There's nothing soft about soft money

Frontiersman editorial board

The soft money ads for this election season are finally behind us, but that acrid aftertaste lingers on. It's a nice term. A palatable term -- soft money. But the ads that are bought with soft money are rarely anything but harsh and pointed. If the responses in the Frontiersman's "Snapshot" column today are any indication, most voters have had more soft money ads than they can stand.

The problem with soft money is that it comes from someplace else. It's not subject to the same limitations and requirements that direct campaign contributions are, and it's usually provided by groups with very specific agendas. Soft money is often used to attack one candidate rather than to encourage voter awareness.

When someone has a specific agenda, especially when that someone is from another state, it's no wonder the voters are repulsed by the ads. It's not so much that the issues that concern them are not important, they usually are. The problem is that those issues relate differently to different places. Alaska faces some difficult decisions, and the candidates who win the upcoming election will have to tackle those decisions. The constituents -- the people who actually live and work here -- will live with the decisions that are made. Those people, the ones who know this state best, do not need help from Outside special-interest groups to determine what is best for this state.

No matter who you support in the upcoming election, whether you lean toward the left and environmental protection or toward the right and resource development … whether you favor tax increases or spending cuts, it's your state -- your decision. Outside interests may know much about a given topic, but that knowledge is often general, and it cannot be applied in cookie-cutter fashion to every state and every region. Before those interests are allowed to spend their money telling Alaskans how to vote, they should be required to live here and gain an understanding of this state and how their chosen issue relates to this state.

If our readers are any indication, though, these soft money ads do not serve their intended purpose, anyway. They turn voters off to either a candidate or to the voting process in general. There's nothing soft about chasing voters away from the polls. There's nothing soft about interfering in the democratic process in a place where you don't live. Let's hope the soft money process falls on hard times. The sooner the better.