Jeffrey Yasskin’s blog

Prop 89 establishes publicly funded statewide elections in California, funded by a 0.2% increase in the corporate income tax rate. It also tightens campaign contribution limits and creates a limit of $10,000 for corporate spending on ballot measures. It’s based on AB (Assembly Bill) 583, but when that got stuck in the California Senate, the California Nurses Association (CNA) added the funding source and the contribution limits and got enough signatures to put it on the ballot, largely without consulting with other groups that had supported Clean Money before. That was a stupid move, as I’ll describe below.

Public funding for campaigns is a really good idea, which has been working in Maine and Arizona since 2000 and several other states more recently. I’ll try to counter some of the more popular objections:

I don’t want my tax money going to some slimy politician.

Slimy politicians are selected by our electoral system. In order to run for office, you have to be able to convince people, in particular wealthy people, to give you money. That in itself takes an unusual personality. Then those people tend to call in favors once you’re elected. Even if you started with high ideals, the realities of running a campaign tend to squash them. By funding campaigns, we can encourage better candidates to run in the first place, and perhaps rehabilitate some of the existing ones.

I don’t want my tax money going to politicians I disagree with.

Look at how large corporations do this. They give to both sides of most races so that whoever gets elected owes them favors. Wouldn’t you rather elected officials owe favors to you rather than to big money?

There are better uses for this money.

Direct corporate subsidies in California cost roughly $3 billion each year. Funding all campaigns costs about $200 million. Now, not all subsidies are wasteful, but when the recipients have been funding campaigns for many years, it’s safe to assume that some are. If even 10% of subsidies are wasteful, publicly funded campaigns pay for themselves. That doesn’t even consider the less obvious manipulations of our laws made possible by the legalized bribes we call campaign donations.

There’s just too much money in politics.

Well, yes, but the laws we’ve passed to try to limit spending have either not worked or been unconstitutional limits on speech. It seems that campaign spending is just destined to go up. So we need to work to limit the damage caused by that spending, or even make it beneficial by helping candidates communicate their positions.

And yet instead of letting the bill take its natural course through the legislature and only bring it to the people when it was obvious the legislature was too corrupt to pass it, the CNA impulsively decided to bring it to the people now, without bringing the other sympathetic parties on board. This lost the vote of the teachers’ union and everyone who dislikes the initiative system on principle. On top of that, they added clauses to the bill that serve only to punish corporations. Yes, big business has hurt the state, and may in fact deserve to be punished. But we also need their help to rebuild our society, and pursuing a war between progressives and businessmen helps nobody. By adding punitive language to what should have been just a Clean Elections act, the CNA lost the potential support of moderate businesses and most of the Republican party.

Getting California to adopt clean elections would have been an uphill struggle in any case. There was no reason to make it even harder by alienating many of the potential supporters, especially when clean elections themselves might help enact some of the more overreaching parts of Prop. 89 a few years later. The CNA should be ashamed of having jeopardized this essential measure.

I still think Prop. 89 is worth voting for, despite its flaws. The unfairness to corporations can be fixed over the next few years, despite requiring yet another election to confirm the changes, and clean elections will reduce corruption and help citizens begin to feel like they have a voice again. That whole “voice” thing is actually the best reason to vote for this, over almost any objections. Our democracy only stands a chance if individuals know they can overcome entrenched interests in our society.

I canvassed yesterday against Proposition 85, which would require parental notification before abortions and then went with that group to watch the debate between Schwarzenegger and Angelides.

The people I talked to were overwhelmingly opposed to 85, as you would expect in SF, but the voter lists we had were pruned to just women Democrats and a few “other”s, so I suspect we got a biased picture. The whole process was geared toward turning out the base, rather than opening any sort of dialog or changing minds. Now, maybe abortion is too polarized an issue to try to change minds on, but parental notification seems like enough of a wedge issue that we should be seeking out those on the fence.

The governor’s debate was extremely interesting politically. I disagree with most of the issues the Governator has pushed, with the significant exception of the recent CO₂ emissions law. And yet I disagree more with Angelides’ apparent philosophy toward politics. Several times, Schwarzenegger mentioned the idea of giving back to society. And when asked, “What’s the one thing you regret doing in office?”, Angelides weaseled out by complaining about deficit spending, which I would be surprised if he had any authority over. Schwarzenegger’s answer wasn’t perfect — he admitted a mistake in strategy rather than a mistake on an issue — but he said he’d learned that he needs to work to bring people together instead of trying to go over their heads.

So, we need to escape from partisan politics and convince people again of the importance of giving back to their communities. But we also need to fix the important particulars. In this election, it seems that I have to choose between the two and, right now, I’m leaning toward the larger goals over the particulars.