Connecticut's public financing program already making big waves
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Thu Oct 23, 2008 at 07:33:27 PM EST
Small donors and public funding are powering 75% of the candidates running for state legislature in Connecticut this year. It's the first year of the state's new Citizens' Elections Program, and that's a fantastic start. The New York Times took note of this exciting progress today: The big story about public financing of campaigns nationally has been Barack Obama's decision to opt out of the national system. But what's unfolding in Connecticut may end up being far more influential. What's unfolding? Three-quarters of the candidates are not relying on wealthy donors and special interest money to run for office. They're raising small contributions, and those contributions are amplified by public funds to give them enough to run a competitive race -- which means elected officials who aren't accountable to wealthy campaign donors but to regular voters and small donors.
Connecticut's initial success is remarkable; the Times acknowledges, "Connecticut's initial experience has exceeded the expectations of even its most enthusiastic supporters." Yet the media have been largely missing or distorting this demand for reform around the country.
Himes, Shays agree on support for public financing
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Mon Oct 20, 2008 at 04:51:13 PM EST
In a closely contested race in Connecticut, incumbent Rep. Chris Shays (R) and challenger Jim Himes (D) agreed yesterday that changing the way we pay for our elections is critical: During that rare light moment, they agreed that public financing needs to be adopted for congressional campaigns to prevent the proliferation of lobbyists, political action committees and special interests who this year are making Connecticut's tight 4th District race one of the most-expensive in the country. Perhaps it has something to do with the dramatic initial success of the Connecticut Citizens Elections public financing program, which began this year. In addition, last week, we sent a letter to every congressional candidate and asked them to sign the Voters First Pledge. As the nation faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, now is the time for bold reforms to both the financial and political systems. Wall Street and powerful financial interests should not be funding campaigns for Congress if we want a political system that truly works for the American people.
The time is long overdue for members of Congress to do what the majority of Americans now know they should do: Make genuine reform of campaign finance a top legislative priority in 2009. Himes and Shays need to make it official that they're on board -- you can see the signers here -- but it's great that this important reform issue entered their debate in its final weeks. The one good investment
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Fri Sep 19, 2008 at 01:25:30 PM EST
USA Today points out what was perhaps the only good investment in this whole economic mess: the banking industry's $170 million to lobby Washington and fund lawmakers' political campaigns over two decades, which is now paying off with a multi-hundred billion dollar taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. Buying justice?
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Tue Sep 09, 2008 at 12:02:48 PM EST
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a editorial on a topic that often gets overlooked but is quickly becoming a major concern for a host of public interest organizations that count on judicial fairness: the megabucks flowing into judicial elections from special interests. The most egregious example recently, that the Times highlights, was the CEO of a major coal company bankrolling a state Supreme Court justice's electoral campaign, and then the justice turning around and casting the deciding vote to vacate a $50 million verdict against the CEO's company. the deciding vote was cast by Justice Brent Benjamin. He refused to recuse himself despite the $3 million that Mr. Blankenship spent to get him elected.
Judicial neutrality and the appearance of neutrality are basic elements of due process. Not every contribution to a judicial campaign triggers due process concerns significant enough to require recusal, but Mr. Blankenship's outsized campaign expenditures surely did.
Across the country, state courts are drowning in a sea of special-interest campaign money. The American Bar Association has good standards for judicial recusal, which nearly every state court system and the federal judiciary have adopted.
Unfortunately, compliance is spotty. Situations like the Massey Energy case create an unmistakable impression that justice is for sale.
I'm no money manager, but I'm pretty sure that the $50 million, a 1,667% return on $3 million invested in campaign contributions, is what you'd call a "good return on your investment."
Unless you're invested in a healthy democracy and a fair, impartial judicial system. Then you'd just call that absurd and senseless and you'd push for public financing of judicial races, as we're doing.
Abramoff sentencing today
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Thu Sep 04, 2008 at 01:46:37 PM EST
Jack Abramoff is back up for sentencing today. After serving part of a six-year sentence on a Florida casino fraud, he's now going to be sentenced for what he's best known for: bribing lawmakers with gifts, trips, and campaign cash and defrauding Indian tribes.
It's a sad but important reminder that in a private-money-driven political system, we'll continue to see bad actors and bad decisions made in a bad system.
We could go down a different road, which is what our Voters First Pledge campaign is all about -- getting candidates for Congress committed now, while they're running for election or reelection, to sign on in support of comprehensive public financing.
We're asking folks to send a No More Abramoffs message to Congress, to ask friends and family to do the same, and to take the message directly to the candidates by downloading and using this downloadable "Abramoff flyer" to communicate back to our future elected officials to take the Voters First Pledge. UPDATE: Abramoff was sentenced to four years in prison.
No quit in Durbin
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Wed Aug 27, 2008 at 06:43:09 PM EST
Senator Dick Durbin
Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin dropped by the Big Tent today. Durbin is the champion and co-author with Sen. Arlen Specter of the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act (S.1285), the bill to create a full public financing system for U.S. Senate races. The average Senate winner spent $9.6 million in 2006, and as Durbin likes to point out, it cost an average of over $7 million to lose a Senate race last cycle. Durbin spoke to bloggers and other media but I caught him on his way out. I thanked him for his leadership on public financing. True to form, he ignored the praise and spoke of the work to be done. With a hostile Supreme Court on the campaign finance front, Durbin was unfazed. "We still need to do this," he said, regardless of the Court. "I don't think we're sunk, not at all." With folks like Sen. Ken Salazar saying we need to do something on campaign finance reform, and Durbin and Specter in the lead, 2009 is shaping up to be a big and critical year to move forward in changing how we finance federal elections.
Jay Mandle on T. Boone Pickens' plan
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Thu Aug 14, 2008 at 12:54:25 PM EST
Jay Mandle analyzes the strange-bedfellows partnership between oilman T. Boone Pickens and environmentalists on the topic of promoting wind power to reduce our dependence on oil. As Mandle points out, these two camps won't just need each other to push through substantive clean energy reforms -- they'll also likely need to overcome the power of wealthy special interests like Big Oil. Pickens is a steadfast Republican who notoriously financed the Swift Boat attack on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. But in advancing his plan, he will find more allies among environmentalists than among his conservative friends....
Many environmentalists welcome Pickens' wind power initiative, whatever his past politics. But even Pickens will have to battle entrenched energy special interests that have long stymied the environmental movement. Since 1990, donors associated with the oil and gas industries gave $220.4 million to politicians running for office, compared to just $3.4 million from donors connected to alternative energy production and services firms. In our political system, where private funding buys political influence, alternative energy advocates simply lacked the clout to get Congress to support renewables. Even with Pickens on their side, the green movement cannot hope to compete in the pay-to-play system of campaign financing. Again, it points to comprehensive reform like public financing as a first step to solving other, major problems.
Common Cause Weekly Update - June 11, 2008
Common Cause continues its efforts to hold power accountable. Abuse of Power: Forging the Path to Recovery Common Cause hosted a distinguished panel on June 10 to discuss the widespread abuse of power engaged in by the current Administration. The Administration has disregarded the rule of law through over-broad assertions of executive power, abuse of signing statements, and policies that arguably flout the Constitution regarding interrogation, detention, and intelligence gathering. The Congress has repeatedly failed to perform its constitutionally mandated oversight duties in each of these areas. The panelists were charged with examining these disturbing trends and with considering how best to restore the constitutional constraints that have served our country well since its inception.
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