On February 27, U.S. District Court Judge Philip A. Brimmer, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld Colorado law that lets individuals give twice as much money to the campaign of a candidate who is nominated in a primary, versus a candidate who is nominated in a minor party convention or by independent petition. Riddle v Hickenlooper, 1:10-cv-1857. Here is the 33-page decision.
The decision says that it is rational to let individuals give $400 to a legislative candidate who runs in a primary, and to restrict individuals from giving more than $200 to a legislative candidate who gets on the November ballot via a minor party nominating convention or via an independent candidate petition, because candidates who must run in a primary are expected to have more campaign expenses. The opinion acknowledges that in recent years, only 11% of legislative candidates who participated in a primary had a primary opponent. But, the opinion says even primary candidates who have no opponent often spend money in primary season “to clear the field of potential challengers, to spend money on campaign literature, to secure volunteers, and to purchase web domains.”
The irony is that this case was fild by Kathleen Curry, who had to run as a write-in candidate in 2010 (the year the case was filed), and running a successful write-in campaign is more expensive than running when one is on the ballot. Successful write-in candidates usually must send direct mail to every voter in the district, if they can afford it; they also do things like distributing literature at the polls, outside the “no politics zone” and that is very expensive also. Plaintiffs will appeal. Curry, an incumbent, was forced to be a write-in candidate because she had changed partisan affilation (from Democratic to independent) in October 2009 and the law barred candidates from qualifying as independents if they had been a member of a party during the year before qualifying. That law has since been relaxed.
Just another example where when you force candidates to be placed on the ballot by different routes, you get all kinds of inconsistencies.
Kathleen Curry would not have been kept off the ballot in a Top 2 system. Michael Chamness was only able to run in the senate special primary because California had adopted the Top 2 reform earlier that year.
#1, you are wrong about Michael Chamness. California let all independent candidates in special elections appear on the run-off (if there was a run-off) before top two came into existence in 2011. And Michael Chamness was fully capable of getting 500 valid signatures, which he needed under the old system in special elections.
Unlimited “free speech” for corporations and unions and Super PACs (the constitution, don’t you know) but “free speech” by individuals is restricted to so many quarters stuffed into political parking meters. What a sham. Tammany Hall lives on in the USSC.
Richard –
Several threads ago you wrote this:
“Baron, if you were a member of Congress, would you give favorable treatment (when you vote as a member of Congress, or introduce bills) to various people depending on how much money those people had given you? Or would you just follow your conscience and your ideas of good public policy?”
My response was “What’s your point?” You may answe that query if you like, but let me venture another response….
Well, whaddya think? To whom do you think I would be most beholden? To Joe Schlub, who slips me twenty bucks on the Internet, or the “persons” who subsidize my media buys (“uncoordinated” wink wink nod nod, of course) in whole or in part?
Virtually EVERY problem we have in this country, the solution to which must be achieved at least In part through political action, will forever remain unsolved because we have done nothing to reform our financing of political campaigns. In fact, we’ve gone backwards, as evidenced by the rotten Citizens United decision, which you have repeatedly endorsed.
Both major-party candidates and minor-party or petitioning candidates face a two-step process to get on the November ballot. For major-party candidates, step 1 is the primary. For the rest of us, step 1 of the “campaign” is the campaign to get enough petition signatures to get onto the ballot — which also costs money.
Can a separate round of contributions for the petitioning campaign be justified as “equal protection”?
#2 Prior to its repeal by SB 6, Elections Code 8550(f) required a 3-month period of partisan abstinence prior to the declaration of candidacy as an independent candidate in a special election.
Unlike for someone seeking to be an independent candidate in a general election where the (12-month) period of partisan abstinence is measured from the general election, that for a special election is measured from the declaration of candidacy.
Had the SD-28 special election been conducted under the old law, Michael Chamness could not have been placed on the ballot.