Angelides Backs Public Financing of Campaigns
SACRAMENTO — Defying some of his strongest supporters in the race for governor, state Treasurer Phil Angelides on Thursday threw his support behind a November initiative that would use taxpayer money to fund campaigns and would markedly restrict political donations to candidates.
The decision to endorse Proposition 89 puts Angelides at odds with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his Republican opponent. Schwarzenegger had made sweeping away the influence of special interests a central platform of the 2003 recall as he blistered then-Gov. Gray Davis for his fundraising. Since then, Schwarzenegger has broken fundraising records himself and has shown little interest in changing campaign finance laws.
Big corporate donors and major unions -- such as the California Teachers Assn., one of Angelides' biggest backers -- oppose the campaign finance overhaul. But the initiative is being sponsored by another important union, the California Nurses Assn., which has been one of Schwarzenegger's strongest critics.
Campaign finance has a tortured history in California, where voters have either turned down efforts to limit the influence of donors or seen them tossed out by the courts. Despite donation limits approved by voters in 2000, unprecedented amounts have been spent; this year alone, an estimated $300 million could go to a host of races and initiatives.
Angelides has been a prolific fundraiser himself, both in his races for treasurer and as Democratic Party chairman more than a decade ago. He raised an estimated $4 million at a Beverly Hills event with former President Clinton this week, and his race for governor has benefited from about $9 million in spending by a housing developer and his daughter, who are his longtime friends.
But he characterized Proposition 89 as nothing less than protecting democracy and creating a system "where it's not how much money you can raise, but the power of your ideas."
"It has become a dialing-for-dollars democracy, with the unjust influence of the special interests silencing the voices of Californians," Angelides said at a rally at the nurses union headquarters in Oakland.
Under Proposition 89, the maximum donation to a statewide candidate would be lowered to $1,000 from the current maximum of $22,300. Perhaps the most significant restriction would be to ban an individual, corporation or union from contributing more than $15,000 combined to all candidates and political committees in a given year.
