In June, the California Fair Elections Act will be on the ballot. Basically, the initiative will create a pilot clean money program for Sec of State candidates who agree to be limited by spending caps.
And the response is wildly positive. Around 63% of Californians in this poll said they would support the measure. This is a great place to start off, especially considering there isn’t any organized opposition at this point. That being said, there is a lot at stake here, so don’t expect that to be the case forever.
The Clean Money Campaign folks have some great information on how it would work:
How Fair Elections Funding Would Work
To Qualify: Candidates have to receive 7,500 $5 qualifying contributions and signatures from registered California voters to show that they have a broad base of support.
Fair Elections Candidates Receive: Enough baseline public funds to run competitive primary campaigns ($1,000,000). If they win their primary they receive enough baseline public funds to run competitive general election campaigns ($1,300,000).
“Fair Fight” Funds If Outspent: If Fair Elections Candidates are outspent by an opponent who does not participate or if independent groups attack them or support their opponent, they receive matching funds on a dollar for dollar basis within 24 hours to respond, up to total funding of 4 times the base amount, i.e. $4,000,000 in a primary and $5,200,000 in the general election.
Prohibitions for Participating Candidates: Candidates would be prohibited from raising or spending additional money beyond what they receive from the fund. Once qualified, they must agree to spending limits and taking no private contributions.
Here’s the full poll: California Fair Elections Act Poll.
…by increasing the registration costs that lobbyists are responsible for. From the shockingly measly to a more than affordable. What you get is a “revenue-neutral” pathway to publicly-financed elections.
The Secretary of State, it should also be mentioned, has inherent jurisdiction over these entities, so this is not only a revenue-neutral solution but also one organic to the constitutional role that the officer is responsible for, etc.
My point is: let’s make our fight (after this fight) funding Insurance Commissioner and BoE races the same way. Levy a minimal fee, puts those funds into a designated fund for electing those offices, etc.
They have the ability to say that they are on the side of the little guy and against all those lobbyists. They have the ability to go spend as much as they want if they sense that it will be a real donnybrook. Then, they don’t have to worry about minor parties, since the qualification for a 3rd party is twice as difficult as the qualification for a Democrat.
That really makes a lot of sense.
I think that someone should take a hard look at the results of the Federal law suit regarding Connecticut’s campaign financing law.
Judge Underhill’s conclusion was in favor of the planitff’s.
Two tiered systems are inherently unfair and will be challenged, if not by Greens as it was in Connecticut, then by others.
I’ve always been curious to see if there’s a better way for candidates to get their message out to the public, and while I’ve been a bit skeptical of these so-called “Clean Money” things, it might be worth trying for the SoS race.
There are a few things, though that are odd about current CA law. If someone is running statewide for Governor, the max they can take is about 20,000 per person. But someone running for say, AG, can only take 7500 per person. That doesn’t make any sense. Both are running statewide in the same expensive media markets, but one can raise more and one cannot? Stupid.
Likewise, while I’ve never seen a super huge warchest be the single factor in winning a race statewide (Sen. Huffington, Gov. Checchi, Gov. Harman, et al come to mind) I don’t know that one can be competitive in a state with a piddly budget and expect to win simply because Real Advertising is outspending any candidate by an exponential amount of money. I mean, how much is spent simply on Back to School advertising (which hits during fall campaign season)?
Finally, while limits are nice, there’s never been effective ways to regulate placement. On broadcast TV, politicals get the lowest published rate, and there’s at least some accommodation, and with direct mail, mail is sent first class at a lower rate, and the mail is “red tagged” so it goes through. However no such protections exist for the biggest growing ad space – the Internet – and there’s no indication that’s going to change. So while all the limits are nice, how does one compete in an expensive state like CA with a few million bucks?
There of course have always been several problems with clean money ballot measures, some of which you can see in the City of Los Angeles where the deck wound up so skewed in favor of incumbents that even though they all are controversial and have high negatives in polling, no onen of importance even runs against them any more.
The two biggest problems are that first, the very rich who want to manipulate government for their own benefit always find a way to spend as much money as they want. That’s why they pay those lawyers $500 an hour. To find loopholes. But the grassroots people can’t keep up with the changing rules and they do keep changing because like the Dutch boy putting his finger in the dike, they still hope that by plugging one more hole they can finally fix the system. But they never do and they never slow down the other side. They just simply change politics from a community discussion to a game for professionals which of course will always favor the rich.
The second problem which I must admit they don’t have much of in LA is that a lot of people and groups use these types of systems as a way to enrich themselves. On the federal level for example, Lyndon LaRouche would never have the organization he has if not for federal funding for his bogus political campaigns which he used to set up other funding mechanisms that he now uses all the time. The same thing is true on a smaller scale for numerous white supremecy groups and would have beenw worse if it wasn’t for the fact that the federal government stopped funding federal candidates at key points when they ran out of money. At one time, that cost David Duke close to two million dollars some of which he got later, but not in a timely manner so that he could organize a national fundraising base.
But Brian’s comment is not that far off. If this measure goes into effect, you are going to see some crazy white supremicists running for Secretary of State and also some crooks who will take the money and make their wives their campaign managers and other such things. That’s just the nature of the beast. So far you cannot point to one significant campaign finance reform measure that has been followed by any larger number of incumbents losing elections.
If you really want to take the money out of politics, a better way to start given the current legal limitaions in America (In Europe you can have subsidized debates and things like that) is to make everyone automatically registered to vote based on their drivers liscense or ID card. They have to have one or the other and although I hate the conservative concept of making them show an ID card at the polls which discourages turnout, I can’t think of a single reason why everyone shouldn’t be automatically registered (perhaps with an optout clause for those with religious or other objections). Parties spend so much time and effort on registration these days, that automatically having everyone sign up would cut down on expenses a lot. JMO!
In my previous post I was of course referring to Brian’s comment about possibly running for Secretary of State and making the point that some crazy people will have exactly the same idea and try to take advantage of the system.
On having everyone registered to vote, that would also allow candidates and parties to spend all of their time on educating citizens and getting the message out.