Congress is on its way to prohibiting campaigns from paying candidate spouses for their work. (Bauer here and Hasen here.)
Let’s take a quick look at the plight of the candidate-spouse before we leap to any conclusions. When the spouse is married to a challenger, that individual may attempt to retain a career even as the demands of campaign appearances eat away at the day. This is less of an issue now that campaigns are permitted to pay candidates themselves (at least someone has a job), but still we can assume that the working spouse was contributing to the household in necessary ways before the campaign, and the added expenses of the campaign mean working is every bit as necessary now.
But its harder to pull off your job, campaign events, care for your family, and fend off the inevitable slings and arrows directed toward you and your employer from the opponent. Your employer will get tired of this, eventually.
Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone for spouse to work for the campaign? Sure. And if you’re paid a salary comparable to what would be paid an outside hire, then why should we care?
For officeholders, in addition to the travel and campaign requirements, their spouses are subjected to a variety of financial disclosure requirements, in the pursuit of a conflict-of-interest free legislative environment. (Heh.) So Spouse of Member will be an unattractive employee for some businesses. Not for lobbying of course.
Lobbying, political management, etc. may be a useful refuge for Member’s spouses - but clearly this isn’t available to the spouses of challengers. So, where does the impact of this reform likely bite the hardest? Challengers? What a surprise.
A targeted reform aimed at abuse of spousal employment makes some sense, but this overbroad overreaction doesn’t.