Campaign Finance Reform:

What Money Can’t Buy

In an effort to atone for the political chicanery in recent years that has eroded Connecticut’s vaunted reputation for intelligence and sophistication, the state Legislature, with the encouragement and consent of the governor, has enacted into law the nation’s toughest campaign finance reforms. Both the Senate and House passed the measure by comfortable margins last week, and Gov M. Jodi Rell signed it into law this week, proclaiming Connecticut as a model for similar reform measures in other states around the nation.

There is some cause for pride in this landmark legislation. Lawmakers in other states have not yet been able to bring themselves to cut off their supply of ready money from state lobbyists and contractors, as this law does. Money is like oxygen for the politically ambitious, and there is no greater ambition for an incumbent elected official than to win reelection again, and again, and again. Yet Connecticut was so shamed by the influence of special interests in Hartford during the administration of ex-governor and current federal prison inmate John Rowland, state lawmakers concluded they had no choice. The newly spurned lobbyists and contractors are already talking about challenges to the law based on their constitutional free speech rights. We hope the courts affirm what we believe the framers of the Constitution intended: that free speech is about people talking rather than money talking.

We are still troubled, however, over provisions in the reform legislation that establish a system of public financing for statewide elective offices and for state legislative offices. Candidates who agree to limit their spending and abide by other requirements in the law become eligible for public financing ranging up to $25,000 in state House races, $85,000 in state Senate races, and $3 million in a gubernatorial contest, if they meet private fundraising thresholds. It is expected that this largess by the state will cost $16 million each year — money that would otherwise make its way to the general fund for other uses.

Having so much money sloshing around the election campaigns in legislative districts is not going to benefit voters. In 2004, State Rep Julia Wassermann raised $6,300 for her campaign in the 106th Assembly District and State Sen John McKinney raised $45,765 to get reelected in the 28th Senatorial District. Granted, Rep Wasserman had no opposition in 2004, but even in years when she has had a challenger, her campaign expenditures are about the same. Most of the excess money the state will be pouring into the legislative district races beginning in 2008 will go to print and broadcast advertising that, at best, will consist of little more than sloganeering. At worst, we will get publicly financed mudslinging. Financing legislative elections with public money will only buy us a lot more of what we don’t need in election campaigns and leave us longing for what money can’t buy for our political process: intelligence and sophistication.