Does Nationwide Fundraising Combat Parochialism?

I haven’t thought about it in detail, but it’s long seemed to me that restricting politicians so as to make it that they can only raise funds from people who are actually their constituents would be a reasonable idea. Ezra Klein offers some doubts:

But it would also increase one of the system’s other problems: Parochialism. Baucus might represent Montana, but as Chairman of the Finance Committee, he’s legislating on behalf of America. If he wanted to anger some of the conservative interests in his state and take a more national view, he could, in theory, raise national money to fund his reelection campaign and defend himself against state-based interests. Removing that option seems likely to ensure total capture by local powerbrokers, which may indeed be worse, or at least more incoherent, than capture by national interests.

I guess I just have some doubts about that in practice. It’s very hard for me to think of a legislator who’s anything less than 100 percent responsive to local business interests under the current system.

The main impact of the rule being considered would, it seems to me, be to make House incumbents much more electorally vulnerable. Most House members would simply find it very difficult to raise a great deal of money from in-district contributions. That would necessarily tend to level the playing field between incumbents and challengers. Which is probably why we won’t see it happen. But it would also probably be a good idea.