Public Campaign Financing
Public Campaign Financing
A couple of days ago Sam Taylor had an article in the Bellingham Herald and subsequent blog on the subject of public campaign finance. The state house voted to allow communities to finance local elec
A couple of days ago Sam Taylor had an article in the Bellingham Herald and subsequent blog on the subject of public campaign finance. The state house voted to allow communities to finance local elections, subject to a vote of the community members approving the change. Washclean is pushing three bills that would move Washington to adopt a similar campaign finance model as Arizona and Maine. These bills would give candidates the ability to choose between the current model of raising money from citizens, or receive funds from the state to finance their campaign. There is a formula that drives the amount as to how much the candidates get, if they choose, and mechanisms to ensure fairness if an opponent chooses to fund their campaign through traditional means and is able to raise significant amounts of money. There is also an initial benchmark that would be cleared before being eligible for campaign funds, which is around 300 contributions of $5 each (for a state house or senate race). This requirement means that people would have to be serious to launch a campaign, and have some demonstrated ability to network in order to be viable.
There are three underlying assertions behind the movement to publicly fund campaigns.
1. There is a perception that special interest money is influencing politicians. In the last state election over 80% of campaign donations were made by various multinational corporations, unions, gambling interests, and other assorted special interest groups. No one is claiming that all politicians are influenced by campaign funds; that is not a worthwhile debate to have. Many people, however, have the perception that special interests have undue influence over the political process, and that is a problem.
2. The special interest money primarily flows to incumbents making it difficult for candidates to unseat politicians. Most of the special interest money does end up in the campaigns of incumbents as they are perceived to have the greatest chance of winning, and special interests want to give money to winners.
3. The daunting task of fundraising potentially keeps good candidates from running for office. In a related issue, fundraising also takes significant time and comes at the expense of meeting with voters. Many seats go unchallenged and many good citizens are driven away from participating in the process due to the daunting task of raising enough money to be viable (I also have never heard a politician say their favorite task is raising money).
Given these assertions, the first question becomes whether you think that these issues have a negative influence on the political system, or not. I have talked with very few people that do not think that there is at least some legitimacy to these assertions. The second question is whether you believe that this is a significant problem, or not. If you think these are issues, but not as critical as many other issues, then one can stand on the sideline and legitimately ignore the debate. The third question is if you believe these are significant issues, then how do you solve them. The experiments in Arizona and Maine have demonstrated that publicly financed campaigns do have a positive impact in dealing with these three problems. Republican and Democrat elected officials in Arizona and Maine have benefited from public campaign financing and have seen dramatic improvement in dealing with these three issues.
Opponents to campaign financing generally follow two lines of thought. The first is that public campaigns are a violation of free speech. The courts have ruled that public campaign financing is not a violation of free speech, as long as there is an option to fund through traditional campaign financing. Anyone can choose to write letters, talk to neighbors, and give money to any campaign, just like they do now. The only thing that public campaign financing does to the process is allow candidates to “just say no” to people wanting to donate more than $5, which is clearly not a violation of free speech any more than the $700 limit on campaign contributions. The second rationale for opposing public campaign financing is that they do not want to spend their hard earned tax dollars on candidates that they do not support. The reality is that the government spends lots of money on things that we may or may not support. The fact is that tax dollars pay the salaries of elected officials, many of whom we do not support. It seems to makes more sense to eliminate the concerns above so it increases the chance of electing someone you do support.
It is important to focus the public campaign debate on two questions. Are the assertions listed above important to our democratic system or not; and, if they are important, then is there a better way to solve it then what has been proposed.
There are three underlying assertions behind the movement to publicly fund campaigns.
1. There is a perception that special interest money is influencing politicians. In the last state election over 80% of campaign donations were made by various multinational corporations, unions, gambling interests, and other assorted special interest groups. No one is claiming that all politicians are influenced by campaign funds; that is not a worthwhile debate to have. Many people, however, have the perception that special interests have undue influence over the political process, and that is a problem.
2. The special interest money primarily flows to incumbents making it difficult for candidates to unseat politicians. Most of the special interest money does end up in the campaigns of incumbents as they are perceived to have the greatest chance of winning, and special interests want to give money to winners.
3. The daunting task of fundraising potentially keeps good candidates from running for office. In a related issue, fundraising also takes significant time and comes at the expense of meeting with voters. Many seats go unchallenged and many good citizens are driven away from participating in the process due to the daunting task of raising enough money to be viable (I also have never heard a politician say their favorite task is raising money).
Given these assertions, the first question becomes whether you think that these issues have a negative influence on the political system, or not. I have talked with very few people that do not think that there is at least some legitimacy to these assertions. The second question is whether you believe that this is a significant problem, or not. If you think these are issues, but not as critical as many other issues, then one can stand on the sideline and legitimately ignore the debate. The third question is if you believe these are significant issues, then how do you solve them. The experiments in Arizona and Maine have demonstrated that publicly financed campaigns do have a positive impact in dealing with these three problems. Republican and Democrat elected officials in Arizona and Maine have benefited from public campaign financing and have seen dramatic improvement in dealing with these three issues.
Opponents to campaign financing generally follow two lines of thought. The first is that public campaigns are a violation of free speech. The courts have ruled that public campaign financing is not a violation of free speech, as long as there is an option to fund through traditional campaign financing. Anyone can choose to write letters, talk to neighbors, and give money to any campaign, just like they do now. The only thing that public campaign financing does to the process is allow candidates to “just say no” to people wanting to donate more than $5, which is clearly not a violation of free speech any more than the $700 limit on campaign contributions. The second rationale for opposing public campaign financing is that they do not want to spend their hard earned tax dollars on candidates that they do not support. The reality is that the government spends lots of money on things that we may or may not support. The fact is that tax dollars pay the salaries of elected officials, many of whom we do not support. It seems to makes more sense to eliminate the concerns above so it increases the chance of electing someone you do support.
It is important to focus the public campaign debate on two questions. Are the assertions listed above important to our democratic system or not; and, if they are important, then is there a better way to solve it then what has been proposed.
