Charlie Summers, the Secretary of State of Maine, is seen in this 27-second you tube clip condemning public funding of elections. He characterizes public funding as “money is just handed to the candidate.” Actually it is a lot of work for candidates to qualify for public funding in Maine and generally.
In Maine, the voters do not elect the Secretary of State. The legislature appoints the Secretary of State. Thanks to Alex Hammer for the link.
It is cut from the middle of an answer. We don’t even know what the question was. How do you actually know that the question was about Maine’s public funding law? You don’t, except for the claim of some blogger hack.
Note Charlie Summers is a candidate for the US Senate, and the sound bite comes from a senate debate. It probably has little relevance to the discussion whether he is the Secretary of State, or whether or not that office is elected.
Maine’s campaign funding scheme was subject to revision because of the US Supreme Court’s decision in _Arizona Free Enterprise Club v Bennett_ and subsequent Maine court decisions, and the 2012 candidate’s guide states:
“There will be significant changes to the Maine Clean Election Act enacted during the Second Regular Session of the 125th Legislature, which begins January 4, 2012. The information in this Candidate’s Guide is current as of the date of its publication (January 3, 2012). In order to make sure that you have the most current information about campaign finance law,”
It doesn’t say “may”, it says it “will” change.
The seed contribution for a House candidate in Maine is $500, from 60 contributors giving $5 or more. The candidate then gets $5000 to spend. What exactly was Summers saying was a good thing? We don’t know because the blogger trimmed the context. But it sounds like he was saying it was a good thing for the candidate to actually go out and meet voters. But should the public make a 9:1 match?
If Gerald Weinand were in the least bit honest, he would have posted at least the entire question and answer. Better yet would have been to post a link to the entire forum, and a pointer to the parts that he thinks salient.