Is Rhode Island ready for Clean Elections? (continued)

IN THE 2004 election season, new restrictions on "soft money," previously unregulated forms of campaign contributions, led millions of dollars to flow into so-called 527s, advocacy groups that backed particular causes — showing how campaign contributions tend to find their way around fresh barriers. While some observers see less regulation of campaign giving and greater transparency as the way to go (see "Money screams," News, May 21, 2004), Clean Elections supporters tout their concept as an elegant solution for much of what ails American elections.

Since campaigns are too costly, Clean Elections induce candidates to accept voluntary and constitutional spending limits. Special-interest influence is reduced since "Clean" candidates don’t accept special-interest money. Candidates are able to focus on issues and constituents, the thinking goes, since they don’t have to spend so much time chasing money. Finally, a more level playing field opens the door to more competition. Set against the backdrop of the 2000 election — during which George W. Bush’s "Pioneers" created a new high water mark by each raising at least $100,000 for their candidate — Clean Elections laws were put into practice for the first time in Maine and Arizona, and supporters and media reports point to the results as a sign of success.

In Arizona, for example, Clean Election candidates won seven of nine statewide races in 2002, including governor, attorney general, and secretary of state, according to the Arizona Republic. Twenty-seven of the 60 members in the Arizona House were elected through Clean Elections, the paper reported, and the number of contested Senate races climbed, from 10 in 1998 to 21 in 2002.

In Maine, more than 70 percent of the primary candidates in the 2004 election were publicly funded, according to the Portland Press Herald, and the number of legislative candidates in Maine primaries has increased — from 358 in 1998 to 429 in 2004 — since public financing was introduced in 2000. "And that means the number of contested primaries — races in which Democrats, Republicans, or Green independents are facing off against members of their own party — is on the rise, too," the paper reported.

Critics, however, question the effectiveness of Clean Elections, and the approach remains a source of contention in Arizona, where a lawsuit filed in January charges that the Arizona Clean Elections system unconstitutionally restrains the free speech of privately funded candidates. "Basically, the Clean Elections system is a public money machine that makes candidates an offer they can’t refuse," Frank Conti, executive director of the Arizona office of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, told the Arizona Republic. "Rather than act as a neutral referee, the state actively tilts the playing field in favor of government-funded candidates."

Patrick Basham, a senior fellow in the Center for Representative Government at the libertarian Cato Institute, was unfamiliar with the 2004 results in Maine, but based on previous data, he described the impact there of Clean Elections as "very disappointing." In particular, Basham says, public financing didn’t overcome the advantage naturally enjoyed by incumbents, and how "politicians, regardless of their ideology or partisan stripe, do everything they can to ensure that they have the upper hand."

In Massachusetts, where voters passed Clean Elections on a ballot initiative in 1998, proponents blame the legislature for undermining the approach by failing to adequately fund it. Although legislative opponents previously expressed concern that less-than-serious candidates would squander taxpayer money, the advocacy group Mass Voters for Clean Elections plans to file legislation with hopes of bringing vigor to the approach.

Such setbacks aside, the advocacy group Public Campaign (www.publiccampaign.org) describes Clean Elections as a growing national movement. Early success, the group says, "has given greater energy and focus to campaign finance reform efforts in many states, including Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin. It has also galvanized federal lawmakers to introduce ‘Clean Money/Clean Elections bills in the US Senate and House of Representatives."

National supporters of full public financing of elections include the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, and the National Organization for Women, among others. Senator John McCain of Arizona, as well as the editorial pages of such newspapers as USA Today and the New York Times, have embraced the Clean Elections model. And it’s impossible to deny the overwhelming influence of money in American politics, much of which flows directly into television advertising, forming a rich revenue source for television companies and big media (see "In whose interest?" News, December 13, 2002). "Money is decisive," says Brown University political science professor Darrell West. "If you don’t have it, it’s very difficult to communicate with the general public."