Will wonders never cease. Two Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would set limits on fundraising for legislative offices. It’s scheduled to get a quick committee hearing Tuesday afternoon, and is likely to be ignored after that. But if the Democratic majority was interested in some world-class trolling, they’d let the bill go forward and watch Republican leadership work frantically to pull the plug on the thing.

Two House members from the Kingdom, Woody Page and Larry Labor, are the lead sponsors of H.116, which would prohibit House and Senate candidates from raising more than $1,000 from any single source — including candidates’ contributions to their own campaigns — and set a $29,000 ceiling for total fundraising by any legislative candidate. (The bill would also do a bunch of other things, but the legislative limits are by far the most impactful.)

Page and Labor found a very friendly ear in The Newport Daily Express, which published a totally one-sided article about the bill that extensively quoted the co-sponsors and just about nobody else. This, despite the fact that the story quoted Page and Labor’s vociferous criticism of former Democratic state representative Katherine Sims, who lost a bid for state Senate in November. There’s no sign that the Express sought comment from Sims, which is gross journalistic malpractice.

What the two Kingdoms’men don’t seem to realize is that their bill would hurt their own party’s cause much more than anything else. Well, there’s also the rank hypocrisy of Republicans, the party of plutocrats, bitching about excess money in politics, but hey, who’s counting?

Page and Labor seem to have a bug up their butts about Sims, who did raise a breathtaking total of $76,212. That’s a truckload of loot for any Senate contest in a normal year. She vastly outraised her Republican opponent Sam Douglass, who has so far reported raising nearly $41,000. (He has yet to file a Final Report, which was due back in December.) Not that it did her any good; Douglass won by close to 20 percentage points, so why Page and Labor are so exercised is beyond me.

The main point, however, is that H.116 would have greatly disadvantaged Republican candidates for Senate, who received an influx of four-figure checks from the Barons of Burlington. Seven of them far exceeded Page and Labor’s proposed $29,000 cap, and six of the seven won their races. The historic Republican gains in the state Senate might not have happened if H.116 had been in place.

Page told the Express that the need to raise big money forces Kingdom candidates to campaign “outside of our area” and seek funds “from outside of Vermont.”

Ol’ Woodman needs to check his facts. While Sims did raise a lot of money, she raised far more than Douglass did from within the Orleans district. Douglass has reported receiving $37,960 in donations of $100 or more, the threshold for itemizing donors (and listing their addresses). Of that total, he got only $4,253 from inside his district. The lion’s share of his loot came from the Barons, who mainly reside in Chittenden County.

Sims, on the other hand, raised the vast majority of her early money from within the district. As of July 1, she’d raised $28,573 in itemized donations from Orleans and only $9,150 from the rest of the planet. Later on, as Douglass’ fundraising achieved warp speed, she sought and received more contributions from outside the district. But overall, she did far better than Douglass on their home turf. And very few of her donors hailed “from outside of Vermont.”

Here are the other Republicans who exceeded H.116’s threshold and won their elections, thanks in large part to the Barons and their buddies.

• Sen. Patrick Brennan raised $77,087, the highest total of any Senate candidate last year.
• Sen. Scott Beck, $62,392.
• Sen Steven Heffernan, $48,483.
• Sen. Chris Mattos, $45,704.
• Andrea Murray, $41,619.
• Sen. Larry Hart, Sr., $35,358.

Murray would have gotten a double whammy under H.116. Not only did she exceed the $29,000 threshold, but she got most of her money from her own pocket. She donated a total of $33,462 to her own campaign, roughly four-fifths of her total. If she’d been limited to $1,000 in self-support, her campaign would have been skint after a couple of mailings. (Of course, her bank balance would be in substantially better shape.)

And let us not forget nominal Democrat Stewart Ledbetter, who tried to muscle his way to a Democratic Senate seat with a bankroll of close to $69,000, much of it from the Barons, only to lose in the August primary.

Some Democrats, including Sims, Chris Bray, Andy Julow, and Andrea Cochrane, raised big money as they tried to keep pace with their well-heeled Republican opponents. But if Page and Labor want to point fingers about the high cost of running for the Legislature, their first target ought to be the Barons, not Katherine Sims. They started this fight.

There’s also the relatively minor quibble that H.116 would set the same limit for House and Senate hopefuls, which is absurd. Running for House is a far different animal than running for Senate. House districts are much smaller. Most of the effort is door-to-door and volunteer-based. There’s not much room for mass media spending. It’s really not possible to knock on every door in a Senate district unless you decide to forego sleep, work or family time for a good six months or so. You’ve got to buy some mailings, newspaper and digital ads at least, and in some districts some radio ads are advisable. A more realistic H.116 would set a much lower ceiling for House elections.

There is something to be said for the spirit, if not the letter, of H.116. I have written about the Barons setting a new, higher threshold for Senate campaign finance and how that’s a dangerous thing:

It used to be that, Chittenden County aside, you could comfortably run a Senate campaign for $20,000 or less. From here on, if you’re an incumbent in a competitive district or you’re taking on a sitting senator, you’d better be able to raise $50,000 or more. It’s small money by national standards, but it’s a quantum leap in Vermont politics.

What would I do if I were drafting a campaign finance reform bill? Well, a lot of things, including enforceable penalties for noncompliance, but let’s stick to the main point of this bill: limits for legislative candidates. I think we could comfortably set a ceiling of $15,000 for House candidates and $40,000 for the Senate. Very low limits would favor incumbents, who don’t need to introduce themselves to the electorate, and incumbents already have plenty of advantages. The limits should allow for robust campaigning but prohibit the actual purchase of elections.

But really, I doubt that Page and Labor are serious about this bill. If they are, they’re ignoring a huge piece of political reality: the Barons’ entry is a huge advantage for their party, and one they’d be loath to surrender. If this bill doesn’t die a quiet death on the GovOps bulletin board, then I’m sure Republican leadership would do their damndest to kill it ASAP.