[EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz

Fri Sep 20 09:51:42 PDT 2013

Sean,

I think you are selling New York City's private financing system short.  Politicians, including likely Mayor-to-be Bill de Blasio, figured out whole new ways to engage in self-serving behavior on the taxpayers' dime, as I pointed out in this blog post from a few years ago.

http://makenolaw.com/bmaurer/187-fighting-corruption-by-getting-the-taxpayer-to-pay-your-parking-tickets 

We'll see if this election results in more than one elected official returning the excess public subsidies that they received from New York City's taxi drivers, nurses, bodega owners, and construction workers.  If NYC took steps to eliminate this insult to taxpayers of which I am unaware, that's great.  But don't use this system to demonstrate that public financing makes the political class any less corrupt or venal.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Sean Parnell
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 7:33 AM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz

One thing Brad forgot to mention is the rich variety of corruption that has persisted in New York city politics under taxpayer funded political campaigns, as documented so well in this CCP report:
http://www.campaignfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Clean-Elections-an
d-Scandal-August-5.pdf. "Cash & Carry Larry" Seabrook, recipient of over
$400,000 in taxpayer funds, was just one of many "clean" officials in New York who taxpayers probably don't feel lived up to the promises of the 'reformers.' 

If New York City is the model for 'good government,' I'll pass.

Sean Parnell
President
Impact Policy Management, LLC
6411 Caleb Court
Alexandria, VA  22315
571-289-1374 (c)
sean at impactpolicymanagement.com

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Smith, Brad
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 9:03 AM
To: Mark Schmitt; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz

Leaving aside what David Keating has already addressed - the article was submitted to the Hill well before the election - Mark's conclusion is once again wrong anyway. It is perfectly possible for the law to facilitate the comeback of a candidate who, nonetheless, loses.

Mark knows this - in fact, he recently wrote in the New Republic that New York's system of government subsidies for campaigning was a "model" for the rest of the country. One reason he gave was that more races were "competitive," as "Dozens of city council and other races featured three or more candidates with enough money to compete." This he attributes to the law.

Yet looking at the results in the New York Times, it appears that incumbents on City Council went 29-1 in their races for re-election, averaging 81.3% of the vote. In 17 contested races, incumbents averaged 63.5%, with the 16 winners averaging 64.8%. The average incumbent winner won by 39.3 percentage points; all incumbents, including the one loser, won by 36.1 percentage points.

So Mark apparently thinks it is a very important point for his case that challengers ran some marginally competitive races that they still lost - this is evidence that the law helped them, and helps make the law a "model for reform."  But the fact that Elliott Spitzer barely lost the controller's race is  not evidence of anything much at all, and particularly not that he may have used the law to intimidate donors or that the law may have helped him in his campaign, a campaign that was far more successful than the examples Mark uses as proof of the law's effects.

Granted, there are a lot of variables left unaccounted for here.
Nonetheless, one almost begins to wonder if for Mark, in between the "harumphs," there is any possible set of facts or evidence that would cause him to rethink his theory.

Indeed, one point that those of us in the free speech community often make is that the campaign finance reform project generally, and government subsidies for campaigns in particular, after 40 years of trial have very little if anything to show in the way of concrete benefits. For noting these lack of results, we are sometimes deemed the "ideologues."

Bradley A. Smith
Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault
   Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
303 E. Broad St.
Columbus, OH 43215
614.236.6317
http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Mark Schmitt [schmitt.mark at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2013 10:30 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz

I notice that in a piece published on September 19, you wrote, "disclosure laws are facilitating the political comeback of former Governor Eliot Spitzer."

You're aware that there was an election, right? It was September 10.

I always wonder if any possible set of facts or evidence would cause the proponents of this theory to rethink it. Apparently not.

Whether The Hill has any editors is also an interesting question, but not for this list.

------ Original Message ------
From: "Eric Wang" <11cfrlaw at gmail.com>
To: law-election at uci.edu
Sent: 9/19/2013 7:37:12 PM
Subject: [EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz
>The lively discussion on this listserv a few weeks ago about disclosure 
>and Holly Paz inspired me to write this following piece that was 
>published in The Hill's Congress Blog today:
>
>http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/323135-disclosures-un
>intended-consequences-
>
>_______________________________________________
>Law-election mailing list
>Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

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