A 'Clean' Sweep for Elections

Schwarzenegger has called for a "blackout" on fund-raising by state elected officials during the budget process; instantaneous electronic disclosure of all contributions to politicians; and a nonpartisan commission to draw election district boundaries. These are all worthwhile steps, but they'll have little effect on the money chase. Half the states in America impose some kind of blackout period on official fund-raising, with no discernible effect on the power of special interests. Checks, after all, can be postdated. As long as candidates are dependent on private money to finance their campaigns, big-money interests will call the tune.

Three of the five top contenders, Bustamante, Huffington and Peter Camejo, say they favor full public financing of elections, which would be a fundamental shift in the process. Camejo's Green Party has long sought such reform, in addition to calling for instant runoff voting, which would allow voters to rank the candidates in their order of preference and ensure that whoever was elected ultimately received a majority of the votes cast.

Huffington, running as an independent, recently stated her intent to place a "Clean Elections" initiative on the ballot. The measure would be modeled on public financing systems now up and running in Arizona and Maine. Bustamante appears to have responded to these calls from the rivals on his left by embracing reform as well. In the third debate of the campaign, on Sept. 17, he parried attacks by saying, "Until you get to a full public-financing system, you're never going to be able to do anything other than rearrange the deck chairs."

He's right (though he has yet to spell out an actual reform proposal). In Arizona, where seven out of nine statewide officeholders, including Gov. Janet Napolitano, won office running "clean," there has been more competition for all offices, greater participation by Latino and Native American candidates and higher voter turnout. Perhaps most important, the state is now blessed with a large number of elected officials not beholden to any moneyed interest.

McClintock has not spelled out a reform proposal of his own, though after Bustamante endorsed public financing he criticized it as a waste of taxpayer dollars. On his Senate Web site, he includes the text of a floor speech he gave in July 2000, where he spoke out against Prop. 34's modest limits on campaign contributions, and insisted that the real source of rising campaign costs was the increasing size of government. "The more money the government controls, the more money will be spent to control the government," he argued.

This view is common among conservatives, but it's contradicted by the facts. Spending on federal campaigns doubled between 1992 and 2000, while the size of government grew little.

Whatever happens Oct. 7, the recall battle itself has demonstrated why we need to tackle the problem of big money in politics, as the candidates in the running are the ones with huge war chests. That shouldn't be the end of the story. But it will be up to an activated citizenry to push for real reform.