Question: Should federal ruling to strike down the Citizens Clean Elections Commission stand?
In Arizona, reformers, mostly liberal, set out again to change the political world. Money — that consistent rhetorical punching bag of the ill-informed — meant too much in politics, and someone, somehow, had to do something.
That something became known as Clean Elections.
From the beginning, reformers relied on the mellifluous name and the electorate’s nagging sense that no good voter could turn down an initiative that introduced itself so nicely.
In 1998, Clean Elections passed by a vote of the people, a fact which, given the plague of voter-approved spending measures that are even now helping to bankrupt the state, says little to recommend it. Nevertheless, the close vote set us on our way to political cleanliness.
But funny thing happened on the way to a politics as pure as the driven snow: Clean Elections just didn’t work.
Clean Elections regulations are difficult to follow, and compliance is often reduced to guesswork. The voluminous complaints of rule-breaking that are a part of every campaign run under Clean Elections attest to the fact that the law is at least unclear.
Further, candidates have an incentive to file as many complaints against competitors as possible, since most complaints get press attention at filing. A free story in the newspaper alleging that a candidate broke the law is a powerful weapon, and candidates have gleefully seized it.
The same attention, sadly, is often lacking if a candidate is vindicated by the Citizens Clean Election Commission, which, as an unelected body vested with the power to throw elected legislators out of office for violation of its rules, should provoke skepticism as well.
The main constitutional problem, of course, and the subject of the recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver, was the matching funds provision of the Clean Elections Act.
Matching funds are further disbursements of public money that are triggered whenever a non-participating candidate competing against a Clean Elections candidate spends any amount over the amount given to the Clean candidate once he or she qualifies for funding. The matching funds provision is the proverbial stick that nearly compels candidates to accept Clean Elections funding.
With matching funds in effect, candidates running under traditional rules have an incentive to stop raising and spending money once the threshold is reached, because every dollar a traditional candidate raises is matched, effort-free, by his or her clean opponent.
The rule also applies to the third-party expenditures often made on behalf of candidates, giving them the bizarre and speech-chilling effect of putting money in the pocket of a favored candidate’s opponent, money that the opponent can spend promoting the message of his choice.
Silver’s opinion finding matching funds unconstitutional did not implicate the entire act, but it seems likely that without the power of matching funds to compel candidates to run clean, Clean Elections will wither and die.
The ruling, if the Ninth Circuit affirms it, may signal the end of the Clean Elections scheme.
Clean Elections is a speech-inhibiting, starry-eyed bit of fuzzy thinking that created more problems than it ever solved. If Clean Elections is dead, let it pass unmourned.
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu
