McConnell’s Dark Secret: He Used to Support Campaign Finance Reform

These days, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell regularly scoffs at Democrats’ sweeping anti-corruption bill to set up more transparency around money in politics, and promote expanded voting rights. But 46 years ago, he praised many of the ideas that the bill, known as HR 1, contains. He called money in politics a “cancer” in a 1973 Courier-Journal op-ed about a local campaign finance ordinance that he complained didn’t go far enough to address the issue (Fred Wertheimer at Democracy 21 first published the McConnell op-ed).