The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson’s newspaper, carried this article in its December 14 edition. The theme of the story is that the state’s 11-year-old public funding law for state office is losing support among both Democratic and Republican state legislators. One charge against the law (which requires participating candidates to collect a large number of $5 donations) is that lobbyists sometimes help candidates raise those small donations.
Arizona’s Clean Elections law was passed by initiative, so no matter how many legislators disagree with it, they cannot change it except to further its purposes unless they put it to the Arizona voters who then vote it down. That’s possible, but it strikes me as unlikely.
As someone that has personally worked with Green Party candidates who successfully collected the necessary $5 donations, I can safely say that the claim that lobbyists help candidates raise the funds is not a valid criticism. It would be one thing if, like the initiative process, hiring people to do the work for you was practically required, thus undermining its function, but the number of $5 donations required is not prohibitive; they can be got by going door to door and making phone calls the old fashioned way as long as they have a modicum of support. Again, Green Party candidates have qualified several times. If major party candidates want to use lobbyists to collect them because they’re too busy to actually talk to their constituents, then I don’t see that as a problem; it certainly doesn’t give them any competitive advantage.
The AZ Clean Elections laws are a great boon to third party candidates, except the Libertarians I suppose, since they refuse to participate on principle. I don’t expect them to go anywhere anytime soon.