‘Clean’ Elections vs. The Real World

 July 17, 2008

For a campaign-finance reformer just waking up from a nap begun in the waning months of 2007, John McCain’s status as the Republican Party’s pick for president must be unbelievable.

Eight months ago, McCain’s run at the nomination was all but dead, after a spectacular failure to meet its original fundraising goal. Rudy Giuliani had an enormous warchest, and even if the mayor managed to squander all those contributions in a losing effort, the deep-pocketed Mitt Romney would be able to tap his personal fortune and grab the nomination.

But McCain did indeed get the nod, an ironic reality that is probably lost on campaign-finance crusaders. To the “special interests are evil” folks, politics would be a neverending series of Lincoln-Douglas debates if not for the corrupting influence of campaign cash. Whether it’s greedy companies demanding perks, or Richie Riches using the family fortune to play with public policy, they believe money is the root of all evil in government. This perspective, repeated constantly by media outlets seeking to boost their own influence, has justified a litany of interventions, including contribution limits, advertising restrictions, and even direct subsidies to candidates.

McCain’s once-unimaginable nomination exposes the vacuousness of campaign-finance “reform.” So does Connecticut’s “Citizens’ Election Fund,” which is currently doling out tens of thousands of dollars to each incumbent and challenger who first secured hundreds of small donations.

Last month, The Hartford Courant reported that there are fewer competitive races in the state’s House of Representatives this year, the first for “clean elections,” than in 2006. “Republicans say they still don’t have a candidate in 43 of 151 House districts,” wrote reporter Mark Pazniokas, “while Democrats have no candidate in 15 districts. Two years ago, Republicans were AWOL in just 31 races, while Democrats skipped a dozen.” (Pazniokas didn’t examine the Senate, but it has one more uncontested district than it did two years ago.)

Campaign-regulation enthusiasts were quick to spin the Courant’s findings. Since the system is “a new kind of politics,” Andy Sauer, of the left-wing Common Cause, thinks “people are just beginning to comprehend it.”

Perhaps Sauer’s condescension is justified. Perhaps not. This year saw a tremendous revival of interest in politics, driven in large part by the campaigns of Barack Obama and Ron Paul. Wouldn’t a huge influx of volunteers and donors lead to an increase in candidates for the legislature, particularly when running for office is now relatively effortless in the Nutmeg State?

Research from other states shows that subpar participation isn’t the only problem with subsidized elections. According to the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), which defends the First Amendment against the predations of the “reform” crowd, the data on lobbyists are mixed. The two states with the longest history of taxpayer-funded elections “have had strikingly different experiences with regard to the number of lobbyist registrations,” report the CCP’s Laura Renz and Sean Parnell. Arizona did see fewer lobbyists, but Maine didn’t. In the 1990s, prior to passage of the Pine Tree State’s program, the number of lobbyists grew by 13 percent. Since Maine’s program began, Renz and Parnell discovered, lobbyist registrations have increased by 20 percent.

Subsidized elections don’t create a more diverse corps of legislators, either. CCP’s Renz found “no evidence that taxpayer-funded political campaigns in Arizona or Maine have had any impact in the number of legislators from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds. Neither state has seen a decline in legislators with ‘traditional’ backgrounds.” (The Nutmeggers now in office who ran in Citizens’ Election Fund-supported special elections are hardly political outsiders. One is a Shelton alderman who now gets to be a pol at both the local and state levels. Another is a former Watertown councilor. The third is a GOP hack who previously worked for Chris Shays and Jodi Rell.)

Like most “progressive” proposals, taxpayer-supported elections have a superficial appeal. But thoughtful analysts understand that supply-side controls of government are the best ways to reduce corruption and waste. Deregulation, privatization, spending caps, tax cuts, competitive contracting of services, elimination of “economic development” subsidies, and bans on public employees holding office are preferable alternatives.

Riddled with loopholes, biased against “minor” parties, and full of unconstitutional encroachments, the Citizens’ Election Fund was a boondoggle at birth. With early results on participation not looking good, a strong ACLU challenge still making its way through the courts, and abundant examples from other states that cast doubt on the wisdom of welfare for politicians, one hopes 2008 will be remembered as both the first and last year Connecticut experienced a “clean” general election.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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