An insult to honest politics
Jeff Jacoby
jewishworldreview.com
LIBERTARIANS WILL NEVER be a force to contend with in
electoral politics because they are crippled by two
disabilities from which Republicans and Democrats rarely
suffer:
They are animated almost entirely by principle.
They have a sense of humor.
Both qualities were on display in Massachusetts last week,
as four Libertarian candidates for state office gleefully made a hash of the state's
absurd campaign finance law. For that service alone,
Dean Cook (the Libertarian candidate for governor),
Elias Israel (lieutenant governor), David Atkinson
(secretary of state), and Carla Howell (auditor) deserve
to be elected in November.
The 1994 Massachusetts law requires candidates for
statewide office to declare an upper limit on the
amount they will spend to get elected. Those who
offer to abide by the "voluntary" cap specified in the
statute are rewarded with a check from the state.
Those who declare a higher limit receive no public
funding -- and their opponents get to spend up to the
higher amount.
Thus, in the race for governor, Democrat Scott
Harshbarger agreed to abide by the statutory cap -- $1.5 million -- and so qualified
for $750,000 in public money. Republican Paul Cellucci forfeited the subsidy by
declaring a higher limit, $5 million. Were they the only candidates, the cap would
have been raised to $5 million. But Cook, the Libertarian candidate, declared a
spending "limit" of $19,514,800,000. That blew a hole right through the campaign
finance law, freeing all three candidates to spend, in effect, as much as they like.
Of course, Cook also blew his chance to get a big chunk of taxpayers' money.
But as a Libertarian, he wouldn't have taken public money anyway.
$19,514,800,000, a Libertarian Party news release noted, "is greater than the
entire gross domestic product of Bolivia" and "four times that of Iceland." It also
happens to be the size of the bloated Massachusetts state budget for fiscal year
1999 -- far and away the largest budget in Bay State history. The Legislature
cannot keep its own spending under control, yet it has no trouble trying to
compel candidates for office to limit theirs.
Libertarians and others oppose campaign spending limits on the grounds that
they abridge political expression; restrict a candidate's ability to fund his
campaign and you restrict his right to free speech. It is true that American politics
is obsessed with raising money, but that is because campaign finance "reforms"
have made fund-raising too difficult. The same 1994 Massachusetts law that
created the spending limits also cut the maximum contribution from $1,000 to
$500. That didn't make political campaigns cheaper, and it didn't drive "special
interests" from the arena. It simply made candidates work twice as hard to raise
the same amount as before.
In politics, dollars equal speech. They also equal the only chance most
challengers have of ousting an incumbent.
"The more one restricts financing," writes political commentator Avi Nelson in the
summer issue of Commonwealth magazine, "the more it benefits the incumbents.
Consider an extreme case: Suppose candidates could spend only $5 for a race.
Who would win? The incumbents, of course, because of all the . . . advantages
they already have. . . . The more one restricts campaign expenditures, the more
incumbents are assured reelection."
Nelson, who ran twice for Congress in the 1970s, points out a fundamental
injustice of campaign-finance laws. To mandate that every candidate in a race be
subject to the same spending limit "is to presume that [all] of them start even on
the track. But they don't." Most elections are fought by candidates with unequal
levels of name recognition, unequal mailing lists, unequal speaking skills,
unequal campaign managers, unequal political connections, and unequal access
to free media. By what Procrustean logic does it follow that the one thing that
must be equal is their freedom to raise money?
But bad as the existing statute is, the proposed "Clean Elections Law" --
Question 2 on the Massachusetts ballot in November -- is far worse. Here is a law
that would all but abolish the freedom of voters to contribute to candidates they
like while forcing them to underwrite handouts to politicians they can't stand -- or
never heard of.
If Question 2 passes, any candidate who met a minimal fund-raising threshold
would automatically receive a huge windfall of public money. For instance, a state
Senate candidate who raised as little as $2,250 would be given $43,000 in the
primary, and another $29,000 for the general election. Candidates for governor
would have to raise no more than $30,000 in order to reap a bonanza of up to
$2.55 million. Powerball will become passe. Anyone looking to get rich quick
would be crazy not to run for office in Massachusetts.
The law would impose new spending limits, of which the state funding would
comprise 80 percent. That is, voluntary donations would not be allowed to
account for more than 20 percent of a candidate's budget. In theory the limits
would be voluntary, but if a candidate went over them, punishment would be
swift: His opponents would be given public "matching funds" equal to the
amount of the excess spending. Meanwhile, political donations would be limited
to $100.
The proponents of Question 2 say with straight faces that it is "elegant in its
simplicity." In fact it is grotesquely convoluted: It runs to 71/2 pages of dense,
single-spaced text. It is almost surely unconstitutional. Worse, it is an affront to
honest politics. "Clean" elections? There is nothing clean about forcing
taxpayers to hand over money to candidates they don't support. And there is
nothing dirty about voters who willingly write a check to a candidate they believe
in.
Citizens who like having the state make their political choices for them will no
doubt favor Question 2. Those who would rather make up their own minds have
every reason to vote no. |
