Oregon House speaker, Jeff Merkley, who is locked in a primary battle with Portland Activist Steve Novick, recently announced that he will continue accepting contributions during the 2008 special session, in violation of House rules.

Merkley has said through his speaker, Russ Kelley, that his campaign will not accept money from Oregon pacs or lobbyists, but will continue to accept money from other sources.

Respectfully, we don't agree that selling influence to interests based in Washington DC rather than Oregon during the special session is much of an improvement.

Recently, Senator Rick Metsger criticized Merkley for breaking his own house rule. We agree with Metsger, and would argue that the 3 Senators running for SOS should also agree not to accept contributions during the special session.

The whole point of establishing rules is to ensure that we abide by them, even when they are inconvenient, as is the case here.

Oregonians have passed strong limits on campaign finance twice in the last 15 years, including in 2006.

The first time, the courts ruled that the campaign finance limits that were passed in 1994 were unconstitutional.

Oregon, which has had limits from the dawn of statehood through 1972 when they were repealed by the legislature, again passed strong limits in 2006. These limits were not implemented by the Attorney General, who took upon himself the judicial function of interpreting the law.

If politicians don't want the people of this state to come back and pass a strong Constitutional Amendment that enacts contribution limits, then they need to follow their own campaign finance rules, even when it is politically inconvenient to do so.