There’s a movement afoot in the land that goes by various names, including Clean Money, Clean Elections.
The idea is to give candidates set amounts of tax money to run their campaigns, provided the candidates agree to restrictions on what they can spend additionally.
Public financing is supposed to “level the playing field,” as its supporters like to say, by blunting the influence of big-money special interests and making it possible for a broader range of people to run.
It sounds good, of course. Who could be against “clean elections”? Only a proponent of “dirty elections,” one supposes.
But decades of attempting to reform elections have yet to work well enough to convince voters that a political career is an honorable pursuit or even a decent one. Every new reform presents clever political operatives with a delicious new challenge. Before long, loopholes are found and the reform has become a mockery of what it was supposed to be. Political action committees encouraged single-issue politics, and campaign spending restrictions led to dark and nasty attack advertising by independent 527 groups.
Public financing is supposed to be better than these earlier strategies. Last weekend, the League of Women Voters of La Plata County sponsored a debate in Durango to consider the pros and cons.
The proponents, Elena Nunez of Common Cause and state Rep. Mark Larson of Cortez, said officeholders who have been elected with public money are more responsive to all their constituents, not just the ones who supported them with big contributions.
The opponents, former Durango Mayor Jasper Welch and current Mayor Sidny Zink, said it’s not right to make taxpayers support candidates they don’t agree with. They argued that fully identifying the sources of all money – including those shadowy, often deceptively named 527s – would be more effective, and simpler.
As the moderator of the debate, I didn’t take sides. But as a lifelong journalist, my tendency is always toward more disclosure instead of more rules.
Of course, public financing has been entirely voluntary, where it has been tried. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there is some form of public support for campaigns in 26 states. Most of that support uses tax money indirectly – as an income tax check-off or a tax credit or refund for contributions to state candidates. Colorado is not one of those states.
At the federal level, tax check-offs for presidential elections have been in effect since 1974. But few taxpayers check that box on their 1040s – only about 10 percent. And presidential candidates don’t like the restrictions. Neither Sen. John Kerry nor President Bush took public funds in 2004.
Eight states give grants of tax money directly to candidates, but still allow them to raise part of their money privately. These partial public-financing states, according to the NCSL’s Jennie Drage Bowser, are Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
Then there’s the Clean Money, Clean Elections model. It gives each candidate who chooses to participate a fixed amount of money. In order to qualify, a candidate must show a broad base of support by collecting a specified number of signatures and small (usually $5) contributions. The candidates cannot accept other outside donations or to use their own personal money if they agree to public funding.
Arizona and Maine adopted this procedure in 2000 for campaigns for the legislature and all statewide offices. Connecticut passed a Clean Elections law in 2005; so did Portland, Ore., and Albuquerque, N.M. In Albuquerque, the vote for the measure was 69 percent.
Vermont has provisions like this that apply only to the race for governor and lieutenant governor. There’s a clean elections law proposal on the November ballot in California.
Nunez said Common Cause might propose an initiative for the 2008 ballot on public financing in Colorado. But the LWV hasn’t taken a specific position on public financing.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
