[EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz

[Michael P McDonald]

FWIW, Mark Melman, who was Stringer's (Spitzer's opponent) pollster, claims that his polls showed Stringer ahead the whole time and that the polls showing a large Spitzer lead had unrealistic assumptions about who would vote. Just to say that we have to take any claims about polls in local elections with a huge grain of salt since they are notoriously difficult to survey in.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

phone:   703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu               
web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
twitter: @ElectProject

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Schmitt
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2013 1:12 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Disclosure and Holly Paz

Just a couple of facts, because much of this responds to arguments I didn't make.

First, Spitzer didn't lose "barely." He lost 52-48, after holding a 17-point lead in July, and a massive advantage in name recognition. That 21-point swing is not a comeback and has no similarity to the position of city council candidates working up to being competitive. The results are simply one more bit of evidence that Spitzer's opponents were not deterred from contributing, despite a single blind quote from a wannabe. Spitzer's opponents were empowered further by public financing, against Spitzer's family wealth.
Second, in addition to the incumbent-challenger races, there were 21 open-seat races which were mostly competitive. It's no surprise that incumbents have big advantages, especially in races like city council where there usually isn't significant ideological difference within a district. And the outside money in the council races, all of it from the Real Estate Board of New York, with an explicit strategy of seeking influence with likely winners, went mostly to incumbents, deepening their advantage. 


Mark Schmitt
Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute
202/246-2350
gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
twitter: mschmitt9 

On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Smith, Brad <BSmith at law.capital.edu> wrote:
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-unintended-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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