Two bills pending in the California legislature would set up discriminatory public funding for state candidates. AB 583, by Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) applies to all state office. SB 536 by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) just applies to Insurance Commissioner.
AB 583 is more favorable to candidates if they are members of a party that polled 10% for Governor, or 10% for the particular office involved, than other candidates. Favored candidates would need 500 $5 contributions to run for Assembly, 1,000 $5 contributions for State Senate, 7,500 $5 contributions for lesser statewide office, or 25,000 $5 contributions for Governor. If they met these hurdles, they would receive (for the general election) $400,000 if running for Assembly, $800,000 if running for State Senate, $2,000,000 if running for lesser statewide office, $15,000,000 if running for Governor.
Independent candidates would need to raise twice as many $5 contributions, for equal public funding; if they did not, they would receive nothing. Members of parties that hadn’t polled 10% in the past election for that office or for Governor would get 25% as much funding, if they raised half as many $5 contributions. They would get equal funding if they raised twice as many $5 contributions.
SB 536, dealing only with Insurance Commissioner public funding, would require members of parties that had polled 10% for Insurance Commissioner in the last election to receive 7,500 $5 contributions. Alternatively, if there were a party that had not polled 10% for Insurance Commissioner in the last election, but cast 20% of the total votes in the current primary, it would be treated equally (this provision seems designed to cover one of the major parties, in case that major party had failed to run anyone in the last election for Insurance Commissioner). All other Insurance Commissioner candidates would receive no public funding unless they submitted a petition signed by 5% of the last vote cast for Insurance Commissioner, in 89 days. For 2010, if this bill were enacted, that would be 416,270 signatures. The petition would say that the signers support the named candidate.
AB 583’s third party provisions are necessary to control costs in a state that has 6 qualified parties and for a bill that would provide up to $60 million for qualified candidates for Governor in the general election if they are running against a privately-funded candidate who spends that much. And yet they provide the strongest third-party and independent candidates the opportunity to receive full funding in the general election if they can show performance by gathering twice the normal number of qualifying $5 contributions and signatures.
AB 583’s provisions are favorable enough to third parties that the California Green Party overwhelmingly voted to endorse last year’s AB 583, and likely will do again this year because the provisions are the same.
As several Green Party members argued, the fact that AB 583 has a partial funding option for candidates who receive only half the normal number of qualifying contributions in some ways makes AB 583 more favorable to third parties than the “flat” systems used in Arizona and Maine that treat all candidates the same, no matter their partisan affiliation. Experience in Arizona and Maine has shown that their candidates usually don’t have the resources to meet the normal “all or nothing” qualifying threshold, and so can’t get their message out at all in the vast majority of races.
With AB 583, however, they can get enough funding to get their message out (e.g. $100,000 in an Assembly general election) if they get half the normal number of qualifying contributions. With a “non-discriminatory” flat system, they would get nothing. This will help them build their party while providing a fair test of whether they can get the 10% of the votes necessary for receiving full funds automatically in that particular district.
More of this discussion can be found on the Cal. Clean Money Campaign’s website, http://www.caclean.org/progress/performance_system.php.
Coming up with these provisions was a balancing act to balance the significant concerns many voters have about providing public funds to “fringe” candidates on the one hand while providing real opportunities to third party and independent candidates to get their word out and compete on the other. I don’t believe the Cal. Green Party would have voted to endorse AB 583 if they didn’t believe that it provided a fair balance overall and that it wasn’t an important bill to help clean up California’s dysfunctional political system.
(Note: this was posted by Trent Lange, V-P, Calif. Clean Money Campaign, but for an unknown reason, it wouldn’t “take” from his computer, so it has been re-posted by Richard).
Richard ; Have you looked at the Iowa clean elections bill? What do you think ?
I understand Trent’s argument about AB 583, and on balance I support that bill. But it’s important to note that the same is not true of SB 536. Although it might be a good idea to start with one office (like insurance commissioner or secretary of state), the level of discrimination against small parties and independents in SB 536 makes it unacceptable.
As Richard and Bob point out, unlike AB 583, SB 536 currently doesn’t provide third party or independent candidates with any realistic way to get full funding if their party hadn’t gotten 10% of the vote in the previous election.
This is part of the reason the California Clean Money Campaign hasn’t taken a position on SB 536 yet, even though it is an important bill and a good one in most other respects. We’ve asked Senator Simitian’s office to amend that and a couple other portions of it, and are hopeful that they will do so.
– Trent