At one time, Paul Taylor, forty-seven, was best known as the reporter who asked a bimbo-burdened Gary Hart the big-A question in the early days of the 1988 presidential campaign. As the 1996 campaign got under way, Taylor decided he'd rather help reform the money-swollen American system of electing a president than cover another campaign. He left The Washington Post to found the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, where he's still raising questions that are being taken seriously.

The questions now are about whether the powerful broadcast industry or the people own the airwaves, and whether the federal government can mandate how those airwaves are used. Like others, Taylor insists that free airtime is the most efficient and practical way to reform how this nation finances its political campaigns, since paying for airtime is what so inflates campaign costs. His Free TV coalition, run out of his home with foundation support, was modestly successful at persuading the networks to donate airtime in 1996, what Taylor calls "a useful first step." But the 1996 presidential campaign was by far the most expensive in history, and the massive amounts of money that the Democrats raised have come back, like tainted meat at a campaign banquet, to bedevil the administration's second term. Taylor sees opportunity.

A beleaguered President Clinton, scouting for high ground in the campaign-finance skirmish, appeared at a March conference Taylor organized, and endorsed Free TV's proposal. "It was the president saying the FCC has the power to mandate" free airtime, Taylor says. And Reed Hundt, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told The New York Times on the day of the Free TV conference, "I believe that we have the power and the precedent and the procedure for giving free access to media for all candidates."

Not everyone agrees. Broadcasters have long opposed mandatory free airtime for politicians," says Edward O. Fritts, president and c.e.o. of the National Association of Broadcasters, "because it won't prevent illegal campaign contributions, won't reduce the cost of campaigns, won't stop negative campaign ads and is blatantly unconstitutional." It's unconstitutional, broadcasters argue, because it violates their Fifth Amendment rights that protect private property from being taken for public use without just compensation. They also argue that under the First Amendment, it would be unconstitutional for lawmakers to tell them what to put on the air.

"The important thing," Taylor says, "is that we have established the principle that the public deserves some free airtime for campaigns. It's going to be a very tough fight, because it's going to cost broadcasters some things they don't want to give up. But if we wind up with free airtime some other way, it's still an enormous win."

Taylor concedes that in many countries that provide free airtime, "it's very dull TV." But he adds, "The idea here is to try to adapt to our more market-driven television. You've got to give the candidates what they find most useful."

Taylor's proposal to pay for all this creativity is based on an approach that seems to have several fathers, although Hundt of the FCC usually gets credit. The plan, whether mandated by the commission or legislated by Congress, would require the broadcast industry to create a political time bank. All qualifying candidates for federal office would receive vouchers from the time bank, either directly or through the political parties. Candidates would use the vouchers to "purchase" broadcast time at the prevailing rates in their media markets.

The total market value of the time would be about $ 500 million for each two-year election cycle. One financing plan would assess each broadcaster and cable station a surcharge of fifty percent on all political advertising they sell at prevailing commercial rates.

Taylor believes it's unlikely that Hundt's FCC could act unilaterally to impose a free-time requirement. One possibility is that the industry will come up with a free-airtime proposal of its own for presidential races.

"A very important new lever has been introduced into the equation," Taylor says. "The issue of mandated free time has been thrown into play."

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