Suddenly, campaign finance laws are a hot topic with Glendale looking at tighter controls and L.A. officials looking to find ways to keep wealthy, self-financed from standing a chance in Council and mayoral elections.
Studies (CGS) with the release today of a lengthy study by its president Bob Stern calling for a radical new approach to public financing of candidates and measures to sharply reduce large contributions to state political campaigns while rewarding candidates who get large numbers of contributions of $100 or less (CampaignFinance.pdf).
Reform,, the study calls for setting up “a hybrid campaign financing system of private contributions and public funding. It would create a powerful incentive for candidates to engage in broad based, grassroots fundraising. It required them to generate a large number of small, private contributions exclusively from California residents to qualify for public funds.”
public funding strengthens discussions between them and their constituents,
because they are not forced to spend all of their time fundraising. Public
financing also reduces the pressures to respond to the needs of large
contributors,” Stern said.
Here’s the rest of the announcement of the study from CGS:
California law now allows donors
to contribute $3,900 to State Assembly and Senate candidates, $6,500 to
statewide candidates other than the governor and $25,900 to gubernatorial
candidates during the primary and again during the general election. Federal
law only allows individual donors to give $2,500 to candidates for U.S. Senate
– ten times less than donors can give a candidate for California governor –
although both candidates appeal to the same number of voters during their
campaigns.
Tracy Westen, CGS CEO, commented,
“Allowing couples to give over $100,000 (the maximum for the primary and
the general elections) to gubernatorial candidates creates the appearance that
large contributors have far more influence than small contributors, that small
contributors have little influence over policymaking, that political decisions
are skewed by money and that the political system itself is more responsive
toward the wealthy.”
The CGS model law sets a
contribution limit of $2,500 per candidate per election. This is the same as
the federal limit, which applies to Presidential, U.S. Senate and House
candidates. Such a limit would reduce California contributions by as much as
90% in the case of the governor’s race.
Public Financing
The CGS proposal requires
candidates to raise relatively small amounts from a large number of residents
to qualify for public funding – thus insuring that only serious candidates
receive public money, increasing participation by smaller donors, attracting
more candidates to races and limiting public expenditures.
Once candidates have qualified
for public financing, they would receive public funding in two steps. First, a
base funding amount will be established by determining what winning candidates
spent in the last two elections for the office being sought. All eligible
candidates who face competitive opponents would first receive 50% of this base
amount in a lump sum public contribution.
Second, these candidates will
then be eligible to receive additional public funds that would match small
donations that they raise between $5 and $100. To give candidates the incentive
to raise smaller donations, such gifts from California residents would be
matched at a 4:1 ratio. Thus, a $20 donation would be matched by a $100 public
disbursement up to 100% of the base campaign amount. A candidate in a
competitive race can receive up to 150% of the base amount (a 50% initial grant
plus matching funds up to 100%).
Public financing would give
candidates an opportunity to run competitive campaigns against wealthy
self-financed candidates even if it could not match the spending of these
wealthy candidates. With the public funds, challengers would have a chance to
get started, become visible, and communicate their messages to the electorate.
New Funding Sources
Funding sources for the public
campaign financing program would include a 10% surtax on civil and criminal
penalties plus a legislative appropriation from the General Fund. This funding
model is based on a very successful Arizona public financing program that
consistently has enough funds from the surtax; in fact, Arizona’s public
financing fund has returned over $64 million to the state’s General Fund since
2003.
Ban on Off-Year Fundraising
In a significant departure from
current fundraising practices, the model law would ban off-year fundraising for
all state candidates. This ensures that campaign funds are given for campaign
purposes, not to reward contributors with legislation or with ongoing
access to elected officials making important policy decisions.
Closed Loopholes
The model law also closes
significant loopholes in California’s existing campaign finance law. A strict
contribution limit would apply to all money raised by candidates and elected
officials from a single source. This restriction would apply to money raised by
candidate committees as well as amounts for ballot measure committees,
officeholder accounts, political party fundraising, and leadership political
action committees. Therefore, a legislative candidate with a contribution limit
of $2,500 per election could only raise a total of $2,500 per election from a
single source for his or her campaign committee as well as ballot measure
committees, an officeholder account, political party fundraising and a
leadership political action committee combined.
Public campaign financing in
California is not new. Voters and elected officials have approved successful
systems of public financing for campaigns in Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland,
Richmond, Sacramento and San Francisco. Public campaign systems have also been
adopted in other cities, including New York, Albuquerque, and Tucson, and in
several states, including Arizona, Maine, Connecticut and New Jersey.
These public campaign financing
systems have attracted new candidates to public office, allowed candidates to
spend more time talking to constituents and less time fundraising, and provided
an alternate source of funds unencumbered by special interest money. It is time
for California to join this trend.
Thank you for sharing, Ron, this is such good news and makes it much fairer than to have to compete with people like AEG’ CEO Horowitz from another state of the union.
I wonder if the LA Times and the Daily News or TV stations, radio stations will send out this important message. I will be watching.
Power to the man and woman on the street!!!!
Welcome to the club. Now if we can only drown alli the lobbyists
I know its unconstitutional, but I would limit the amount of money that candidates can spend period and not burden the taxpayer with public financing.
Each candidate gets ONE DOLLAR and a paper sack to cover their faces. Then on election day voters just guess whose running for office and votes for one without knowing who is running. It’s just like present day election (minus the lobbyists and filthy dirty campaign $$$.)
How to run political campaigns for office:
Contributing money to candidates you think wll represent you and your family in the public government – fairness, accountability, honesty (you will not be sold out to the highest bidder). In addition, you have heard this individual discuss issues and you think that is the way you feel.
How much money will the candidate of your choice need? Trips around the area will take a car, gas, eating out costs more than family meals at home. Maybe there is a need for an aricle of clothing that will help identify the person as a candidate – like a cowboy hat, like flags to be
given to the people who come to hear him speak, this can be an expense. I am not making suggestions, these are decisions to be made in the committee formed to make the campaign.
Why are we so impressed with a candidate who is able to collect millions of dollars? I have often wondered. If I give someone fifty dollars because I like his ideas on how govcernment should function
in our lives, it is not because I expect him to remember who I am, personally, because I expect him to make his decisions in the way I need to function. If I can give him more money than anyone else, he sure will remember me when I ask that he use my union, company, products to fulfill the job of building a new road, a new bridge, or repairing streets, installing traffic lights, making friendky decisions that will represent me and my needs.
In other words, I have just bought him, body and soul. I own him.
The proposal of financing campaigns by the public need not mean from the public tax money collected because we all share in the costs of city maintenance. It means that we all paticipate in the election of someone we trust to be a council member, mayor, city attorney. We walk door to door, make phone calls,. form political groups to discusss the issues we consider to be important and we need to agree on the solutions in order to have the results that we think are going to be good for most of us.
Yes, public means participation.
Ron is wrong.
What’s euphemistically referred to as public financing is in reality compulsory political donation, and it’s singularly the worst approach to political reform put forth to date. Unless, of course, the end desire is to permanently keep the system as corrupt as possible.
If the goal is to reduce the influence of the wealthy few, and increase the influence of the general public, then the power of money itself has to be neutered. The best guide to this end is in our own history.
Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas participated in no fewer than seven public debates for a legislative seat that wasn’t even up for popular vote, and the result was that the people of that era were not only better informed of all of their political choices, they were also better informed of the political issues of the day than we are now in this great information age.
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO CLEAN UP THIS MESS, MAKE THEM DEBATE!
Right now, all political offices are limited to those who meet various requirements. Those requirements include: age, resident location, criminal history, citizenship etc. In short, there already exist limitations as to who can run for office, and who can serve. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to add a requirement to be a participant to a bunch of scheduled, open, public debates.
Voters should have available to them solid information in order to make their political decisions, and nothing Ron is offering here holds a candle to the ability of voters to go to a local venue and see/here all of their political choices gathered in one place at one time. Make no mistake, political debate is not pretty, and we are living in complex times, but no more complex than Lincoln and Douglas were living in 1858.
All Ron is offering is to institutionalize total voter information to names on bus benches and billboards, to TV and radio ads and self-serving mailers. Further, there is the implication that with enough bureaucracy, the corruption of a political cast system will be avoided.
To boil all of this down to its essence, the best way of cleaning up our political system is to re-democratize our democracy. MAKE THEM DEBATE!
Debate? Of course, with each other candidate regardless of party. Why? Stops the lying.
Great idea. Thank you.
Debating does not cure the fundamental corruption of the political process by the magnitude of business and union money. To think otherwise is grossly uninformed and naive.
7:244pm:
That is vey true. Yet, the debate tells the
voters much that they would never know otherwise.
Lots of would be candidates would never win if people were able to watch and hear the individuals.
To Wes Thorsten,
The current “voluntary” or “opt-in” campaign finance laws in the City of Los Angeles REQUIRE Debates for those candidates seeking matching funds.
But regarding the money side, would you object to:
1. Leaving out public financing of campaigns.
2. Support putting a cap on funding. (Even though as to date, this is being challenged as a first amendment issue).
In my attempt to be concise, I failed to emphasize the need for numerous debates. I suggest a minimum of twenty out of twenty five opportunities. The effect of this quantity should be to not only fully inform voters as to their choices, it should also put substantial downward pressure on the need and effectiveness of political money.
Any non-aligned candidate (not enjoying the largess of a special interest) should have the sense to bring up the question, “Who gave all that money, and what was promise in return?” With at least twenty opportunities to bring up this question, I think it would be reasonable to suggest that the power of money would be substantially reduced.
There is no panacea here. Some corruption in government is inevitable (some may argue beneficial). The best we can do is to engineer a system where corruption is risky for the players, ineffective and most of all easier to detect.
In regards to the issues brought up by James McCuen.
I’ve witnessed one of these debates that you referred to. One debate. And out of seven candidates, only four showed up, and of the three that didn’t bother, two were well financed by the very same groups that have successfully stunk up our local government. I might also point out, that the area was blanketed by billboards featuring those no-show candidates names as well as yard signs and bus benches.
As far as putting caps on political donation, forget it. Not only has it been outlawed by our illustrious supreme court, it’s the easiest regulation in modern politics to circumvent.
Any special interest can go ahead and buy TV and radio time, they can also lease billboards, print yard signs, and hire an army of kids to litter the entire region with the stuff. The actual candidate need not lay a finger on the wherewithal to do these things and thus technically be in compliance with the law.
Currently, the established centers of power hold all of the cards, so its time to knock over the table and change the game. Let the political whores show themselves for what they are, so lets create a scenario where they are required to justify themselves in a truly open and public setting.
MAKE THEM DEBATE!