Campaign financing is an issue that affects all of us—it is how we elect the people that represent us on a day-to-day basis. Campaigns take money, and campaigns are the vehicles that get candidates elected.
As Arizona citizens, we want our voice to be heard, but thanks to a recent Supreme Court order, this will not happen.
Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court suspended an Arizona program that has been in place for well over a decade. Approved in 1998 by Arizona voters, the Citizens Clean Election Commission gave candidates subsidies to finance their campaigns, all paid for by taxpayers.
The idea behind Clean Elections is to encourage more people to run for office – with public funds, they would not have to raise as much money as a privately funded candidate.
This program leveled the political playing field significantly.
Democrats and Republicans alike have embraced the idea of Clean Elections.
Gov. Jan Brewer is running for reelection as a publicly funded candidate. Attorney General Terry Goddard, the Democratic nominee for governor, is also running as a Clean Elections candidate.
According to The Washington Post, Brewer will drop from $2.1 million campaign funding to $707,477 with this order.
Another Republican nominee for governor and privately funded candidate, Buz Mills, has already spent $2.3 million on his campaign, according to the Post article.
But thanks to the Supreme Court order, this funding will be halted. The order was issued on the grounds that it violated privately funded candidates’ freedom of speech because they were forced to stop their campaign spending at a certain level.
Publicly funded candidates cannot get name recognition now. Radio and television commercials, campaign literature and signs all cost money—these are all highly effective ways for a candidate to campaign. State elections will be won not at the polls, but at the bank. Whoever has the largest pile of cash, not the best platform, will win.
The average citizen’s voice will get lost amidst the millions of dollars it takes to finance a campaign, even at the state level. If we cannot elect state legislators or a governor who represent us, people will not have any incentive to turn out at the polls on Election Day.
Our state’s democracy will crumble into an aristocracy.
Coming on the heels of the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporate campaign spending to take place, the Supreme Court has set an elegant table for November’s elections. It is a table that looks enticing, but few will be seated.
The guest list includes only corporations and the well-to-do. The average American and Arizonan are excluded. A precursor to attending this November is money, which few of us have right now.
As a college student, I fit neither the corporate or monetary requirements to participate in this once great democracy of ours, do you?
Reach Andrew at andrew.hedlund@asu.edu.
