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Will, that study doesn't tell you the effects of lots of other factors, either. For that study to be even remotely probative they'd need to hold a lot of things constant, and I it can't be done. In fact, I defy you to find any study that can possibly do a ceteris parabus analysis of the effect of money in a political race. I really don't think it is possible.
And remember, there is no linearity there, either - more money does not equal more persuasion. I wasn't in CA during this last campaign so I know about it only secondhand, but the impression I got from following the news is that (1) Whitman is NOT a good campaigner, it's not in her personality; (2) she tried using money to compensate for her lack of talent at campaigning; (3) she massively overspent, to the point that people got sick of her ads; and (4) her story wasn't told well and she never managed to make herself appealing (i.e. a lot of her money was wasted). Are my impressions wrong? I can tell you that having lived through the last Bloomberg campaign for NYC mayor, where he spent something like $120 million, and the recent McMahon-Blumenthal dustup in CT, which was horrendously expensive and assaulted us constantly with TV ads, the spending was not even remotely persuasive (in fact, both CT candidates gave me the creeps).
Having said that, I will acknowledge that if I were running for office (perish the thought) I'd prefer having enough money to having to worry about whether I have enough. But that's very different from the proposition you're talking about. And "enough" is something that different people can disagree about and that will vary from campaign to campaign and from situation to situation.
Sorry, but your contention just doesn't support the kind of regulation you want. If there is a proposal to restrain political speech or political spending -- that is, restricting people's liberty in a very blatant way -- it will have to be supported very, very well on the facts and for very, very good and compelling reasons. Abstractions won't cut it.
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