CLEAN MONEY—CLEAN ELECTIONS

CLEAN MONEY—CLEAN ELECTIONS
By Mark Schaeffer

American democracy is in crisis because enormous amounts of special-interest money have distorted political campaigns. The current campaign-finance system might as well be organized bribery. Too often, we have one megabuck, one vote, and we get the best government that money can buy. Good candidates who don’t pander to moneyed interests have great difficulty getting their message out. On every issue, the playing field is tilted in favor of the rich and powerful.

Clean Money Clean Elections (CMCE) is a new movement to solve this problem on both the state and national levels by creating a fair system to finance campaigns. Under CMCE, candidates for office would receive a fixed and equal amount of public funding, with no strings attached, sufficient to run an effective campaign. Candidates would qualify for the clean money by limiting their campaign spending and by collecting a set amount of small contributions from voters.

Statewide CMCE was enacted by the voters of Maine by ballot initiative in 1996, by the Vermont legislature in 1997, and by initiative in Massachusetts and Arizona in 1998. National CMCE has been introduced in both houses of Congress, but so far it has been bottled up in committee.

CMCE-NY intends to accomplish the following goals:

Reduce and limit campaign spending. CMCE would set strict spending limits, to prevent the outrageously high amounts spent on recent campaigns for governor and some legislative seats.

Stop the flow of special-interest money. CMCE would limit campaign contributions to participating candidates to no more than $100. For other candidates the limit would be reduced to $1,000. (Now individuals can donate tens of thousands of dollars to a candidate in New York.)

Give regular people a shot at winning office. CMCE candidates who collect a set amount of $5 contributions from voters in their districts would receive a fixed, equal amount of public funds. Under CMCE, you wouldn’t need to be rich, or raise money from corporations and millionaires, to run for office.

Stop the endless money chase. Under CMCE, candidates could qualify for the ballot and then spend their time raising issues instead of raising money.

Restore the principle of one person, one vote: Under the current system, the candidate with the most money is considered the front-runner. With CMCE, candidates would receive an equal amount of campaign money, so they could concentrate on appealing to voters, rather than to big contributors. In addition, CMCE would ban soft money, provide extra funds to candidates who are opposed by non-participating candidates or by independent expenditures, improve disclosure and enforcement, and require participating candidates to debate their opponents.

In New York, CMCE in supported by 80 citizen organizations representing senior-citizen, labor, tenant, environmental, student, religious, women’s, community, good-government and neighborhood groups. Tenant groups endorsing it include the Metropolitan Council on Housing, New York State Tenants and Neighbors Coalition, West Side Tenants Coalition, Mount Vernon United Tenants, Interfaith Alliance on Homelessness and Housing, and Queens League of United Tenants.

At a news conference announcing the introduction of CMCE bills in the state legislature, Billy Easton of NYSTNC said, “In 1997 big landlords and their PACs hijacked state government by donating millions of dollars to Governor George Pataki and Senator Joseph Bruno. Every New Yorker paid the price as the state got no business done for six months and set a record for the latest state budget. We are supporting this legislation in order to limit contributions by profit-seeking landlords, restore majority-rule democracy to state politics, and protect tenants.”

Opponents of public financing call it “welfare for politicians, paid by taxpayers,” but the real effect of CMCE will be to take away the advantage of candidates who represent concentrated wealth. Taxpayers would actually save money, since we all pay for policies favoring the big contributors. The 1980s savings-and-loan deregulation fiasco, followed by the multibillion-dollar bailout, is costing the average household thousands of dollars. The cost of that one special-interest law would have financed fair campaigns for over a century. Meanwhile, we pay billions more for policies that benefit landlords, the insurance industry, giant oil companies, big polluters, defense contractors, and more.

For more information, or to help work for CMCE in New York, contact Citizen Action, 130 William St., 7th Floor, NYC, NY 10038, (212) 964-3534.