I feel pangs of guilt all the time when I see a close race for public office I care about, but nevertheless I do not contribute money most of the time when asked to do so by various parties, including on these pages.
The reason for this is because I feel contributing to candidates who do not represent you directly is one of the factors undermining representative democracy. I'm fully aware that as long as this is legal, if everybody did as I did, progressive candidates would have a difficult path to elected office. So I'm not encouraging this so much as explaining why this is a personal choice, and why I think there may be a legal (?) way to reform campaign finance that reflects these principles.
Simply put, if I can't vote for a candidate, then I should not have influence in that candidate's election. I'd like to see this tried out in law sometime. More apologia on the flip.
First disclaimer/admission of cognitive dissonance: I do contribute to parties. Parties support candidates but they also support an infrastructure and organization that promotes a coherent (?) platform, at least in theory. Dr. Dean's 50-state strategy was an excellent example of how party building represents us all.
Now, I realize I'm splitting hairs here. By giving money to a party which then gives support to candidates outside of my various legislative districts, I confess I'm indirectly giving money to candidates who don't represent me. But in a party-based system, where the parties themselves are regulated, this at least allows the spending to be carefully tracked (in theory, again).
But I am sensitive to the issue of "outside money" influencing a race. The Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech in several cases involving various campaign laws, so we allow pretty much anybody within the country to give money to any race. (Such as the Mormon Church organizing in favor of Proposition 8 in California, including out of state contributions.) We allow corporations to support candidates via PACs even if they can't contribute money directly to candidates. The same with any public interest group or issues based lobby that chooses to support candidates (from the NRA to NARAL). The effect of this is obvious: we have candidates who are defined by a set of positions on specific narrow interests, and not necessarily representing some point in the spectrum of opinion from within their district. We get splinter politics instead of consensus politics.
My thought is also that despite the fact that my money is not well-spent on the direct races I can vote for (at the Federal level both my Senators and my Congressman are Democrats), my giving money to somebody in, say, the 99th District of New York is anti-Democratic, because I am saying I propose to speak for the citizens of that district. The whole idea of representative democracy is the representative in question is supposed to represent members who vote for her or him, not other parties. Yet I will influence the outcome of that election, and the positions taken by candidates, by contributing money to somebody else's fight.
In other forms of democracy than our republican (small R) system, this might not perhaps be the case. But we have a one-person, one-vote system and a district-based system of representation, with winner take all, so that's it. When I'm shouting with my money in another race, that means I'm drowning out somebody who lives there.
In my idealized reform of the political system, contributions would be restricted to individuals and parties. Only individuals who can actually vote in a given election may give money to a candidate standing for office in that election, and parties of course may only give money to a candidate representing that party.
The effect of this would be to "de nationalize" races for representatives (cf. NY 20 or whatever). Let the people who are represented speak for themselves. Keep corporations and special interest groups out of direct support, but let them organize within districts accordingly.
I'm going to admit I'm a hypocrite here. I've given money in the past to candidates for office where I don't live, although in most cases it's because I had some personal connection to the district or race in question, such as I used to live there. But I do believe this is an anti-democratic system that allows me to do this. I just feel odd doing this, and I'm not doing it now. (This year I'm redirecting my political contributions into the local food bank, which seems to me to be more in need of it right now, and statewide propositions, which unfortunately are a big deal here.)
I understand the counter-argument here: because control of houses of the legislature is an outcome that affects us all, in theory I do have a dog in the hunt in another district, however indirectly. And that's in part why I continue to support the Democratic Party nationally. But I don't think that's the way the founders intended representative democracy to work. For better or worse we are divided up into geographic groups, not special interest groups, when it comes time to pull the lever, and if money is speech, and speech affects votes, then it's anti-democratic to allow outside money.
On the final point, I concede: it's unlikely to happen. I'm not sure about the legal hurdles of such a system. But decentralizing the money and influence from it seems to me to be the crux of the problem for an allgedly representative democracy.