Clean Money Will Work in California--Look at the Details

I could write a book disagreeing with everything you wrote, but most of the reasons I don't like "Clean Money" have been written about elsewhere.

However, I wanted to point out that anyone who was at the State Democratic Convention in San Diego got to see first hand the dangers of public financing with the activities of supporters of Lyndon LaRouche.

For those not familiar with LaRouche, he was a small time scam artist who decided to make himself rich by running for President several times and using the matching funds system to pay for quote, unquote, organizers whose real job was to raise more money for LaRouche organizations that he could then spend on himself.

This is no secret and has already been mentioned in numerous newspaper stories and in several court cases. However, what's new is that because of the financial generosity of political matching funds, they have gotten so well organized using matching funds that they now have a large organization of paid people that are articulate and give a great first impression to go out and raise money for them. You could see just how articulate they were at the Convention where the LaRouchies were successful in electing a Vice Chair of the African American caucus and a Recording Secretary of the Asian Caucus, both of whom will now be promoting their groups viewpoint (and raising money for the group) from positions of seeming authority. They use pitches like supporting the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and other such issues as a come on to raise money from grassroots people who don't know any better and it all is coming about because Federal matching funds gave them the money to hire top class fundraisers. With this kind of abuse in the system now, you want to provide new incentives for crazy groups to get involved in politics? I guess that raises some questions for me.

This is a valuable thorough list of answers to many of the questions about AB 583. I hope everybody in the California State Assembly and California State Senate reads it and learns the true essence of this excellent policy for all democratically minded people to understand!

I will print out a copy and learn these facts well.

I hope California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will jump on this popular and completely viable solution to the corrosive unfair influence of money in politics, this "global warming" of our democracy.

It would be great to see Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger supporting Clean Money Fair Elections Act AB 583, just like he's supporting solid environmental law, so that we can truly launch a new era in America of interested and active challengers into politics who are focused on policy, not fundraising.

Let's call it "The Post Corruptive Era" since the ability of big-money to corrupt has never been so huge and so powerful. And Clean Money would meet them at their game.

Full Public Financing of Elections is the real campaign ticket Governor Schwarzenegger rode on. With his aggressive and vocal full support of AB 583, it can become a reality and no more will we say:

"Money goes in, favors go out, the people lose."

We'll say instead on the day the the law is signed:

"Thanks to Governor Schwarzenegger (and Loni Hancock, and the voters of California bringing on the dawn of the Post Corruptive Era) henceforth... the people win!"

I'll repeat my statement: no Democratic candidate for the Legislature has failed to win because of a lack of money if demography or circumstance made the race competitive.

The lack of competitive races between 2002 and 2006 was not due to the lack of money. Spending money would have been silly - the seats were not competitive.

That's because Democrats drew districts that guaranteed 10 years of governance. Fortunately, (republican) money could not change that fact.

The seats where money could make a difference were AD 17, 30, 31, 76, 78, 80 and possibly 15. Not surprisingly, that's where both parties spent. No seats turned over, but the closeness of margin is perhaps an indication that the spending was well targeted.

The other close contest in the last six years took place in AD 21. The current insurance commissioner spent several million dollars in a losing cause - but made it close.

There are two replies to Bill Cavala’s statement that “no Democratic candidate for the Legislature has failed to win because of lack of money”:

First: Most people who support public financing of campaigns don’t do it to “help Democratic candidates”. They support it to clean up a dysfunctional system that makes voters feel – rightly in some cases, as shown by Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, and others – that their elected officials are corrupted by private campaign contributions. They also support it because good candidates who aren’t supported by big money interests almost never stand a chance, no matter how popular their ideas might be with regular voters.

Second: Bill’s statement is certainly arguable even in the limited situations he wants to look at. In 2004, Democrat Patty Davis lost by only 1.3% (1,998 votes), even though she was outspent by nearly $600,000 by incumbent Republican Shirley Horton. I’ll bet a good consultant would have a fighting chance to make 1,000 people switch their votes if their candidate wasn’t outspent by $600,000.

In 2006, Democrat Maxine Sherard was highly competitive against Horton, coming within 5%. Not being outspent by 2-1 (nearly $900,000) probably would have helped. Democrat Steve Clute lost by only 3.2% to incumbent Republican Bonnie Garcia. Not being outspent by $300,000 certainly could have made a difference. The AD 15 races Bill mentions also featured serious Democrats who lost after being outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ask the losing Democrats in those competitive races if they wish they’d had as much money as their opponent.

(To be evenhanded, there were also a number of competitive races in the districts Bill mentioned in which the losing Republican would have a fairer chance if they weren’t badly outspent.)

Bill is also ignoring primaries. Gerrymandering doesn’t affect primaries, and yet not a single legislative incumbent has lost a primary in California this century. Is this because all those 230 incumbents were loved by their party’s voters? Given the popularity of the legislature, that seems unlikely.

The fact that incumbents outspent their primary challengers by 7,289-1 from 2002-2006 might have had something to do with it, though.

The voters deserve a real choice, and under the current system they’re usually not getting one. Clean Money would change that by providing a level financial playing field in nearly every race that candidates could qualify.

Considering the fact that we currently have spending limits in this century, maybe that has something to do with why incumbents never lose. If you look back at the nasty pre-limits days which were essentially Pre-1990, incumbent legislators were losing their seats all the time, many in contested primaries. Of course that is the hidden reason so many politicians support campaign reform, they know it's a shell game and by changing the rules, they can keep control away from ordinary people.

Prop 34's contribution limits, such as they are, didn't come into place until 2004. If having no contribution limits helps challengers so much, then perhaps you can explain why not a single primary challenger was able to raise even 10% as much as the incumbent and why only 1 out of 63 was able to raise as much as the incumbent in the general election in 2002, when there were no limits.

The current system is broken. Challengers will almost never be able to compete financially with incumbents when their only option is to try to get money from special interests that would rather give big checks to incumbents to try to influence them. That’s true whether contributions are limited or whether the sky’s the limit.

The only way to fix that is to provide Clean Money public financing to qualified challengers so they can compete on a level playing field. If you think that competition in elections is a good thing, that is.

Trent Lange
Vice President of Board of Directors
California Clean Money Campaign

A question for Trent Lange:

I really like the fact that Clean Money provides matching funds to Clean candidates when they're outspent by non-participating candidates and attacked by independent expenditures. That's what swayed me to vocally support Clean Money. This system can match private with Clean Money thus keeping a level playing field of ideas for the voters to choose from.

With immediate matching funds candidates would be able to respond, thus remaining financially competitive.

But given the tremendous growth independent expenditures in California, will the system be able to afford it? What has happened in Arizona?

Lots of people ask that question: With independent expenditures in support of candidates or attacking candidates skyrocketing in California, would AB 583 really be able to afford to provide the matching funds Clean Money gives to participating candidates when they are subject to them?

The answer is that our analysis shows that it would have been able to afford them even in “most expensive case” scenarios assuming that the system had to match every single high-spending candidate and independent expenditure in 2006. That most expensive case is highly unlikely, given that not all candidates will use the system (it’s a voluntary system) and the fact that a lot of the candidates who would likely be the highest spenders actually will use the system -- like Arizona’s incumbent governor did in addition to her opponent.

The most interesting thing is that in Arizona the amount the system has had to provide to match high-spending candidates and independent expenditures has dropped since the first time it was used for statewide raises. In 2002, Arizona had to spend $3.1 million matching independent expenditures, but by 2006 that amount had dropped more than a third, to only $949,000. This is true even though the number of participating candidates increased dramatically during that time.

In short, Clean Money doesn’t limit independent expenditure groups who have something serious to say. But it does make them think twice if they only intend to attack a candidate to try to drown them out, because they know that with Clean Money’s matching funds those candidates would be able to respond. And that’s why Arizona’s Clean Money system has actually had to pay out relatively little in matching funds, and why the same would probably be true in California also.

Trent Lange
Vice President of Board of Directors
California Clean Money Campaign

The problem with your comment is that the reason IE's have dropped is that people with money have started to dominate Arizona politics shutting out minorities in the process and don't have any need for IE's. Arizona should have long ago been a Democratic state, but because of so called campaign reform, the poorer people of the state have not been able to get organized like they should and the rich who are in control have done things to make it harder for them to vote, keeping power in the same hands. I would love to see an example anywhere in the country that passed campaign finance reform where challengers were elected at a higher rate than they were before the reform passed.

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