Optimism reigns in clean elections

On the road to winning the governorship in Arizona, Janet Napolitano broke with tradition. Not because she’s a woman or a Democrat, but because she campaigned without taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the mining industry or trial lawyers, unions or small businesses.

What’s more, more than a third of the lawmakers she will work with next year also won office after stepping off the treadmill of fund-raising that dominates politics elsewhere.

In Maine, an even more dramatic change took place. Three-fifths of the new state lawmakers won running publicly financed campaigns in which candidates made do with limited government money, foregoing privately raised or personal cash.

Proponents of so-called clean elections are optimistic that the results in Arizona and Maine will win converts to their cause of curbing expensive campaigns and limiting the influence of special interests.

But skeptics complain about independent spending they say skirts the spirit of the law and taxpayer-financed negative campaigning.

Both sides are watching to see if the laws work or just drive the campaign money elsewhere. They’re also eyeing the candidates to see if they show greater independence than other politicians.

“The lobbyists will have less influence,” declared Napolitano, who spoke often about how the system freed her to talk about issues rather than ask for cash. “Hopefully, we’ll have more legislation that’s based on what’s good for the most people, as opposed to what’s good for a particular group.”

Clean election laws, which vary slightly in each state, aim to allow near-total public financing of campaigns in return for a promise from candidates that they will forego private money after collecting some small contributions up front.

Candidates in Arizona must prove they’re viable by gathering hundreds of individual $5 contributions. Then they get set amounts of cash to campaign and can’t raise any more private money.

If they’re outspent by privately funded candidates, the state will keep pace, but only up to a point.

Though four states have passed clean elections laws, Maine and Arizona are the only states where the legislation have truly worked.

In Vermont, courts put spending limits in doubt and no candidates chose public financing this year. Massachusetts voters passed an initiative in 1998, but lawmakers refused to fund it; a judge ordered the state to auction off state property to cover the costs, but there was still only one publicly financed candidate for governor and 11 for state Legislature.

In 2000, voters in Missouri and Oregon rejected clean election initiatives.

Despite those setbacks, advocates have high hopes that Arizona and Maine will offer a model for how public financing can cure the ills of big money in politics.

“The clean election system reduces the influence of both special interest and legislative leaders, and allows more bottom-up legislation,” said Maine state Rep. Paul Volenik.

Volenik, a Democrat finishing eight years in the legislature, credits public financing, in part, for helping win approval of the state’s first-in-the-nation law on prescription drugs. He says legislators felt more free to support the measure, which lets the state use the threat of price controls to negotiate lower drug costs for the uninsured.

“No matter how small the campaign contribution is, there is influence there. It isn’t a quid pro quo, but it is influence,” he said. “If the planet’s going to survive, that’s what we need.”

Critics see cause for dismay, not hope. They say those with money to spend on politics just direct the cash to groups that buy independent ads which are often mean-spirited. And candidates end up with less control over campaigns.

“Here, the [pro-clean elections] ad was ‘Get the money out of politics,”‘ said Maine Senate Majority Leader Beverly Daggett, a Democrat. “Well, it hasn’t gotten the money out of politics. I don’t think it can.”

Daggett ran “clean” but also raised $20,000 for her own political action committee that bought ads on behalf of other Democrats in the state.

Her PAC’s name? “The Benjamins,” she said. “It’s all about the money.”