OK. I know that this topic is most definitely close to many of your hearts, as it is to mine. I also know that you probably feel very differently than I do on this issue. I am, in fact, one of the only Democrats I know who feels that the progressive movement as a whole is on the wrong side of the campaign finance debate. Naturally, I expect a cold reception, but will soldier on.
I just ask that before you jump on me, you hear me out and read my entire diary. Maybe I will make you think twice about the issue, maybe we can agree to disagree.
I will not deal with all of the issues surrounding campaign finance in this diary - that would be impossible. However, I think I can help to open a dialogue and bring a unique perspective to this debate. I plan to continue writing about it on Kos, and maybe after reading several entries you will see that maybe this liberal from a red state has a point.
My perspective after the jump...
What I will be focusing on in this diary is the polarization that public financing of campaigns creates in legislatures that are not one-party dominant.
Arizona, my home state, passed the "clean elections" law in 1998 by citizen initiative. It is an opt-in program, but the vast majority of candidates in both parties choose to participate in it rather than to finance traditionally.
The law requires that candidates collect a certain amount of $5 contributors by a deadline, as well as a small amount of "seed money" to begin their campaign.
Once candidates turn in their $5 contributions, the Clean Elections Commission writes them a check for around $13,000 for the primary election and around $20,000 for the general election. If the candidate is running in a one-party-dominant district, they can opt to receive the bulk of their funding in the primary.
During the campaign, if a "traditionally financed" opponent or "independent expenditure committee" outspends the "participating" candidate, the Commission gives matching funds of up to three times the initial investment, as long as the participating candidate can provide proof that the money was spent to defeat them.
This system seems like it would be a great alternative to "big money" politics. However, when it is actually put into practice, all that it does is create confusion over the language of the law, cripples campaigns due to their inability to raise and spend significant amounts of money, and creates a rather activist-heavy-policy-light class of legislator who was only able to get elected because of grassroots activity rather than traditional methods.
Effectively, only very liberal and very conservative candidates can get elected, because pragmatic politicians with support from business (which many Democrats do and should have) are unable to raise sufficient funds to mount a campaign. The private sector loses the ability to get involved at all when monetary support is cut out of the equation and campaigns are made all about how many feet someone can get on the ground.
The very far left has The Sierra Club, NARAL, and Unions, among other groups, to do walking for them, and the very far right has the religious right, "Moral Majority" types to hit the pavement. Pragmatic candidates who cant amass support among activists groups, but who are generally more willing to work to craft AND PASS good legislation, are left out to dry.
The result of this is a legislature full of very liberal and very conservative members who can barely stand to be in the same room together, much less pass good bills or budgets that make much sense.
Academic research has shown that candidates do not generally collect money from contributors, then change positions or give favor to certain lobbies, but rather what ACTUALLY happens is the opposite: interest groups find candidates whose beliefs are in line with what they want to see, then support them. This can be done both by "troops on the ground," and, in most states, monetarily.
From the abstract of that study:
...campaign contributions are not a form of policy-buying, but are rat her a form of political participation and consumption. We summarize the data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals , not special interests, are the main source of campaign contributions. Moreover, we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good, dependent upon income, and campaign contributions as a percent of GDP have not risen appreciably in over 100 year s - if anything, they have probably fallen. We then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators' votes. Finally, we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects, there is little relationship between money and legislator votes.
If we can find a way to publicly finance campaigns without polarizing our legislatures, then lets do it. But I would definitely make sure it works in the states before taking it to the Federal level. If the Arizona system was taken to Washington, the "deadlock" we currently know would most likely spiral downward into an utter inability to pass any legislation at all.
Those are my thoughts. Now it's your turn to sound off...