A Number of high-ranking members of the New York business community have thrown their influence and money behind Gov. Cuomo’s call to have the deficit-ridden state government take over financing of political campaigns, supposedly as a deterrent to corruption.
It’s not entirely surprising that the elites behind the Public Campaign Action Fund — including, according to The New York Times, media moguls Barry Diller and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, as well as bankers David Rockefeller Sr. and Jonathan Soros (son of George Soros), plus various union leaders and Moveon.org — would support an increase in campaign-finance regulation. All have histories of championing state power on many issues.
What is surprising is that they’re holding up the New York City campaign-finance model as an example of a successful system.
The program’s failures are well known by its administrators. New York City’s Campaign Finance Board has lamented: “The program’s requirements . . . appear to have contributed to greater disparities between office holders’ and challengers’ campaign finances.”
The board further admitted: “The Public Fund has helped to finance possibly unnecessary campaign expenses and uncompetitive campaigns.”
In other words, the city’s system has boosted incumbents at the expense of challengers — and “free money” has also encouraged needless campaign spending and, indeed, pointless candidacies. Why presumably smart individuals would foist such a failure on the citizens of New York is baffling.
And these problems seem to be intrinsic to public financing of campaigns. A report last year by the Center for Competitive Politics, Clean Elections and Scandal examined two decades of experience with public-funding programs. The report showed that, far from preventing corruption, so-called “clean elections” have damaged governments, including the city’s.
These systems have reduced the chances that corrupt incumbents would lose their seats. They’ve also been regularly abused by candidates, who often use the public campaign funds improperly for personal gain or find creative ways to circumvent reporting requirements and strict contribution limits.
Did these wealthy New Yorkers somehow miss the widespread coverage of the current investigation of city Comptroller John Liu’s campaign for alleged massive violation of campaign-finance laws?
By CCP’s estimation, New York City candidates who have been investigated for charges ranging from election fraud to slush-fund abuse have been granted nearly $14 million in public funds over the last decade alone.
Campaign-finance expert Alison Hayward notes that this is not simply an “urban problem”; she cites Maine and Arizona as examples of states in which these programs failed to deal with corruption issues or accomplish any tangible goals. Studies in 2003 and 2010 of Maine and Arizona’s public- funding systems by the Government Accountability Office led to similar conclusions.
Supporters of such systems, such as Common Cause, claim that the simple fact that money is being provided by taxpayers and not “special interests” is all the evidence we should need that publicly funded elections are beneficial. But ask about real, tangible benefits that improve the lives of voters, taxpayers and citizens, and supporters of tax-financed elections fall silent.
The reality is that asking the public to fund political campaigns accomplishes nothing. Candidates continue to seek interest-group support through other channels, both financial and in-kind, and corruption problems abound.
Worse, these programs stack the deck in favor of preferred interests and incumbents, stifling voter choice and electoral competition.
In fact, promises to the contrary, public financing of political campaigns correlates with less rather than more voter participation (as in New York City), as voters realize the insurmountable odds against removing incumbents.
Blaming the campaign-finance system is the politician’s classic excuse for a refusal to deal with tough issues facing the state. What is clear is that where it has been tried, forcing the public to pay for campaigns through tax dollars has failed. There is no reason for the broke power brokers in Albany to emulate New York City.
Bradley A. Smith is the chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics and a law professor at Capital University Law School.