[EL] making sense of Az and Ct public funding decisions

[Richard Winger]

As we all know, the US Supreme Court struck down part of Arizona's public funding law and left intact Connecticut's public funding law.

Connecticut's law says all candidates who want public funding are required to raise a certain amount of $5 contributions.  But if the candidate who does this is an independent, or the nominee of a new party, he or she must also submit a petition signed by 20% of the last vote cast, in order to receive equal public funding with the Democrat and the Republican opponents.

Lowell Weicker was a witness against the Connecticut law, and even though in reality he won as an independent for Governor in 1990, he said if the current law had been in effect, he could not have won, because his major party opponents would have had full public funding, and the 20% petition is so onerous, he could not have met the conditions to get full public funding himself.

To think about whether the Arizona decision and the Connecticut law can be squared with each other, imagine two scenarios.  In the first one, Lowell Weicker is voluntarily privately funding his own campaign, and his major party opponents are using public funding.  Under the Arizona precedent, Weicker has a right to block extra public funding for his Democratic and Republican Party opponents, because their extra public funding was injuring Weicker's campaign.

In the other scenario, Weicker wants public funding, and he raises the needed amount of $5 contributions, thus showing that he has a viable campaign.  But he still can't get public funding, because he can't get 20% of the voters to sign a petition for him (no candidate for any statewide office, in any state, in U.S. history, has ever complied with a ballot access petition greater than 5% of that state's registered voters).  Weicker's Democratic and Republican opponents do get public funding because they each raise the needed amount of $5 contributions.

What principle of logic says that Weicker is being unconstitutionally injured by the first scenario, but he is not being injured by the second scenario?  It seems obvious to me that the second scenario is more damaging than the first one.  In the first scenario, Weicker is discouraged from speaking because if he speaks loudly, his opponents will receive more resources to speak loudly against him.

But in the second scenario, the amount of his speech is sharply reduced, by his failure to be allowed to receive public funding.  So in both scenarios, his speech is curtailed by the particulars of the public funding law.
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