Follow through with clean elections

As people say, we get only as good a government as we deserve. The same can be said about the elections we hold.

In one bold stroke in 1996, Maine voters demanded a higher standard for state elections by passing the Clean Election Act. That landmark campaign finance reform gives candidates a modest amount of public funding for their campaigns if they can show strong grass-roots support in their districts, promise not to solicit or accept special interest money, and agree to strict spending limits.

Clean Elections worked. Thanks to Clean Election reforms, private spending was cut in half in the 2000 elections, and the average cost of running for a legislative seat actually decreased. Just as importantly, more people – and more women – stepped forward to run for office, giving voters a choice in some districts which otherwise would have been lacking.

When the votes were counted, half the Maine Senate and almost one-third of the Maine House was elected without collecting a dime from lobbyists or other special interests. It was an impressive start, and it made Maine the model for reform across the nation.

The Clean Election law was put to the test again in March with the special election in the Portland-Falmouth Senate district. Despite concerns about spending from sources independent of the candidates, the reforms again worked as intended. Here are three ways.

First, Clean Elections showed again that it gives voters more choice. Five candidates competed for this single seat, and the three most popular candidates chose the Clean Election option (A fourth candidate was not able to demonstrate enough grass-roots support to qualify.) One of the independent candidates said that he would not have run without Clean Elections. Clearly, public financing has become an attractive and viable choice for legislative candidates, even for hotly contested elections.

Second, the Clean Election candidates were able to spend their time communicating with voters instead of asking for money in endless phone calls to potential contributors, and they were not obligated by special interest money to steer their campaign away from controversial issues.

Third, the candidate who won is now free to vote his conscience in the Senate without stopping to think about how big moneyed interests will react. At the end of the race, there were no fat cats to thank, just campaign volunteers.

Some people expected more. They believed that Clean Elections would lock special interest money entirely out of Maine politics. While that’s a worthwhile goal, it is not constitutionally possible, and it was never envisioned that Clean Elections could do that. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the state cannot prohibit someone from spending money in favor of or against a candidate and cannot limit the content of that speech.

What Clean Election reforms can do is level the playing field. When parties and political action committees injected their messages into the recent special election with private money outside the control or coordination of the candidates, Clean Election candidates got limited matching funds to respond. Without the security of being eligible for matching funds, no candidate would abandon the big money chase and accept spending limits, and we’d be back where we started in 1996.

The recent special election does not predict what other campaigns this year will bring. The special election was as unique as it was special. It was the only Senate race in the state, with no competition for the attention of those people who run the political parties and the PACs. Furthermore, this election determined which party would control the Senate for the remainder of this Legislature and have the edge in that Senate district going into next fall’s election.

Some Clean Election critics have focused on the amount spent per vote in the special election, but the spending was not out of line with some past highly competitive races. The winning candidate in the special election spent $17,500 in Clean Election funds, and the losing Republican candidate spent the most, $52,500, in Clean Election Funds.

By comparison, in the 1998 Maine Senate races, 10 candidates spent more than $41,500 each. Both the 1998 and 2000 Senate elections included three candidates who spent more than $50,000.

In the typical election, and overall, the Clean Election system has proven itself to be very cost-effective. The entire cost in 2000 for 138 general election campaigns and 115 primary campaigns was just $875,000, or about $1.34 per voter.

The amount spent per vote will vary from race to race in any system, but our focus should stay on eliminating the effect of money on the candidates, their politics and their positions.

In the past, the major candidates in a crucial race such as this year’s special election were deeply and personally involved in raising large amounts of campaign money from special interests. They spent many of their waking hours on the phone or in person wooing dollars from wealthy individuals or major lobbies. Each big donor had a keen interest in influencing the deciding vote on important issues, such as budget priorities, corporate tax breaks and environmental protections.

While we cannot entirely end the influence of special interest money, we are weakening that influence through Clean Elections campaign financing. The risk and appearance of corruption is far stronger for direct campaign contributions to candidates than for any debatable benefit from special interest money spent independent of candidates.

Yet there is no single silver bullet. We can and should do more to restore the public’s confidence in the integrity of Maine elections. For example, Maine could prohibit Clean Election candidates from creating PACs or raising and spending PAC money for other candidates, and we could limit the amount that can be contributed to PACs.

Ridding Maine politics of the corrosive influence of special-interest money requires eternal vigilance. Better eternal vigilance than throwing up our hands in despair.

Tom Bradley is an attorney for the Maine Citizen Leadership Fund, a public interest group located

in Portland.