Public Financing

I'm not much of a "goo-goo," but I think it's hard to deny that our country would be much better served by a real system of public financing for campaigns. Along with reducing the power of big donors of the political system, a public financing situation would great mitigate the problem of uncompetitive elections. Gerrymandering has attracted a lot of indignation recently, and to some extent rightly, but realistically that's only a small piece of the puzzle. Any district of any shape or size has a median voter and it should be possible to run a competitive campaign in even a very conservative or a very liberal district. The problem, usually, is money -- there's only so much to go around, and it naturally tends to focus on a relatively small number of "winnable" seats. Public financing would guarantee that for every real candidate there was real money for a real campaign and incumbents everywhere would need to be on their toes.

That, of course, is exactly what incumbents don't like about public financing. I wish Zach Roth had been a bit clearer on that point in his otherwise excellent article on how public financing could really kill the GOP machine. To get it done, Democratic leaders would need to decide that they care more about the health of their political movement than they do about their personal job security, and that's naturally a hard sell. Meanwhile, the vague gesture in the direction of public financing that we already have -- the voluntary checkbox scheme for funding presidential elections -- is going deeper into collapse with every passing cycle.

Comments

Happy to reduce the power of small organised groups, which comes predominantly from campaign contributions. But I'm not sure we want to maximise the competitiveness of individuals districts. Lots of European countries have much less competitive political system and produce much better policies as the result.

Posted by otto | January 23, 2007 7:20 AM

To make myself clearer, what we should be aiming at is a publicly funded insider's cartel, not publicly funded maximisation of electoral competition.

Posted by otto | January 23, 2007 7:22 AM

I'm not convinced by your "there's a median voter in every district" argument. While that's true, if the median voter is far enough outside one national party's range of positions and far enough inside the other party, even a median voter candidate would be very unlikely to win, because of the built-in disadvantages of identification with his or her national party.

Posted by Doug T | January 23, 2007 7:28 AM

Napolitano!

The Arizona system rocks.

Perhaps we should elect the kind of President who's been strongly advocating for a real public financing system for years now.

Posted by Petey | January 23, 2007 7:33 AM

The reason 'goo-goo' is a mild epithet, evoking ridiculousness, is that much goo-goo-ism is just marginal dicking around. McCain-Feingold is quintessential goo-goo, for example. Real public financing (whether via fees from lobbyists, directly from the Treasury, or whatever), on the other hand, would be a revolution. Not only would it make more races more competitive (a good thing, sorry Otto), but it would change practically everything about our politics: think about how and which candidates decide to run or not, and what issues they run on; how pols decide to retire or not; how bills are written and lobbied-for, etc. etc. The opportunity costs - cumulative and symbiotic - of our current sewer system are really quite incalculable.

If the dems have the stones to do this *and* health care, it's FDR all over again. The Republican machine will not be just crippled, but utterly dead. They (the GOP) would have to go back to being conservatives, which would be pretty healthy for everyone.

BTW, Edwards (like Obama, presumably) understands the centrality of this issue and highlights it - another reason to like him.

Posted by jonnybutter | January 23, 2007 7:58 AM

I see Petey beat me to the punch in mentioning Edwards, but Edwards fully deserves kudos here - he doesn't just favor this 'in theory', he runs on it. It really is seminal.

Posted by jonnybutter | January 23, 2007 8:05 AM

who decides which candidates are real and get real money. Do they still have to raise their money to run in a primary? Which third parties get a chance?

You know this country has a long tradition of letting property owners or other wealthy or elite segments of society have a formal and special role in electing government officials. I kind of see the money primary as an extension of this. It is not all bad to have the candidates pre screened by the wealthy and powerful. Is there any reason to think more political advertising would result in better decisions by an indifferent electorate?

Posted by Doug | January 23, 2007 8:22 AM

Why do you think so many people are indifferent, Doug? Because they know it's fixed.

Posted by jonnybutter | January 23, 2007 8:36 AM

"who decides which candidates are real and get real money. Do they still have to raise their money to run in a primary? Which third parties get a chance?"

See Arizona's public financing systems for answers. In short, if you can raise lots of small donations, you'll get lots of public financing.

Posted by Petey | January 23, 2007 8:57 AM

Public financing is good, that checkbox funding scheme is totally retarded, though. There's no more reason for campaign funding to be based on the number of people who check a box to redirect money to it as there would be for any other kind of funding.

Posted by Consumatopia | January 23, 2007 9:15 AM

I dont see any reason why we want to be ruled by politicians who can raise lots of small donations any more than ones who can raise a few large donations. Indeed, there are lots of pernicious groups that can arrange for lots of small donations. Get the politicians out of the soliciting donations game completely.

Posted by otto | January 23, 2007 9:21 AM

"Get the politicians out of the soliciting donations game completely."

It's next to impossible to even theoretically design a public financing system that doesn't use the breadth of your donor community as a criteria. Otherwise, primaries and third parties will cause fatal flaws.

An Arizona type system makes the most sense. If you can get lots and lots of people to send you ten bucks each, you really deserve lots of public financing. It doesn't matter if those donations are organized by groups or not.

Beyond the simple benefits of public financing, rewarding candidates who can enlarge public participation in the political system is a major plus for our national civic health.

Posted by Petey | January 23, 2007 9:30 AM

I think the danger/problem with public financing is that's going to shift the pivot of lobbying/access/corruption from giving money outright to campaigns to try controlling free media in forms even worse than Fox News.

That could potentially be worse.

Posted by Nick Kaufman | January 23, 2007 9:50 AM

"I'm not much of a 'goo goo,' but ..."

Isn't this sort of like, "I'm not a feminist, but ..." [followed by classic feminist position, like equal pay for equal work].

What's so bad about being a "goo goo"?

Posted by Cthomas | January 23, 2007 10:18 AM

I assume that the public financing scheme we're talking about here would include some type of ban on private spending, or else it wouldn't do a hell of a lot of good.

So here's the obvious question: what do you do if someone starts buying ad time outside the system? Put them in jail? That seems a bit contrary to the spirit and letter of that whole First Amendment thing. I know we're part-way there with McCain-Feingold, but that's not a good reason to go the rest of the way.

Posted by too many steves | January 23, 2007 11:22 AM

"I assume that the public financing scheme we're talking about here would include some type of ban on private spending, or else it wouldn't do a hell of a lot of good."

To repeat myself, check out the Arizona system. There's no need (or constiutional possibility) for banning private spending.

Posted by Petey | January 23, 2007 11:35 AM

I was going to make some sort of comment about how public financing just creates another type of un-democratic gatekeeper to determine which candidates are allowed to run, but apparently thats what everybody here wants.

Posted by Travis | January 23, 2007 12:17 PM

I, for one, welcome our new undemocratic gatekeepers.

Posted by otto | January 23, 2007 1:03 PM

public financing just creates another type of un-democratic gatekeeper to determine which candidates are allowed to run

You were 'going' to make a comment? I know this is a blog and all, and as such is all bloggy, but...would it kill people to actually *read* about post-Buckley public finance schemes for campaigns? Start with AZ.

Posted by jonnybutter | January 23, 2007 1:07 PM

"would it kill people to actually *read* about post-Buckley public finance schemes for campaigns? Start with AZ."

The beauty of having the AZ and NYC laws in place is that you can point to rational and functional examples in the debate over a national law.

Posted by Petey | January 23, 2007 1:26 PM

"Any district of any shape or size has a median voter and it should be possible to run a competitive campaign in even a very conservative or a very liberal district."

This is belied by decades and decades of evidence. A congressional district with a 25-point party registration edge is not going to be won by the candidate on the low side of that gulf, unless the candidate on the high side is caught doing something highly criminal or outrageous. Even dying won't prevent his or her election.

Posted by Chris | January 23, 2007 2:56 PM

Clean elections laws are a crock -- it's just another form of incumbent protection insurance. Has any locality that has implemented such reforms seen a substantive decrease in incumbent reelection rates? I highly doubt it. For such schemes to really mean anything, extra money must be given to challengers to compensate for the advantages of incumbency. I think an extra 10% bump-up for every two year term your incumbent opponent has served sounds about right. So, if you're up against, say, a 9 term incumbent, you as the opponent would get a campaign fund that's 90% larger than your opponent's. I'm simply shocked -- shocked I say -- that lots of (incumbent) lawmakers totally love the idea of publicly-financed elections.

Want real competition? Let Congressman X face the power of a smart but poor challenger who is free to accept (with ironclad strict disclosure laws, of course) a $10 million campaign contribution from Oprah Winfrey or Mel Gibson or the AARP or the AMA.

Posted by Anonymous | January 23, 2007 10:18 PM

Candidates have to be good at fundraising in order to get elected, and have to be even better to stay elected. So when they arrive, they have both the skill and the motivation to do something they're already skilled at rather than venturing into the scary world of federal legislation.

One tangential issue is the size of the House: the population has grown way beyond the capacity of 435 federal representatives, and the main reason for capping the size of the House is... the size of the chamber. You'd still get gerrymandering with smaller districts, but you probably wouldn't get some of the more atrocious cases. And making districts smaller would go some way to disintermediate the relationship between congresscritters and their constituents.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 24, 2007 12:21 AM

A few clarifications:

1. Successful public financing systems, like those in Arizona and Maine, are voluntary...which means candidates are free to opt in or opt out (you run into First Amendment problems otherwise).

2. Candidates who opt in are required to qualify for public funding by gathering a set number of qualifying signatures and $5 donations to show they have significant grass roots support within the district they want to represent. They don't get to keep the donations; those are just for qualifying purposes and the money goes into a pot to help finance the system. Thus the voters are the "gatekeepers" who decide who will get public funds. These qualifying requirements help weed out "fringe" candidates while providing lesser known 3rd parties a chance to compete. To qualify the candidate must also agree to forego all private funds and abide by specified spending limits.

3. If such a publicly funded candidate is outspent by a privately funded candidate (i.e. one who opted out of the system), the publicly funded candidate gets additional matching funds, dollar for dollar, up to prescribed cap (so we don't break the bank), so that they can remain competitive. This does two things: it helps keep the playing field level, and it discourages privately funded candidates from trying to "buy the election" because they know that every additional dollar they spend will just trigger more money for their opponent. Expenditures by independent groups which attack a publicly funded candidate are covered by the same "matching funds provision" with the same results. Total campaign spending actually tends to go down because money no longer buys advantage.

4. In both Arizona and Maine, which have had these systems for almost a decade, voters have more choices, among candidates who no longer have to have access to great wealth in order to be "viable." Elections are more about issues and ideas and less about who's the best fundraiser. Incumbents still have some advantages like name recognition, but they also have a track record which may or may not work in their favor. The point is, at least the determining factor is no longer money. And once elected, our officials no longer owe any favors to anyone...except the voters. (What a concept!)

For more nonpartisan info see www.just6dollars.org or www.publicampaign.org.

Posted by cmrced | January 24, 2007 1:29 AM