Clean Money, Clean Elections

I love the idea of public campaign financing. I love the idea of making the candidate process accessible to anyone regardless of income, and I think it would be great if our elected officials could be less beholden to big-money interests. But let's be honest — the only way public financing would work is if it were mandatory, so everyone would have to play by the same rules. Otherwise, those with ties to those big-money interests could simply bypass public financing and raise much more than a public system would ever be able to provide. And mandatory public financing is a tough sell to people who were elected by and whose incumbent advantage largely relies on the system as it stands now. It will be a very long time before we see that happen, if at all. And voluntary public financing is simply not viable.

Or is it?

Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter have introduced the Fair Elections Now act, which creates a public financing system for Senatorial candidates. And I have to be honest — the plan has me intrigued. The plan is voluntary; a candidate opts in by raising a set number of $5 contributions (dependent on state population and the number of congressional districts in the state), to prove viability in lieu of the commonplace candidate petition, and is then entitled to public funding similarly scaled on population, as well broadcast vouchers discounting ad costs. The interesting bit to me is that the bill also allows candidates to receive what it calls "fair fight funds" to, as the bill sponsors put it, "keep the race on a level playing field."

It all sounds well and good, but would this work? At a time when we're looking at presidential campaigns aiming for nine-digit fundraising targets, and a competitive Senate race can easily get up to the tens of millions, is it really possible to ensure a "fair fight" against privately financed candidates?

I don't have a definite answer to that question. I doubt anyone does. But the individuals and organizations that are backing this bill, including the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, and MoveOn, think that it is not only possible, but necessary. Campaign costs are skyrocketing, and elected officials are having to spend more of their time raising more money from more large donors. Freshman congressional representatives are already finding that they have to start fundraising for their reelection as soon as they enter office. This model for campaign funding isn't sustainable.

And there are examples of this sort of system working. The financing system put forth in the Fair Elections Now bill was based on the systems currently in use in Maine, Arizona, and North Carolina. These states have elected over 200 officials under these public financing systems.

Of course, state, county and municipal elections don't have the sort of massive fundraising requirements that a national race would have. And the numbers that election law specialist Adam Bonin cites as examples of the sort of funding that this bill would provide are not in any way trivial — up to $3.75 million in a Delaware race, or $42.7 million in a California race. We're talking about a significant amount of money coming from public coffers to run elections. I haven't seen any estimates as to how much we're looking at spending on the whole for this public financing program, but I imagine the first order of business for those opposing it will be to come up with an estimate of that number, and then decry it as far too high.

I'm not sure a price can be named that I would think is so high that it outweighs the benefits of public financing, of not having our elected officials spend the majority of their time in office assuring that they will be answering to wealthy interests in their next term. As unlikely as the possibility of a real public financing initiative may seem, the sheer amount of political weight behind this bill and its counterpart in the House means that at worst, we are starting a real public discussion on substantive campaign finance reform, and at best, such reform will be found to be an idea whose time has finally come.