Let’s say you work in a restaurant, as many of you probably do. Every Tuesday night, a certain patron comes in and, as a rule, leaves a tip three-fourths the value of his meal. For exceptional service, he’ll leave even more.
There might be a few other regulars who come in on Tuesday night, but they can’t be expected to leave as much as the Golden Patron.
By and large, most of the evening’s customers are random people you may never see again. Who’s going to be your primary concern when you’re walking around with that tea pitcher to see who needs a refill?
Now, if our politicians work in a different kind of service industry, public service – and the patrons leaving the biggest tips are wealthy individuals and organizations, who, like all of us, carry certain expectations in return for their patronage, who are our politicians going to be most concerned with giving a refill?
It’s not difficult to arrive at that altogether obvious conclusion, yet true, publicly-funded elections, where the “waiters” could be equally indebted to everyone, remain something less than a pipedream.
I say “true publicly-funded elections” because even with the establishment of a public funding program for presidential candidates in 1973 (that’s what that $3 check-off on your tax return is for), our presidential nominees still raise hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations every election.
Why? Because they have to agree to spending limits in order to receive public financing, and because they can’t accept private donations at that point. When everyone’s obviously not going to be bound to those limits, no one wants to be.
I also say we’ve not yet seen true publicly-funded elections because even with the comprehensive Clean Elections at all levels of government within Arizona and Maine since 2000, the use of public financing hasn’t truly been adopted altogether within those states, much less on a national scale.
Under our current electoral system, Clean Elections are something of a sham, in that it’s simply an option, not a requirement.
It works like this: Any individual who acquires a requisite number of signatures and donations of $5 from their constituency could apply to receive public funding for a campaign bid.
For example, in Arizona, 220 contributions are needed to apply for funding in a Senate or House race. If approved, they would then have to pledge not to use any personal funds or private donations in conjunction with their public funds.
Approved candidates this year received $12,921 with which to campaign in primaries and $19,382 for general elections (none of the primary funds may be carried over to the general election).
Since Clean Elections’ inception, additional funding was even provided to candidates who were out-funded by those who chose to go the privately-funded route, allowing publicly-funded candidates to match their opponents’ expenditures up to three times what they would normally have been limited to.
However, on Sept. 3, federal Judge Roslyn Silver ruled that matching the funds of privately-funded candidates might be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
This was due to a suggestion that privately-funded candidates may be compelled to limit their freedom of speech (“vote for me” and “don’t vote for the other guy” falls under this heading), knowing that campaigning beyond a certain point would provide their opponents with more funds.
It’s to be ruled on Oct. 9 whether funds matching will be allowed to continue into this November’s election cycle.
Let’s be honest: That’s bull. While funds matching can be heavily flawed in practice (look at this year’s primary race in Arizona’s District 30 for an example; the very example, in fact, which led to Silver’s ruling), privately-funded elections – or a combination of privately-funded and Clean Elections – is more so.
What’s needed is altogether publicly-funded elections. Not as an option: A requirement for all candidates running for office.
Privately-funded elections alone would be flawed for obvious reasons, among them the analogy offered at the beginning of this article.
Another reason is that, even without campaign contributions, most people simply don’t have the funds or resources to compete with traditional candidates – whose backgrounds are in business and law – particularly at the federal level.
As for Clean Elections and their impotency, that stems from the equally obvious point that a publicly-funded candidate can still be out-funded by a privately-funded candidate when funds matching – which looks to be on its way out anyway – has a cap.
Plus, the same opportunities political action committees and 527 groups have to support and distort traditional campaigns with their expenditures – spending that serves as a campaign contribution in practice, but circumvents federal limits on direct monetary donations – will likely be there to benefit or harm campaigns regardless of the system used.
At least under full public funding, those groups wouldn’t be allowed to constantly laugh in the face of weak, loophole-laden limits on campaign contributions.
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