Is the Defeat of Arizona's 'Clean Elections' System a Victory for 'the Richest Americans'?
As Damon Root noted this morning, the Supreme Court today overturned Arizona's "Clean Elections" system of matching funds for state candidates, concluding that the subsidies effectively penalize privately financed candidates and independent groups for exercising their First Amendment rights, a burden that cannot be justified by the constitutionally unacceptable goal of "leveling the playing field." Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) condemns the decision, which it predictably portrays as a favor to plutocrats:
A majority of the Supreme Court continued to allow big money to capture and corrupt our public elections. This is yet another nail in the coffin of campaign finance reform, jeopardizing a host of similar public financing systems throughout the country and turning back the clock on state efforts to prevent corruption in their political campaigns.
For decades, campaign finance reformers have struggled to create political environments that keep big special interest money from corrupting government. With a history of corruption in state elections, Arizona found a way to do just that by creating an effective public financing scheme. The state scheme attacked corruption and the appearance of corruption in the state's political system by breaking candidates' dependence on big money. Under Arizona's now eviscerated campaign finance provision, ordinary citizens were able to run competitive races against better-financed opponents by agreeing to limit total spending and accepting only small contributions. In exchange, the state contributed public funding.
Today's decision centers on the matching funds provision of the law (sometimes referred to as the "trigger" mechanism) that provides those candidates who opt in with additional funding if their opponents exceed established spending limits. This is a critical component, because it allows candidates who agree to forsake large contributions for small ones to go toe-to-toe with self-financing millionaires and well-financed candidates supported by big money special interests….
The law deters quid pro quo corruption and the appearance of corruption by providing candidates with the option to campaign without depending on outside contributions, thus justifying the matching funds provision.
In a press release headlined "Roberts Court Stands Up for Big Money Again," CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan declares that "Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative colleagues have been systematically dismantling our nation's campaign finance laws, ensuring that only the richest Americans will have a say in the political process." In addition to today's ruling, Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, Sloan is alluding to Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which overturned restrictions on independent speech by corporations, and Davis v. FEC (2008), which rejected a rule that raised contribution limits for federal candidates facing self-financed opponents. Her portrayal of the Supreme Court as the rich man's friend, though familiar, is not borne out by these decisions.
The charge may seem most fitting in the case of Davis, since that ruling blocked Congress' attempt to help candidates compete against wealthy people who fund their own campaigns. But one need not be a pawn of "the richest Americans" to question the method Congress chose, which applied two different rules of law to people based on their socioeconomic status. Furthermore, focusing on the advantages enjoyed by wealthy candidates obscures the fact that self-financing worries Congress because it allows challengers to overcome the huge advantages enjoyed by incumbents. In other words, it can be a powerful tool to oppose entrenched interests.
The same can be said of Americans' ability to pool their resources and participate in political activity through nonprofit corporations such as the National Rifle Association, the Sierra Club, and the American Civil Liberties Union, a right upheld by Citizens United. Unlike wealthy individuals, who were always free to spend as much as they wanted to influence elections, members of grassroots political organizations (yes, along with megacorporations such WalMart and Exxon Mobil) had to contend with the speech limits overturned in that case.
Likewise, Arizona's Clean Elections system imposed a greater burden on independent groups and candidates who depend on voluntary contributions than it did on rich people running for office. The subsidies were capped at three times the initial allocation, so a wealthy candidate could still outspend a publicly funded opponent, while a candidate relying on the voluntary support of his fellow citizens probably would be stuck in the range where every dollar he spent triggered a dollar for each of his opponents. And it is hard to see how the matching funds deterred "quid pro quo corruption," as Sloan claims, since Arizona already had strict limits on campaign contributions. In any case, the Arizona scandals to which she alludes involved exchanging official actions for bribes, which has always been illegal.
Arizona's system did help candidates who were neither wealthy nor good at attracting voluntary contributions. It's debatable whether the public benefits from increasing the percentage of politicians who are so unappealing that their only hope of gaining office is by depending on money forcibly extracted from taxpayers. But as CREW concedes, today's decision allows states to continue testing that hypothesis through public financing that is not directly tied to the spending of candidates who prefer a less parasitic approach.
I anticipated today's decision in a column last March. I marveled at the overwrought reaction to Citizens United in a Reason cover story last December.