional races around the country. In districts held by G.O.P. freshmen like Longley, outsider advocacy groups on both sides are routinely spending $500,000 to $1 million a race, amounts that often dwarf the efforts of the Democratic challengers.

Such spending skirts campaign-finance laws, which were meant to restrict the influence wealthy individuals and powerful groups could exert in an election. Contributors are not allowed to donate more than $2,000 a candidate, and political-action committees are restricted to $5,000. But there are no limits on what they can spend as long as they don't coordinate with the campaign or their message stops short of saying "Vote for Candidate X." The scandal in the latter case is that they come as close to saying it as they can get away with. They simply invite viewers to phone Candidate X's opponent and complain about his positions.

That's not the only trick that special-interest groups and rich people are using to stretch the laws intended to bind them. The result is an extravagantly expensive campaign season. While the amount that candidates for President and Congress will spend this year is estimated at $1.2 billion, the amount spent in other ways by the parties and special-interest groups may total $800 million more. There's no end in sight. Bill Clinton and Bob Dole both promised in their first debate that they would get serious about reforming campaign-finance laws, but they have studiously avoided the subject in the past 12 months; Congress has been stalled all year on the McCain-Feingold campaign-reform bill, its most comprehensive attempt to close the loopholes. And the absence of any serious enforcement of the existing laws by the Federal Election Commission is so well known that it continues to embolden Democrats and Republicans to pull their shenanigans.