Businesses should rethink PAC money Second of three parts.

Movements in Oklahoma, California and Colorado to give pink slips to elected officials who would make a career of office-holding are attracting two very different kins of supporters.

One is the anti-incumbency movement. Many people feel that phrase "career public service" is a contradiction in terms.

If people can learn to read and write, do algebra and calculus and learn world history in 12 years, beginning in kindergarten, they certainly don't need 12 years to learn how to operate in Congress or a state legislature. Law-making is not brain surgery.

The other movement emphasizes campaign finance reform. Unlike the anti-incumbency movement, reform seeks more competitive elections. Says the reformer: change the system; don't put a cap on terms.

The problem, from the reformer's point of view, is an election system that is stacked against the challenger. Incumbents have free mailings; free broadcast facilities; publicly supported travel allowances; offices in Washington and in their states; large, taxpayer-supported staffs; access to free issue research; and access to money provided by special-interest "political action committees" known as PACs.

Bit it's the PACs themselves that make reform so difficult.

During the current election cycle, for example, there are 85 candidates for 32 seats in the U.S. Senate. According to the latest finance reports, 79% of the $140 million that PACs have contributed to these campaigns have gone to the incumbents.

Its the same story in the House, where 80% of the special-interest PAC money is going to incumbents.

Special-interest financing is led by business. Business PACs outspend labor PACs by almost 2 to 1.

Even more interesting, business PACs give more money to incumbent Democrats than labor PACs do. Current Senate Democrats for example, get more money from business than labor by a margin of 3 to 1.

Labor PACs play a large role in getting Democrats elected to their first seat in Congress, but once they are elected - once they are incumbent officeholders - the business PACs take over their financial care and feeding.

The conventional wisdom that Democrats get more money from labor than from business just doesn't hold up.

Big business - and it's big business that generates most of the business PAC money - is very comfortable with the system.

There's just one problem: too few business leaders are asking what damage is done to the public interest or the interests of the business community itself by an election system that is stacked so heavily against competition, against challengers.

High, deficit-induced interest rates continue to do more than Iraq's Saddam Hussein to hurt business vitality and economic growth.

It is time for business to re-examine its role in perpetuating the system of uncompetitive elections. The fault is not in the stars; it's in ourselves.