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| Feb.
28- March 6, 2007 |
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| Clean
Them Up
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| Publicly
financed election campaigns weaken the ties between money
and power
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By
WILLIAM LOGAN ELDER
Contributing Writer
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This winter’s strong winds blew locally and nationally.
Watching Nancy Pelosi looking over George Bush’s
shoulder during the State of the Union Address, the first
woman to have that particular perspective, or, unluckily,
sitting in the cold and dark watching for a utility truck
tells you there are winds and then there are winds. The
winds of change blowing through our nation’s capital
had force enough to refresh much of the country as well.
While the winds of change are real — Democrats reassert
themselves, while Republicans, through forced smiles,
acknowledge “past mistakes” and the Administration
re-assesses “new political realities” —
the war goes on abroad, and at home a system of elections
driven by big-money tightens its stranglehold on our representative
democracy. It takes an uprising of the electorate of historic
proportions — as just happened in recent congressional
elections — to loosen that grip temporarily, enough
for a breath. This is a rare opportunity to look clearly
at how we hold elections and how we might pry the corrupting
hand of big money away for good. We have that opportunity
right now, right here.
Money buys elections in America. Money buys media exposure.
Money buys staff and the paraphernalia of political organization.
Money buys the candidates’ attention and that all-important
commodity: access. Sometimes money even buys a candidate
outright: position, prestige, power, vote, and all. Outrageous,
but too recent and all too real to deny.
Raising money has become the single, greatest, predictable
imperative in successful campaigns — from local
judge to presidential hopeful. Virtually every candidate
admits that raising the money now deemed necessary to
run an even moderately competitive campaign is time consuming,
distracting, and odious. Many an outstanding public servant
that you never heard of has backed away, never run, and
let the less squeamish, the better-connected, better-bankrolled
opponent win because the money-grubbing grind is so distasteful.
Who supplies all this campaign-financing money? The answer
is as jarring as it is straightforward. Money is supplied
by those who are buying something. The something they
want to buy is the “prestige, power, vote, and all”
that comes with the successful candidate’s office.
They don’t want all of it, and not all the time,
just a law here, a regulation there, favorable hearing,
a little — or a lot of — advocacy. To buy
what they want, corporations tack onto their products’
prices the cost of campaign contributions and lobbyists.
You, the consumer, get to subsidize big money’s
campaign/lobbying activities.
Under our current system of election financing, the supplier
of big money, or the pooling of common resources to make
up big money, wins the money race most every time. The
small contributor’s influence on the candidate and
issues is drowned in a cascade of massive contributions.
The higher the office, the truer this becomes. The 2008
presidential race — even at this early stage, and
for Democrats and Republicans alike — illustrates
how the system works. Candidates are ranked as serious
in direct relation to the amount of money they can attract.
They remain in the race only so long as they fulfill that
money promise. As with horserace handicapping, big money
bets according to track record and tractability, and always
drives the odds. It hedges, so a bet pays off no matter
who wins. And small-money voters keep getting surprised
at having to clean out the stables — again.
There is a better way, a way open to us now, this legislative
session, here in Washington. It is called public financing
of campaigns. You take away big-money influence, give
candidates their fundraising time and energy back, their
independence, and you attract to races talented people
who are neither independently wealthy nor dependently
connected — all by putting into place carefully
written, proven laws that pay for campaigns, up to a specified
amount, out of public funds, only after a candidate has
proven he or she can attract a specific number of small
contributors and, critically, has signed an agreement
not to take private contributions. Maine and Arizona already
have such systems in place, and they work!
Washington Public Campaigns (WPC) is fighting to bring
clean elections here. WPC, together with a wide-ranging
coalition of groups and office holders, is advocating
for three complementary public-financing bills in the
legislature: for judicial races-— endorsed by Gov.
Gregoire, after heavy-handed special-interest funding
in the last elections; for local races; and for all statewide
races. Find out more about Washington Public Campaigns:
visit www.washclean.org or call 206-463-2812. Take back
your elections! Make them clean elections!
William Logan Elder is writer living in Seattle, and a
member of Washington Public Campaigns, a statewide organization
working for public financing of election campaigns at
all levels.
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