I'm not sure "conflict of interest" is the right term, perhaps "incentive to
behave badly" would be better?
As a native Oregonian, I must say it's nice to see Portland come to their
senses on this - I don't know I would have predicted that, even as one who
believes a majority of citizens are generally dubious of tax-financed
political campaigns if given more than just a few clichés and slogans
supporting the concept.
Sean Parnell
President
Center for Competitive Politics
http://www.campaignfreedom.org
http://www.twitter.com/seanparnellccp
124 S. West Street, #201
Alexandria, VA 22310
(703) 894-6800 phone
(703) 894-6813 direct
(703) 894-6811 fax
-----Original Message-----
From: election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu
[mailto:election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Gronke
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2010 8:58 PM
To: Douglas Johnson
Cc: JBoppjr@aol.com; election-law@mailman.lls.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] thoughts on public financing
I'm surprised Rick did not mention the defeat of "voter owned elections" in
Portland, OR, about as blue a town as one can find.
The program was hampered by a weak regulatory process--elections have been
historically so clean in the county (and state) that the City saw no need to
create much oversight in how candidate monies were spent. (The poster child
for the system, unfortunately, was a working class woman who struck a deal
with a fundraiser who promised to deliver the 1000 $5 donations if she hired
him as her campaign director. The conflict of interest was pretty apparent
from the get go. He basically faked a bunch of signatures and paid for the
rest.)
The "pro" clean elections outspent the "anti" by a substantial margin yet
the system still went down to defeat.
---
Paul Gronke Ph: 503-517-7393
Fax: 734-661-0801
Professor, Reed College
Director, Early Voting Information Center
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland, OR 97202
EVIC: http://earlyvoting.net
On Nov 28, 2010, at 4:51 PM, Douglas Johnson wrote:
I view the coalition for "clean elections" as a combination of two
(overlapping) populations of voters: those who want to reduce the funds
available to campaigns, and those who want to change the source of campaign
funds. These are, clearly, two very different goals. Together, they tend to
be a majority of voters in most polls and votes. But with various court
decisions essentially banning the first option, I believe we're seeing that
there is not sufficient support for the 2nd goal (government becoming the
full source of campaign funds) to make it a reality at levels where
essentially all candidates will participate. "Too much is spent on
campaigns" is a strong populist pitch. "Government should pay for
politicians' campaigns" is, well, not so strong. Can anyone imagine a
funding level where billionaire Meg Whitman would have agreed to spend only
what government gave equally to her and Jerry Brown?
That argument continues to weaken as more and more of the early-mover
public financing systems (such as Arizona) generate stories like this: "Some
of the 107 candidates who received public money to run for state Legislature
this year bought computers, cameras and printers they can keep and paid
relatives as campaign workers and consultants."
Then again, Brown crushed Whitman. Perhaps the fear of self-funding
candidates is overblown?
My belief is that the key to reducing the role of money in campaigns is
increasing the variety and depth of information available to voters, so that
paid advertising becomes less of a factor in voter decisions -- with kudos
to the California Secretary of State, local registrars of voters, the Center
for Governmental Studies, and the League of Women Voters (smartvoter.org)
for making progress toward that goal. But the biggest of such programs
weaken themselves (like the CA SecState) by excluding candidates who spend
"too much" on their own campaign, or (like the local counties in CA) by
excluding candidates who lack the funds for a campaign statement. When one
candidate's intentionally excluded from a channel of information, that
exclusion immediately and significantly undermines that channel's
legitimacy. Increased information to voters will not stop the Meg Whitmans
and Al Checcis from spending $150 million or whatever, but it will increase
the odds that candidates whose !
dominant qualification is their pocketbooks will continue to lose.
Then there's the problem of getting voters to care enough that they don't
base decisions on slate mailers or 30-second TV ads. But that's an entirely
different discussion . . .
- Doug
Douglas Johnson
Fellow
Rose Institute of State and Local Government
Claremont McKenna College
o 909-621-8159
m 310-200-2058
douglas.johnson@cmc.edu
www.RoseReport.org
In a message dated 11/28/2010 4:42:05 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
rick.hasen@lls.edu writes:
http://summaryjudgments.lls.edu/2010/11/it-is-with-great-pleasure.html
November 28, 2010
The Big Campaign Finance Story of 2011: An Effective End to Public
Financing
<image001.jpg>By Professor Rick Hasen
It is with great pleasure that I kick off the "11 on '11" series at
Summary Judgments, the new Loyola Law School, Los Angeles faculty blog. The
series asks us to identify what is likely to be the most significant legal
development in our field in 2011. In the field of campaign finance, the big
story is likely to be the continued demise in public financing of campaigns,
a development caused by both court rulings and legislative inertia.
As early as tomorrow morning, I expect the United States Supreme Court to
agree to hear McComish v. Bennett, a case challenging the matching funds
provision of Arizona's public financing law. Under the law, a candidate for
state office who agrees to take public financing in lieu of private funds to
finance a campaign receives extra public financing when the candidate faces
a wealthy opponent who spends large sums in the election or by large
independent expenditures against the candidate accepting public financing.
As I explained in a June post at the Election Law Blog, I expect the Court
to not only take this case, but to reverse the Ninth Circuit and strike down
the Arizona public financing system. (To be clear, that's not a result I
favor: the Ninth Circuit's opinion in the case, and Judge Kleinfeld's
concurrence, offer strong reasons to reach a contrary decision in this case
and uphold the Arizona regime.)
This development is significant because the Court is likely to take away
one of the only tools available to drafters of public financing measures to
make such financing attractive to candidates. Public financing has a number
of benefits, including reducing the threat of corruption and the appearance
of corruption, providing a jump start for new candidates who are not
professional politicians, and freeing up candidates and officeholders to
have more time to interact with voters. But rational politicians who are
serious candidates will not opt into the public financing plan unless they
think they will be able to run a competitive campaign under the public
financing system. The whole point of the extra matching funds in the Arizona
plan is to give candidates assurance they won't be vastly outspent in their
election. While an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court inMcComish would not
mean that all public financing systems would be unconstitutional, it would
eliminate one of the !
best ways to create effectivepublic financing systems.
If the Court strikes down the Arizona plan, I expect reformers will push
for various alternative plans (which have been proposed over the last few
years) to provide public financing to candidates, along with a multiplier
match (3 or 4:1) for small contributions. (Give a candidate $100? The
candidate gets an additional $300 or $400 from the public financing system.)
The idea here would be to provide another way that publicly financed
candidates to run competitive campaigns without running afoul of the First
Amendment (as likely understood by the Court in McComish). Such
plans,however, face two major problems. First, it is not clear if they will
actually attract such candidates to participate. Will a rational candidate
expect that there will be enough money in the system from these multiplier
matches to participate, when facing not only wealthy candidates, but
independent spending campaigns which can now be funded by unlimited
corporate or union funds through super-PACS? (Al!
l of this new funding, of course, is thanks to the big campaign finance
story of 2010, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United.)
Second, it will be a hard sell to enact new public finance laws during
these difficult economic times. Arizona passed its current measure via
initiative. It would require considerable work and resources to get a new
measure before voters and passed.
The lack of public financing will also be a major story in the upcoming
2012 presidential campaign, which will get going in 2011. As I describe in
detail in Richard L. Hasen, The Transformation of the Campaign Financing
Regime for U.S. Presidential Elections, in THE FUNDING OF POLITICAL PARTIES
(Keith Ewing, Jacob Rowbottom, and Joo-Cheong Tham, eds., Routledge,
forthcoming March 2011) (draft available), no serious candidate in the 2012
presidential campaign will be able to afford to take public financing: the
U.S. system for publicly financing presidential elections simply has not
kept up with the ability of non-participating candidates to raise funds
privately. Though President Obama pledged to fix the public financing
system, he's never come forward with a plan to do so, and even if he did,
such a plan would have virtually no chance getting out of the Republican
House or past a Senate filibuster.
Public financing will still exist in 2011 and beyond, but expect fewer
participants and less of an impact of such systems going forward.
Tags: 11 on '11, Campaign Finance Law, Election Law
--
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
919 Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211
(213)736-1466
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org
_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law
_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law
_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law
_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law