2006: A Year of Growth for Clean Money in California

Sorry to be a fact-based skunk at this rose-colored picnic, but the Clean Money Campaign was a massive failure. By including a glaring promotion of organized labor in Proposition 89, the over-reaching drafters doomed badly needed campaign finance reform for at least a decade. Face it – 1.8 million more Californians supported right-wing initiatives that would have limited reproductive choice (Prop 85) and environmental regulation (Prop 90) than our Proposition 89.

It will be hard enough to get moderate voters to support giving tax money to politicians for their campaigns without the gratuitous labor provision that earned the reluctant opposition of many editorial pages. Greed and hubris are a poor foundation upon which to build public policy. The measure failed on the day it was drafted, wasting everyone’s time and resources.

Progressives must move past the delusional view that 2006 was a good year for campaign finance reform and figure out what a responsible and appealing public finance proposal would look like. Successful campaign finance reform will be an initiative based upon what voters will support, not a cynical measure that fulfills a too narrow slice of progressive dreams.

Dear The Rest of the Story: As someone who has strongly supported a clean money approach, I don't think you are the skunk here and we clearly need to air things out a bit and think carefully as you suggest. There's a lot of work and figuring out that we need to do and to learn the lessons from last year--both in terms of the failure to pass AB 583 and Prop 89's failure on the ballot. To not do so, is to repeat mistakes to paraphrase George Santayana.

But I also think that there was progress made in 2006 in raising the visibility of this issue and in this learning process itself.

Thanks for your comment.

I too am a proponent of "clean money". However, this article doesn't look into the mirror: Why didn't AB 583 make it further than it did? Didn't Speaker Nunez want it to happen? Considering he is one of the benefactors of special interest ("unclean") money in his campaigns and as distributed well amoungst his fellow political party members, of course he didn't. He and politicians from both parties LIKE the status quo. In their minds if it ain't broke...

Still don't think so? Well then tell me who if any politicians openly supported Proposition 89 and/or turned down special interest cash during the last election. The answer would be zero methinks.

Mr. Russo,

I agree that we supporters of public financing need to learn from our experience and I'm a big fan of facts, but I'm not sure the characterization of Prop 89 having included a "glaring promotion of organized labor" is one of them.

Please consider: the mere fact that Prop 89 dealt differently with non-profit groups (such as unions) than with profit-making ones (like corporations) doesn't ipso facto constitute unfairness or any kind of power grab for the simple reason that these two types of organizations are very different and therefore warrant different treatment.

Corporations enjoy many legally enshrined advantages that non-profits don't (eg. limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment for the accumulation and distribution of assets), which is why the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that "the compelling government interest in preventing corruption supports the restriction of the influence of political war chests funneled through the corporate form" (Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 1990).

As profit-making enterprises corporations have huge amounts of cash at their disposal which they're able to spend on campaigns regardless of whether their customers or their shareholders (the sources of their cash) agree with their political views. Non-profits like unions have no such well to go to, depending almost exclusively on member dues.

All Prop 89 would have done is require corporations which wanted to spend more than $10,000 on a given ballot measure campaign to set up a PAC...the same way unions and other non-profits do. Then, like non-profits, they could spend all the money they could collect, no limit. That would have put both profit-makers and non-profit-makers on a more level playing field. No unfairness, no foul, no power grab.

Don't get me wrong. I think on balance it would have been better to address the issue of disproportionate and unfair corporate influence over our ballot measure system at some other time...but I submit the issue, though much misunderstood and in this case very distracting, is nevertheless a legitimate one.

Lastly, I must say thanks for all you do at California Progress Report. Your voice is crucial to our efforts and much appreciated. Please keep up the good work.

Sid asks why AB 583 didn't make it further than it did. The answer was that nobody wanted two Clean Money initiatives on the ballot at the same time, so Assemblymember Hancock pulled it when the California Nurses Association qualified Prop 89. There was no reason to even ask Senate President Perata to help move AB 583 along in the same way as Speaker Nunez did in the Assembly.

As for politicians openly supporting Prop 89: Actually, a substantial number of current elected officials did, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara Boxer, Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, Secretary of State Debra Bowen, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, fifteen Assemblymembers, three state Senators, and many more.

The full list of endorsers was quite impressive: http://www.89now.org/endorsers/.

Of course, the degree to which they all actively campaigned for Prop 89 varied, but they all deserve our thanks for standing for cleaning up the system despite the opposition to Prop 89 from groups whose support they normally seek.

Others, like Speaker Fabian Nunez and Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres, said they couldn't support Prop 89 because of some of its non-Clean Money parts, but said they support public financing of campaigns. Both showed it by being extremely supportive of Clean Money and AB 583 in the past.

The combination of people and groups who came to support public financing of campaigns through AB 583 or Prop 89 last year and those who honestly stated they supported public financing even if they couldn’t support Prop 89 gives a powerful base for Clean Money moving forward, especially if California's activists continue to show how important it is to them.

And from what we've seen, the passion of politically-active Californians for reform is as strong as ever.

Trent Lange
President of the Board of Directors
California Clean Money Action Fund

I remember before the election; there was negigible in public support for Prop 89. I saw NONE of the alleged politician supporters in any pro-89 commercials. I only saw con-89 commercials with the "Welfare for Politicians" jingle killing the initiative at the ballot box, the only place it has a chance as our elected officials may "support" it but won't actively campaign for it OR submit legislation for it (the kind that goes through both the assembly and senate to the Governor for signature), a big difference. Heck, if those same "supporters" gave up 10% of their own special interest campaign contributions in support of Prop 89 it would have had a much better showing. All what you all have said sounds good. But at the end of the day, nothing was accomplished except perhaps your perceptions of "momentum"...
I admire the fight for "clean money". Please keep it up. But I think a more realistic look at what and who you are dealing with is in order too.

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